A 28-year-old with no degree becomes a must read on the economy

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-02/nathan-tankus-s-newsletter-subscribers-don-t-care-about-diplomas

by htk • 6 years ago

155 124 6 years ago

bloomberg.com

ixvvqktiwl3• 6 years ago

Also check out r/investing or r/wallstreetbets, lots of free opinions on what's happening in the world.

HenryKissinger2• 6 years ago

check out ... r/wallstreetbets

Don't. At least not for anything other than the memes.

ixvvqktiwl3• 6 years ago

Honestly I think the average IQ on WSB is pretty high, you just have to learn to sift through the junk. There are plenty of gold nuggets to be found.

Also the memes are great. What's the point in life if you aren't having fun?

acwan93• 6 years ago

Serious question: does anyone know when/why that subreddit became what is is today? I used to follow it in the early 2010s and it actually provided some reasonable insights.

stopping• 6 years ago

There may be lots of free opinions, but I don't believe they have much value to the novice investor. I'll admit there are some hidden gems, but separating the wheat from the chaff requires more insight than these subreddits provide on average.

StavrosK2• 6 years ago

They're free and worth every penny.

DevKoala2• 6 years ago

His piece challenging Frank Partnoy’s fear mongering comparison between CDO’s and CLO’s is great.

https://nathantankus.substack.com/p/worst-case-scenario-or-i...

FabHK• 6 years ago

That article was my first introduction to Tankus's writings, and I must say that I disagree - it's not great.

I found Partnoy's article quite persuasive, and Tankus's response [1] not convincing.

For example, this is confused, in my opinion:

Remember that collateralized loan obligations are simpler instruments than collateralized debt obligations. There is one layer between individual loans to corporations and CLOs whereas CDOs were two layers away from individual mortgages. Second, because CDOs were made up of mortgage backed securities, what mortgage backed securities were in them mattered. It's important in this context to know what the purpose of CDOs were. They were the equivalent of kitchen leftovers thrown into a lunch special the next day and cooked in such a way as to hide that they aren’t fresh. CDOs generally took the riskier and lower rated portions of mortgage backed securities and made up entire securities out of them.

I disagree. They are quite similar. Mortgages are wrapped into Mortgage Backed Securities, yes, but they are typically not tranched. So it's basically more or less like one big "average" mortgage. Those then are put into a CDO, and tranched. (Two levels of tranching are normally called CDO-squared.)

Next, house values are somewhat floored - a house can loose 30% value, maybe 40 or 50%, but that's really quite unlikely. Debt, per se, will normally also have some significant recovery value if equity goes to zero. However, a comparatively junior loan might easily go to zero if a company goes bad. Partnoy mentions this explicitly and highlights that many underlying loans are fairly junior:

> We already know that a significant majority of the loans in CLOs have weak covenants that offer investors only minimal legal protection; in industry parlance, they are “cov lite.” The holders of leveraged loans will thus be fortunate to get pennies on the dollar as companies default—nothing close to the 70 cents that has been standard in the past.

Thus, it is CLOs that have something akin to double-tranching, more so than CDOs, contra Tankus's assertion.

The point is, a proper comparison between mortgage securities and syndicated corporate loan securities would compare the value of outstanding “subprime” Mortgage Backed Securities to outstanding Collateralized Loan Obligations, not to Collateralized Debt Obligations.

No. Compare the CLOs to CDOs, or corporate debt to mortgages, or corporate bonds to MBS.

In other words, in nominal dollar terms the current CLO market is ⅓ of the size of the subprime mortgage backed securities market then. This actually understates how relatively paltry Collateralized Loan Obligations are.

That's not paltry. A big problem with CDOs was that it was very intransparent where the losses would accrue. The underlying mortgage market went down, say, 10%. If every bank took a 10% hit, fine. But given the opaqueness, it could be that one bank would take a 5% hit, the other a 25% hit. Nobody could tell, and that made every bank suspect. CLOs pose the same problem.

The key here is to understand that the problems with CDOs were not because of losses on the underlying mortgages. They were dynamite, engineered to explode. The nitroglycerin was not the mortgages but credit default swaps, a type of unregulated insurance that let purchasers bet on whether a specific security was going to fail or not.

