MAE Grad Speech

I was supposed to give a graduation speech at the MAE graduation event before the official commencement but I was late and wasn't able to give my speech. I would like to post my speech here for all the current MAE students and specifically for those who have just graduated.

2014 MAE Graduating Class

MAE Speech 2014:

It’s an exciting time as we graduate today and are looking to the bright future.

This program has been an amazing opportunity for me and I hope it has been just as amazing for you. With minimal core requirements it allowed me to specialize my education in areas that no other programs offer. I know many of you are dual degree students and have very unique backgrounds. I was able to meet people from all over the world with a wide variety of goals and interests which has helped me see the world through different lenses.

And after graduating I hope we all continue to stay in contact through email and our LinkedIn group. With a better connected alumni base we can continue to give back to this program and help future students in ways that haven’t been possible. Keeping a program running and making it competitive and successful is a large challenge, and I would like to thank Linda and Vinnie for the hard work they have put in. I would also like to thank Stefanos and all the other students who have been helping me build the mentor program and the alumni program as this will help all of us in the short-run and the long-run.

But as graduation has neared, I have realized that I have been in school for 20 years and standing here the future doesn’t look so promising. We are all used to being in school and moving on can be a bitter sweet moment. Many of us are graduating without jobs and that reality has started to set in as well. But I hope you realize how valuable this degree is and how much you have learned from those around you. As I have contacted many of our alumni in the past few weeks I have seen what great lives they have made for themselves and they have accomplished many great things. Our alumni base is very diverse across professions as well as countries. We have all worked very hard to get into this program and we have all worked very hard to graduate. And I know if you continue to work hard as you move forward in your lives you will be just as successful as our current alumni. I would encourage you to think about what this program has done for you and continue to think about how you can give back to the program and the future MAE students.

If there is one thing that I have learned from this program, it is that you get out of the program what you have put into the program. I hope all of you took courses that challenged you. For me there were depressing times when homework loads were high and exam scores were low but I wouldn’t change it for anything. Those terrifying times built character and grit which are invaluable assets that we all need.

So as you close this chapter of your life, and move on to new things, I hope you remember not to take the easy route, but to continue to look for challenges and to better yourselves. I hope you remember how Michigan has helped you and you continue to give back to your fellow Wolverines. For today we are victors and stand among the half million Michigan alumni. And as we say in Michigan, GO BLUE!

MAE Alumna Letter

An Alumna of the MAE program has been very helpful and offered to write a letter of advice to current MAE students. The letter is below.

Hello Fellow MAE students and graduates:

How to find a job with the MAE?   I can appreciate your dilemma because I faced the same one 30 years ago, when I finished my degree. 

The MAE is an overly flexible degree that could work in many many contexts and it requires that someone--you--do some careful thinking about what you want to achieve in your career.  From the opposite end of the career spectrum, I know that students are desperate to get somewhere, but it is worth taking a long term view of your career, expect that you will succeed and accomplish and contribute, and spending some time (6 months to a year) doing two things.

·    First, clearly identify your personal strengths, and learning to state them clearly.   You should know what you want to offer an employer.  Ultimately, you will want to target jobs that use your core skills and grow those skills over time, in a context that also allows you to develop secondary talents.  A career and your current job should center around something that you do easily, so that you will excel in the longer term.  To give some examples, higher math and diplomacy are both skills that are easy or hard for various and different groups of people.  If you are terrified to speak in front of groups, you shouldn't target a job or be persuaded to take a job as a spokesperson for an organization.  If you have terrific database and math skills, you need to state that and be hired to do that.  If you don't want to be a database manager, you don't want to get into a job where that is all that you do, just because you have a MAE.  When you're working in a job 40+ hours a week, you must be using your strengths.  If you're not, you won't be happy and you won't perform well.  If you find yourself in a job building on a secondary rather than primary skill, your boss needs to support you while you build your capacity.  If s/he doesn't, s/he will mark you down or even fire you for a weak performance.    

·    Second, learn about the content of jobs in various sectors.  Do ALOT of informational interviewing with a diversity of well-educated successful people to ask them to carefully define the daily content of their job, and tell you what skills they have that are essential to their success.  Ideally, one would do this before entering graduate school, but it can be done in the course of completing a degree.  [By the way, every week, the second page of the New York Times Sunday business section has an interesting interview with CEOs about careers, managing and hiring, being ambitious, strategic moves and thinking outside of the box.  Read the back columns for some interesting views on interviewing as well as very interesting places to work.]  This kind of research will inform your choices regarding the sectors of the economy that interest you, the size of organization you might want to work in, and related lifestyle issues.  There are so many organizations:  public sector, private sector, multinationals, national companies, regional public service utilities, small start-up firms, your own company operating from your study.  Can you stand to sit at a desk all day long?  Do you need to work alone?  Do you want to manage, train, and mentor staff?

