Enough election crap. The WSJ ran an article yesterday describing the efforts of the 24-year old Yale graduate (Jay Hallen) who is setting up the new Iraqi Stock Exchange. The only thing is, he's, well, 24 years old, majored in political science, and according to the WSJ "rarely watched financial news stations and didn't follow the stock market" prior to landing his current gig. He's been forced to undertake a crash course in high finance. What gives?
Enough election crap. The WSJ ran an article yesterday describing the efforts of the 24-year old Yale graduate (Jay Hallen) who is setting up the new Iraqi Stock Exchange. The only thing is, he's, well, 24 years old, majored in political science, and according to the WSJ "rarely watched financial news stations and didn't follow the stock market" prior to landing his current gig. He's been forced to undertake a crash course in high finance.
Why is a 24-year old with no financial experience given such a position? Your guess is as good as mine. Some background (there's isn't much) is
here. Some possible explanations:
a) He's truly a genius, who is capable of both mastering a subject area he is entirely unfamiliar with, and possessive of the organizational skills required. Possible, but it's hard to believe that there aren't more qualified people out there.
b) He's a Yale graduate, Like Bush, and Bremer, and got this position via some set of informal connections.
c) The people running the Coalition Governing Authority are clueless idiots.
d) He's a stooge; the governing authorities really don't want a new Iraqi stock market to flourish (can't see this as being likely).
e) He's intended to be a harmless caretaker who'll either look the other way or won't notice when the stock market starts to be manipulated in various ways. For example, stock prices in Iraq (such as they are, or were before the war) are very depressed right now. A functioning market would potentially allow a well-funded group, or individual, to come in, buy up many companies at bargain basement prices, and then sit on them as the economy develops in the future. It would all be perfectly legal, but you may end up with, say, friends of the current administrators (perhaps members of the governing council itself) owning a huge share of the stocks in Iraqi companies. What better way to allow this ransacking of Iraq's economy to take place than by putting a 24-year old neophyte in charge of setting up the stock market?
I myself can't think of any rational reason why this particular guy got the job.