Dynamite is engineered to be stable and less explosive than nitroglycerin, and most CDOs were not engineered to explode either. Towards the end, when smart money wanted to short the market, some products were built and sold to long investors so that the smart money could short it, sure. But Tankus doesn't provide evidence about the relative size of that.

Many of these collateralized debt obligations were filled with credit default swaps tied to the riskier and lower rated tranches of Mortgage Backed Securities which I discussed earlier, which were guaranteed to fail.

Again, CDOs are tranched, MBS aren't generally (except in the sense that a CDO is an MBS in the wider sense). CDOs based on CDS are synthetic CDOs, and yeah, they were constructed and sold.

One way of recognizing how fundamentally different circumstances are is by examining what happened to AAA rated mortgage backed securities. If, as Partnoy implies, the losses on CDOs were simply a matter of defaults on the underlying mortgages, triple A rated Residential Mortgage backed Securities should have taken losses comparable to CDOs.

That's nonsense. The whole point is that the expected loss of an MBS is independent of correlation, while the expected loss of a CDO tranche depends on correlation. That's really the basic feature - if you have a non-linear payoffs of an underlying, vol enters, and if you have an underlying consisting of many other underliers, the vol depends on the correlation.

And really, that's what this is about. Higher tranches of CDOs or CLOs are safe when correlation is low, but when one massive black swan hits, namely a pandemic, then correlation is not low, and tranches considered safe before might fail. And one still has the opacity of CDOs.

In fact, it’s likely that collateralized loan obligations made up of the top portion of a portfolio of loans will do the best of any of the Bank’s corporate loans [note: presumably he means the top tranches of such a CLO]. When a bank originates and holds a loan, it immediately takes losses if the borrower defaults. In contrast, it takes very substantial levels of defaults before holders of the top portion, or “senior tranche” of a collateralized loan obligation realize any losses. For any given portfolio of loans, given the same overall default rate and the same loan modifications, senior tranche holders will experience less losses than outright holders of a portfolio of loans. This structure may encourage originating lower quality loans and investors may overpay as a result of tranches being mis-rated by credit rating agencies.

Indeed! That's the problem. Correlation, again.

However, it can’t be said that this structure, in and of itself, magnifies losses for investors in the senior tranche. In fact, it works as intended- other investors bear the bulk of the risks.

Not the structure in and of itself... but the problem remains: you construct a AAA security out of worse quality loans assuming low correlation, and then a pandemic hits...

Finally, Tankus imputes ulterior motives on Partnoy without any warrant.

To sum up, using Tankus summary:

1. No, collateralized loan obligations are not a major systematic risk to the banking system. - well, he hasn't refuted that claim though.

2. No, collateralized loan obligations are not like Collateralized Debt Obligations. - well, they are somewhat. It's the correlation, baby.

3. The Great Financial Crisis was a credit default swap crisis, not a mortgage crisis. - CDS (like all derivatives) are in net zero supply. So, they just redistribute the wins and losses. The losses came from mortgages. CDS redistributed them, CDOs made them very opaque. CLOs can do the same.

4. Credit Default Swaps are not threatening another banking crisis. - Hopefully. CLOs neither, hopefully.

5. Even the leveraged loan market is only somewhat important macroeconomically. - Ok.

6. Liquidity and capital issues are being handled differently today. - Hopefully. But we also have an unprecedented crisis at hand.

7. Leveraged loan issuance is not the major cause of financial distress among businesses. - Not yet.

In the response to Partnoy's response, Tankus reiterates his misunderstanding:

I do not think that popular press pieces should present Collateralized Loan Obligations as similar to Collateralized Debt Obligations when the unique and dangerous feature of Collateralized Debt Obligations is that they were securitizations of already structured products and not securitizations of underlying loans directly.

That's not the unique and dangerous feature. The unique feature of a CDO is the tranching, which it does have in common with a CLO.

Mortgage Backed Securities are the proper analogue to Collateralized Debt Obligations and if Partnoy’s piece were edited to reflect this, a large degree of its rhetorical force would be weakened and the premise of the article may not even hold up to scrutiny.