·    When you have a list of skills that are central to interesting jobs, you should look over your proposed course choices and make sure that the content of the courses you choose will supply those skills.  If the MAE required courses don't offer you what you need, you may need to extend your stay to get a few courses that do fill those gaps.  Interview next semester's professors and find out what skills you will acquire in his or her class.

 

·    Finally, get a suit and haircut, get your resume in perfect order with your personal strengths and your job skills front and center, and go to professional conferences and network.  Most professional organizations have a discounted student membership fee.  Working professionals are usually interested in meeting and informally interviewing potential employees, and giving suggestions about places that might be hiring.  If you structure it well, that MAE will take you to finance, banking and accounting conferences, transportation conferences, urban planning conferences, engineering conferences, demographics and statistics professional conferences etc. etc. etc.  Meeting people will hone your understanding of what about you sells and where opportunities lie.  It will be fun and will affirm to you the value of your education.

·    Possibly take ANY job in a location that excites you, and locate a good job after you've relocated.  There are agencies in every major city that place professionals in temporary jobs, and working through such an agency gives you the opportunity to examine potential employers from the inside.   However, assess the quality of your credential vis-a-vis other job seekers in the location before jumping in.  Here in Washington DC, having a masters degree is like having a last name, everyone has at least one so what you have to offer has to be strong enough to withstand tough competition.  

·     For U.S. citizens, if you want to be in the federal government, it is always hiring.  The baby boomers are retiring and the federal government is increasingly desperate to backfill and retain talent.  That said, the federal government has not adopted many of the management approaches and tools that are typical in modern successful private sector firms.  The federal government's hiring mechanism is a horrible website called USAJOBS, which one MUST master to get any job in the federal government.  At the end of every job announcement in USAJOBS is the name and phone number of the personnel officer handling paper work for that job listing.  Call that person up and ask them about employment in their agency, including unpaid internships.  Many new MA graduates get a toehold by doing unpaid internships at their agency of choice.   

·    After you get a job--and you will get a job because you're very well trained--settle in, work hard to make a contribution to your organization.  Work with and support your boss, but make him or her support you in your career and help you advance.  After a while, assess your employer and your immediate boss.  If you don't think you've landed the right opportunity, change jobs.

             Best of luck to you,

             Renee in Washington DC, MAE 1983.

Economic Pet Peeves

My biggest pet peeve in economics is The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith and specifically the “Invisible Hand” theory. I live by The Wealth of Nations but economists are driving me nuts.

To start with The Wealth of Nations which I am betting it is by far the most quoted book/literature in economics and is not even read by the vast majority of economists. By read I mean cover to cover not I skimmed it or I just read one of the five “books”. I have been reading the book for years now and it has taken me years due to the vast amount of pages, the depth of the concepts, and the lack of my personal free time. I have been told by PhD students, Professors, students, and economists that The Wealth of Nations is a good book which I agree with but then they miss quote portions of it just to prove a point. You can’t just take a sentence out of the book with no context and then think somehow this proves your point. I view it as the bible of economics and that being said it has been miss quoted just as much as the Bible. If you haven’t read the book, please don’t quote it and then think you have made a point. The book is written in Old English (published in 1776) which again adds to the complexity of understanding the material.

For the modern economist who thinks that the economy is like a house cat you must not understand Adam Smith or you don’t believe in the foundation that Adam Smith has created. If you don’t believe in Adam Smith’s principles please state that before you speak and announce that you are an economist as if it validates you. If I know you don’t agree with Adam Smith than at least I can understand that you have a different train of thought which I can respect. Now back to the house cat; modern economists think that the economy is like a feral cat that has been domesticated by their fancy econometrics. The Invisible Hand theory states that the economy allocates assets (being money, labor, or anything of value) the most efficient way possible. Now you have the modern economist who steps in and decides that having lower GDP is bad, poverty is a problem we must solve, and the list goes on with issues that economists feel they can solve with econometrics. The economists use econometrics to look for patterns in market data and then figure out how to adjust a variable to coerce people and the economy to adjust in a way that will “fix” their cause. The problem I have is that the economy is a wild beast that can’t and shouldn’t be tamed. Somehow the economists think they are God and think they know better than the Invisible Hand which is the economy. No human can ever out do the markets and no human should try to interfere with the markets to push their cause.