Same same. Or:

However, a major overarching point of my piece is that that extreme scenario is only plausible when it is implied that top tranche CLOs are like subprime top tranche CDOs. I’m claiming that this is an apples to oranges comparison.

Same same. It's a valid comparison, in my view.

Further, it’s important to grasp that to the extent to which the top tranches of CLOs are threatened on the scale that Partnoy speculates about, no other portfolio of loans would be safe.

Correct. But the portfolio of loans wouldn't be rated AAA, while the CLO senior tranches are. That's the problem.

So, I haven't read much of Tankus, but from this one piece (and the reply to the reply), I am not that impressed.

[1] https://nathantankus.substack.com/p/is-there-really-a-loomin...

DevKoala2• 6 years ago

You are making an argument of CLO’s having more risk than CDOs by using the following from Fartnoy:

Later this summer, leveraged-loan defaults will increase significantly as the economic effects of the pandemic fully register. Bankruptcy courts will very likely buckle under the weight of new filings. (During a two-week period in May, J.Crew, Neiman Marcus, and J. C. Penney all filed for bankruptcy.)

1. We have hit 2014 highs, but we are reopening, and the Fed keeps buying bonds allowing the companies to incur on new debt while keeping their dues with banks.

We already know that a significant majority of the loans in CLOs have weak covenants that offer investors only minimal legal protection; in industry parlance, they are “cov lite.” The holders of leveraged loans will thus be fortunate to get pennies on the dollar as companies default—nothing close to the 70 cents that has been standard in the past.

2. I don’t see him even throwing a percentage of the number of CLO’s that would have to default for this to be a problem. It would be nice to understand where we were, where we are, and what are the possible outcomes. Moreover, the assumption that companies will go down to zero net worth that returns pennies on the dollar implies that the market for companies is inefficient, the risks and pros are not assessed properly. If that was the case we wouldn’t be seeing so many mergers. Companies that will rather be acquired by other companies on pure stock transaction rather than going down to zero, and the leader in the space absorbs the debt. These mergers are driven for a hunger of client expansion and space specific technology acquisition. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-masmovil-m-a-loans/masmov...

After that, you continue making analogies between them by assuming there is more shadow banking and a short market exists, without proof. You also go into a layer structure comparison while ignoring the fact that the CDO’s risk was being assumed recursively while sold linearly. There is also no comment on the fact that the debt on non financial organizations, consumers of CLOs is 23% less than that in 2008 without even adjusting for inflation.

I understand your argument, but it seems you have convinced yourself already of a worst case scenario that is not occurring so far because the Fed is bailing the banks out by buying bonds.

viburnum• 6 years ago

Tankus has been studying economics full time for twelve years! He's earned it. His posts used to be not good but he's paid his dues.

melling2• 6 years ago

What’s the famous saying about the best way to get the right answer? Something about posting it to the Internet and having the crowd correct you?

gen220• 6 years ago

Cunningham’s Law! It is great and has many applications, when you’re trying to squeeze good information out of a system that doesn’t circulate it naturally.

donw• 6 years ago

Universities, in their current incarnation, offer a poor return on investment.

When a degree was scarce, it was valuable. As was when a degree guaranteed a certain level of knowledge and skill.

But that really isn't the case nowadays. The vast majority of degree programs exist simply to collect tuition dollars, and the students that undertake these programs would be better-served by a vocational or professional education system.

The standard counter-argument here is that you gain social skills in university... but the same is true when you join the workforce.

Germany gets this one right, by the way.

That is not to say that the idea of a university has outlived its utility! We need spaces where curious minds can seek answers from and challenge themselves against well-practiced experts. That's part of how you set a country up for future success.

But that's not what we have now, not from my experience in the United States. What we need are Schools of Athens, but what we have are Temples of Amun.

So it's not all that surprising that, in the information age, curious people look to both the cost of a degree, and to the legions of unemployed graduates, and figure they can do better.

kiba• 6 years ago

College offers a "poor" return on investment because students focused on passing their exams and their classes, with no thought on application or any plan to retain the knowledge they acquired.

Thus, any skills or knowledge they gained are only temporary, to be forgotten as soon as they graduate.

In this perspective, college can teach as much as they want, but 80% will evaporate.

akudha• 6 years ago

Yup. I was a shitty student (I used to read novels on my way to the exam hall) and still got a masters degree without breaking a sweat (with decent grades). And this is from a good institution with a fairly tough entrance exam.

Everything I learned, I learned outside school. Sometimes I wonder if the only things that schools provide are friendships and connections, and in some cases brand recognition. Something is not right about the way we teach youngsters.

vesche3• 6 years ago

Paywall bypass:

  wget -U "Mozilla/4.0" "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-02/nathan-tankus-s-newsletter-subscribers-don-t-care-about-diplomas" && firefox nathan-tankus-s-newsletter-subscribers-don-t-care-about-diplomas

I don't really like when non-formal education is highlighted as surprising in a talented individual. At least in the US, a college education will often put you in serious debt and seems to currently be teaching all sorts of non-technical inaccuracies while ill-preparing people for the real world.

With so much knowledge & resources being available for free online: why would any smart, independent young person want to go to college in the US? The only reason I can think of is to become something that you actually _need_ to go to college for like a doctor or lawyer.

It's pretty crazy when people like Jordan Peterson, who used to teach at Harvard, is suggesting that young people go to trade schools. The college system in the US needs to be restructured or die.

runawaybottle• 6 years ago

It’s starting to become an unspoken understanding. The same way we all know just because you got a HS Diploma doesn’t mean anything.

beenBoutIT• 6 years ago

In America a having a HS degree won't get you very far or impress most people but not having one is a terrible thing. The amount of work required to pass through four years of public school is a joke, 'D' grades across the board will do the job.

melling2• 6 years ago

Shouldn’t we be willing to reward his effort? It has been a long road.

Does anyone subscribe to his newsletter?

coding-saints• 6 years ago

I agree and (from a developers POV) think the education needs updated to match the opportunities. But while this article and generate healthy discussions, so much is directed towards some "either / or" debate that it's hard to add input or perspective without feeling like a preamble

bmitc• 6 years ago

People are absolutely obssessed with institutions, mainly via justification of their own passage through those institutions. I have seen it at every level of education where people a notch below them or more on the educational ladder are looked down upon. People holding bachelor's or master's degrees will look down upon those with only an associate's degree or a high school certification. Those with a Ph.D. will look down upon those who don't and elevate those who do. I have both seen this and experienced it.

A book that covers this is Disciplined Minds by Jeff Schmidt.

vesche3• 6 years ago

I definitely agree with this, and I will check out the book you suggested.

The title of the posted article is particularly relevant to me, as I'm also a 28 year old without a degree. I gained my technical skills from schools in the military, OJT, and self-teaching. When I was applying for software engineering jobs in the civilian world, my resume often wouldn't even be looked at because I didn't have a college degree.

tayo42• 6 years ago

I think it's to idealistic. How else can you verify someone got educated on a subject while not being educated on it your self.

aliante6• 6 years ago

Education is basically a system for vouching for someone's knowledge. It is too exhausting to individually check people, so we trust an institution instead and let them confer that trust on others.

Gene_Parmesan• 6 years ago

I think one big problem with college here is that it's fairly easy to attend and get a degree while putting in only minimal effort. If you are someone who is motivated to make the best of your college experience, I think it is still possible to have experiences there that are difficult to have elsewhere.

As a personal example, I have a journalism BS, a law degree from a T20, and I then self-studied comp sci and software dev for four years before doing a career switch. I was fairly unmotivated in college and feel like my BS was a waste. The prestige of the T20 law school didn't change that; once I was admitted I was virtually guaranteed a degree and my motivation followed accordingly.

Then I had a life revelation that led me to the comp sci and a career that I am now obsessed with. My dedication to learning was able to get me significantly more educational value than I got out of my unmotivated degree work. I think I was able to get myself 90% of the way to a BS level in comp sci, but at the same time I do believe there are things I have missed out on by not getting a CS degree that I will really struggle to replicate on my own. For instance, I have tried and tried to (a) find a valuable Compilers course online (like I was able to for algs, ML, linear alg, discrete, etc.), or (b) self-study via textbooks, but neither has been very successful.