An example of the feral cat is the long list of financial crisis we continue to have and will continue to have. The economists on their ivory towers dictate governmental policy to help push their causes and agendas. Then when the cat attacks them they act surprised and can’t understand why the cat that they thought they tamed attacked. After these crisis (typically financial) the economists all get together and brainstorm why it happened. They then write books on these crisis and give ways on how next time they will tame the economy using new and better methods. Why can’t economists realize that the economy has allocated assets due to the efficient equilibrium? Every time you push it in the direction you want it fights back and makes a market correction. The Invisible Hand principle that the modern economists say they believe is being contradicted every time they try to manipulate the economy. The modern economist is ignorant if he claims to believe in the Invisible Hand and then manipulates the markets in an attempt to please the public.

In conclusion, if you are going to preach economics and use The Wealth of Nations make sure you understand what you are talking about before you preach it. If you ask me a question and I don’t know, I will either tell you I don’t know or I will voice it as it is my opinion. Just be honest!

Market Interpretation: June 2013

    Over the past six months the market has been rising and I have read a lot of article on why people think this is happening. Some analyst think this is an over reaction to good news and that the market is going to take a big hit soon as a corrective measure. As a note, today the market is down about 0.80%. This view of how the market is over valued is completely wrong for many reason.

    Analyst are looking at market GDP as an indicator of the stock market which is very flawed. This flaw is due to the Keynesian thought process which is wrong in more ways than I would like to talk about in this post. The reason the market took a hit today is because the market didn't add as many jobs in the private sector as the analyst predicted (http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-adp-jobs-economy-20130605,0,2964130.story). This argument of unemployment is why some analyst have been predicting that markets have over reacted to good news and that the markets will correct downward. The problem is these analyst haven't been looking at corporations at a micro level and then figuring out how this effects the market and the economy.

    The real reason that the market has had an upward trend is due to increased productivity. Increased productivity leads to an increase in GDP and many other measures but it is important to note that productivity is far more important than GDP. Since the credit crisis many people were laid off meaning that unemployment has gone up. These companies first took a hit since people didn't have money to spend. As the market started to recover and many Americans started to increase spending regardless of employment due to the stimulus and social programs. These companies started to streamline their processes and got more efficient since they had fewer employees and an increase in output. Basically these companies have learned to run their business with less employees which has led to an increase in productivity. Productivity meaning that the ratio of employees to units produced as decreased.

    This increase in productivity has led to the need for less employees which means unemployment rates will remain high. The unemployment rates will change once the demand for goods and services grows enough to employee these people or until companies get lazy again and become more inefficient. The bottom line is that companies are reducing costs in comparison with revenue which is leading to higher returns on their stock. Since many companies are experiencing this trend it is making the market or at least the indexes such as the S&P 500 increase as a whole. The market will fluctuate over time but the long-run (the next 1-2 years) will have good returns unless more manipulation on behalf of the government we currently have forces companies to make inefficient decisions.

    As a side note many people are predicting another market crisis in the next 5 to 10 years which I would agree with as long as the government and Keynesian ideas continue to dominate. This upcoming crash will be due to poor policy and over regulation which has been the causes of most if not all of our financial crisis.

Greed 1.0

Introduction to the Greed Series

     I am going to be exploring the concept of greed by writing a series of blogs and getting feedback from those of you reading as well as from the people around me. Through my recent readings of finance, economics, and the news I have begun to question whether greed is good or bad. Since I am pursuing Financial Engineering and have read many news articles about how bad and greedy Financial Engineers are, I have started to question the society we live in. So please feel free to read the first paper below and give your feedback.

This photo is courtesy of InvestingCaffeine.com

Greed - 1.0

     The word greed has a negative connotation. First we must define greed so that we can discuss the concept of greed. According to Merriam-Webster online dictionary, greed is “a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (as money) than is needed.” That definition is basic and easy to understand at first but the question then becomes what is needed? Is needed food and shelter? Or is it more than that? Is love needed? The question of needs can become controversial and we will therefore assume that it is food and shelter so that we can continue on our exploration of greed. Greed dates back to the biblical times and is condoned by Christians and many other religions as a sin. The question I would like to explore is why is greed bad? Can we all be greedy and be happy? Or is greed bad for a society?