Now, would that missing 10% from my CS self-education have been worth $100,000? Since I'm someone with no interest in academia, probably not, but it's hard for me to tell.

I do think that encouraging young people to pursue other avenues than college is part of the answer, but I think we'll fail to make college a truly valuable experience for all unless we increase the challenge (on the average -- certainly there are some schools currently in existence that are highly challenging).

vesche3• 6 years ago

I think one big problem with college here is that it's fairly easy to attend and get a degree while putting in only minimal effort.
I think we'll fail to make college a truly valuable experience for all unless we increase the challenge

This is really interesting. I think we need to both increase the challenge of getting a degree and find other ways to make it more "exclusive". One way to accomplish this might be to make certain, non-technical majors limited somehow. That way areas of study that are over-populated like social sciences, psychology, etc are smartly minimized so they could produce fewer, more elite graduates with credentials that are more valuable. This is obviously easier said than done.

Also, if you're still looking for a book on compilers there's none better than the "Dragon Book" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compilers:_Principles,_Techniq...

neonate• 6 years ago

https://archive.is/THHp4

WalterBright2• 6 years ago

Anyone who has actually read Monetary History is going to be way, way more interesting than those that get their economics from internet memes, slogans, and journalists.

rmrfstar5• 6 years ago

You've got to be careful with Friedman's work. He's highly persuasive, but presents an incomplete picture. For example, he dogmatically asserts that "market power" is not an obstacle to market efficiency. According to Friedman, monopolists are only problematic to the extent that they corrupt government to their ends.

The book's central thesis is that Fed monetary policy made the depression worse. That is widely accepted by economists of all stripes.

However, Friedman also argues that the Fed should boldly step in as a lender of last resort. He ignores the fact that no institution can make a realistic solvency determination during a crisis. What that means in practice is he supports things like TARP.

This amounts to a statement that the cost of financial panics (which are an inherent characteristic of all systems with maturity transformation) should be born by the public rather than the financial sector. That is a political decision, not a technical economic one.

A lot of economics from the Friedman era is about clothing political choices in technical jargon.

aliante6• 6 years ago

should be born by the public rather than the financial sector.

Given the size of the financial sector, I am not sure those are not all that different.

partiallypro2• 6 years ago

He ignores the fact that no institution can make a realistic solvency determination during a crisis. What that means in practice is he supports things like TARP.

I don't think either of these sentences are true. Friedman wasn't for bailouts for those that did wrong, he simply knows that a deflationary spiral can occur if there is a cascading banking failure. Which is what happened in the Great Depression, and what was avoided in 2007/08. It should also be noted that TARP made the public money.

Should be born by the public rather than the financial sector.

That is also not true. The issuer of money explicitly a tool of the government (even if the Fed itself is technically private.) The reason the Fed has to step in, is because the actual equation for money supply includes the velocity of money. If economic activity crashes, the money supply goes down. That is accelerated further due to complex financial instruments such as derivatives. The Fed shoring up balance sheets with low interest loans alleviates that during economic downturns. There is a side effect that some firms are able to use this opportunity to enrich themselves, but it is rarely at a great cost to the public, relatively speaking.

nojito• 6 years ago

TARP was a resounding success. There was nothing political about it, because it was sound policy that worked.

monadic2• 6 years ago

Why that book and not, say, Capital? Friedman is hardly unusual to run into in the US so I'm a little confused why you would consider that a distinguishing factor. Why not just label them a Friedman fan and move on?

WalterBright2• 6 years ago

Because Monetary History is a long, complex book and someone willing to make the effort is going to be more interesting.

nikivi• 6 years ago

Nathan made a thread as a reply to this piece on him

https://twitter.com/NathanTankus/status/1278777095670370304

eganist3• 6 years ago

Thank you for linking this. Arguments will be made that Nathan is politicizing his spotlight, but he's simply seizing the moment to cast light on a dark and apolitical truth most of us take for granted.

I hope HNers can take the time to read this with an open and introspective heart and mind. Unrolled: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1278777095670370304.html

dkdk8283• 6 years ago

It absolutely is politicized and I find this to minimize his accomplishments.

roenxi• 6 years ago

He's literally just some dude; he isn't even claiming credentialism. Anyone who complains about him politicising something is looking very hard for reasons to complain.

If making political statements is the reward he wants for doing the legwork to document what the Fed is doing, he can have it.

aahhahahaaa5• 6 years ago

Wow, what a thoughtful way to respond. That level of character is something you certainly can't get with a degree.

arkis223• 6 years ago

There are quite a few people in the world with a high level of character and no degree

jlawson2• 6 years ago

"That I'm a white cis male who dresses in dress shirts and dress slacks(and have done so since I was 19)has given me a passport into conferences,events and more.I crashed conferences without paying during high school that I would have been barred from if I looked any other way"

How does he know? Is there any evidence for this? Were women or blacks 'barred'? Because if so, I would expect someone to sue and win easily.

The rest of the tweets are a stream of similar and all-unsubstantiated accusations. But we can't dispute any of what he said, because he made his accusations without enough specificity for them to be checked in any way. He chose not to name the 2010 conference.

There's nothing trifling about such accusations. Just because nobody is in a position to respond doesn't mean you're not hurting people. Whether the accusations are made against individuals, specific groups, or a whole ethnic group. If you're gonna slag someone you should have evidence, and you should be specific.

In any case, he chose a good strategy to maximize his personal outcomes. He'll benefit greatly from this. D on fairness and principle, A on strategy.

aahhahahaaa5• 6 years ago

It's outrageously easier to fly under the radar if you're white. If you want to look at it in a ridiculously objective way just consider being a black rock on a white sand beach. Even without the concept of racial bias, which is absolutely at play in these situations, you'll be subject to more scrutiny just by not being the norm.

hardwaregeek• 6 years ago

I've been thinking about this exact issue with respect to my accomplishments. How much benefit have I drawn from looking like a programmer? I'm an Asian American male with glasses. I fit the part. Looking back, people gave me respect and their ear far before I deserved it. Would I have gotten the same level of encouragement if I were Black? Would I have gotten the same level of respect if I were a woman? Probably not.

Any social engineer can tell you that appearances are half the battle. A white male in a hardhat with a clipboard could get into most construction sites. A white male in a suit could probably get into most office buildings.

There's some rather vehement responses in this thread. I wonder how many people are threatened by the idea that their accomplishments are partially due to them "looking the part" and not just their work and skill.

ColanR• 6 years ago

Any social engineer

From my readings of pentesters doing social engineering, female pentesters have the vast advantage when trying to gain building access.

aliante6• 6 years ago

A white male in a suit could probably get into most office buildings.

A woman is going to have a far easier time getting into an office building.

chrisco255• 6 years ago

Dressing for success is not exactly some secret of influence. A black guy in a suit in 2020 is going to be able to get into any office building as well. A black guy with a hard hat is not exactly unheard of on construction sites. It's quite common.

M5x7wI3CmbEem10• 6 years ago

aren’t Asian-Americans dominant in every high-paying profession? doctor, engineer, consultant, banker, etc.

I just haven’t seen very many in industries such as education or government

usaar333• 6 years ago

How much benefit have I drawn from looking like a programmer

On the other hand, our profession does have the benefit of being able to be done with zero knowledge of appearance. In fact, I credit that fact to enabling smart teenagers to make key contributions to open source they otherwise would be excluded from due to assumptions coming from age.

CerealFounder• 6 years ago

Im a white man who looks like a wrestler, while also the CEO and founder of a pair of very well known companies and I without fail will get "bro" talked to upon first meeting by other guys in all contexts.

BoiledCabbage• 6 years ago

It's a great point you raise, and something that we all should think about.

There's some rather vehement responses in this thread. I wonder how many people are threatened by the idea that their accomplishments are partially due to them "looking the part" and not just their work and skill.

Additionally I think a lot of people understand the concept of probability and likelihoods, but when it comes to this topic people get very uncomfortable thinking that where they are today is partially due to luck but as well due to structural factors that benefited them unrelated to any active actions they took.

And usually the emotional response is either doubling down on the parts they did control (completely ignoring the fact that plenty of other people put in more effort or did better at those same parts and didn't get as far as they did), or claiming that yes the problem does exist but "not in my area, because no-one actively does anything bad like that", or the other "my intuition says it's a minor issue or an already resolved issue therefore that's true" - which goes against the research that says - no it is a problem.

Thorentis7• 6 years ago

Point out your "flaw" before the mob does. Classic tactic. I can't even tell if people are sincere any more, that's how far the PC culture has gone. Nathan now gets a free ride since he has acknowledged his privilege, and has now unlocked new avenues to market his work. Maybe he can get a job as an economic diversity consultant to ensure a perfect racial balance is admitted to conference from now on, given how self-aware he is.

fzeroracer• 6 years ago

It's unfortunate to see other HN commentators here seeing someone be humble and recognize that their success is the result of a number of different criteria as being an example of 'PC culture gone mad' or that he's just lying to avoid the mob or as a personal attack on them.

There was an example a while ago of the issues black CEOs face in SV [1] and it's just something you'll never see as a cis white man. I've certainly never encountered any issues relating to my race or my gender or how I present myself, but if you're a black man you're already used to dressing a different way to prevent being perceived as a threat [2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23540162

[2] https://mashable.com/2015/08/08/black-men-dressing-up-police...

CivBase2• 6 years ago

This article puts a lot of emphasis on his lack of degree.

Have we forgotten what a "degree" actually means? When you receive a diploma, it just means some institution is willing to attest that you have achieved some sort of qualification.

You can learn something without approval from an institution. Diplomas are typically expensive, so it's not always worth it to get one. Why is this such a foreign concept?

_td9r• 6 years ago

Authority bias is systemic.

mrfusion• 6 years ago

I worked at a research institution for several years and you couldn’t be promoted above a certain level without a PHD.

rurban• 6 years ago

Depends. I tought for over 10 years at three universities without any degree. Never managed to finish, because I didn't need to. But this works only in liberal countries where qualification trumps buerocrazy. Would never work in Germany.

pcvarmint• 6 years ago

I once worked at a national lab, advising postdocs on compilers and optimization, even though I don't have a degree. Is 20 years of experience worth less than a degree?

Most people I worked with were Ph.D.s who didn't care about their degree or title. They were focused on technical problems and solutions. There was never a statement like "But (s)he doesn't have a degree in this-or-that."

Only insecure managers have ever raised the "degree" issue with me. One manager who stymied my career because I didn't have a degree, was later fired for making a commitment for which a Ph.D. was committed to do the work. The project was late or never completed. The Ph.D. was demoted, but the manager who committed to his work, and who hurt me earlier because I didn't have a degree, was fired. I thought that was Karma.

Rochus2• 6 years ago

Well, there are also people who actually learn something at a university and benefit from the fact that there are good teachers and supervised exercises.

CivBase2• 6 years ago

There are. I went to a university straight out of high school and I don't regret it. But there are also people who learn elsewhere.

pinkfoot• 6 years ago

It tends to work out poorly for surgeons and structural engineers.

We rightly extrapolated that such an approach has similarly poor odds in other domains.

number6• 6 years ago

Good point. Structural Engenieers don't tend to follow newsletters written by someone without a degree living in his parents basement. Well if you find someone doing a math newsletter or paper without a degree but a certain knowledge that one quickly climbs academic ranks.

This leaves me thinking that economics is more about assuming and musings than about verifiable facts

SergeAx• 6 years ago

Even less: diploma means one has attended a prearranged set of courses, did some homework and passed the exam. It doesn't actually implying any sort of qualification except doing homework and passing exams. We are supposing that those activities are resembling those we do at work close enough.

Thorentis7• 6 years ago

(From Nathan's Twitter after this: https://mobile.twitter.com/NathanTankus/status/1278777095670...)

I do have a credential- the intersection of my whiteness, maleness and cisness.

Wow, wasn't it just yesterday a post blew up about political correctness gone mad?

I suppose Nathan wanted to get in first and "apologise" for his whiteness, before his rise to fame (which has coincided with the rise of a... particular socio-political movement) punishes him for it.

Isn't it enough to just say "if you're good at something, you don't need a degree"?. But no. He took to Twitter to perpetuate the woke, self-denigrating culture of white Twitter to ensure that his success wasn't hampered by the mob. PC culture has reduced people to snivelling, grovelling shadows of themselves that can't think for themselves.

Forget blind-hiring practices! Should we be putting disclaimers on our resumes that points out if we're a white cis-male so that a company can appropriately punish us for the sin of being born a particular sex and race?

whymauri2• 6 years ago

Or - get this - he genuinely believes that and isn't playing some three-dimensional career chess contrivance.

Thorentis7• 6 years ago

That's very likely. Nobody is immune from this trend. Despite his great accomplishments in a field in which you usually need a degree, he is now feeling guilty about how maybe he only achieved success because he was white. This is the 2020 version of imposter syndrome. Everybody feels imposter syndrome when they have unexpected success. This is the woke Twitter version of it.

brbrodude3• 6 years ago

This kind of rant is just as boring as any other that would be considered "PC" just for the sake of it and it works by the same logic of first and foremost not being charitable to what was intended/tried to be communicated to then deliberately making up wrong interpretation to try to conjure up ridicule, so yeah, tell me how is it not the same shit on an inverted signal? Seems though that he actually has something else to add rather just acting out butthurt or laying down The New Law, plus he also writes with some humility something which I grew up thinking it's a good thing.

I'm not uncritical of "PC culture" or whatever you wanna call it, I call it left-moralism and I don't like it because it's also a lot of times entirely based on being uncharitable or purposefully misinterpreting others, which is no good for making sense of stuff, I do however care first about if there's truth on statements I may be reading/listening and second about if it brings me or others emotions in one way or another, and that I call: reading/listening.

Thorentis7• 6 years ago

My rant wasn't about his intentions. He almost certainly had good intentions. I'm sad that his good nature has been corrupted by the current PC trend, and that he is suffering from imposter syndrome where he is attributing his success to his "whiteness".

lukev• 6 years ago

Interesting article, but it feels like it's grinding some weird axes. Like the way it harps on his lack of a degree, and awkwardly mentions the political alignment of people Tankus learned from (like "[he read a book] by the liberal John Maynard Keynes" or "[he studied with] with the leftist economist J.W. Mason").

Is this standard for Bloomberg?

Miner49er3• 6 years ago

Isn't that important when talking economics? Liberalism as a political philosophy has a lot to say on economics (very pro capitalist and pro markets) and "leftism" informs the reader that Mason isn't a capitalist.

It shows that he's learned from people with very different theories/opinions on economics.

motohagiography• 6 years ago

He shouldn't be so humble, he's not that great.

The headline and the article were incredibly patronizing. I'd argue his response was undignified, as the implication is that due to his privilege, he might have otherwise earned his success if only he had in fact finished his degree. It was a smug gesture that betrays the legitimacy of every other person who has also succeeded without one. The phrase "unctuous git," sprung to mind.

Good on him for succeeding, and one hopes he isn't just being elevated because he can be relied upon to toe the party line, but as someone with a similar background, Tankus is not representative.

ohgreatwtf• 6 years ago

In summary: Young man who has spent his entire life studying pro-system dogma and pro-system logic runs a blog and a newsletter where he writes optimistic, windy expositions on why what the government is doing is right, and gets paid by a multitude of liberal journos and government officials who need talking points and arguments that enrich their position. He's literally a yes man for money printer go brr

unethical_ban2• 6 years ago

This sounds like a reddit comment, and not in a good way. Please explain your issues with their content in a way that frames your opinion and the differences with his, rather than simply attacking him and his character with sophomoric language.

viklove2• 6 years ago

Ironic, how you disparage the original comment by attacking him and his character through a comparison to reddit. Please attack the content of the comment rather than its tone. Using big words does not make your perspective more valid.

A 28-year-old with no degree becomes a must read on the economy

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