This is probably more interesting for my German readers, as they may be less familiar with this mysterious and fascinating world of fraternities at US universities. There is really no such thing in Germany and the Burschenschaften or Verbindungen we have here are not the same. They are much more political, mostly conservative to extremely right-wing (although, I am told, they also drink a lot).

Here a Rolling Stone article on fraternities at Dartmouth. And here a follow up interview with the guy. As I said, I recommend this especially to my German readers.

If what the article say is true, that fraternity brothers not just from Dartmouth have the best shots at these highly-paid finance positions on Wall Street, then I really have my doubts whether this is the right allocation of human capital. If we leave one of the most important sectors of the modern economy to essentially a bunch of almost pubescent alcoholics and misogynists with a huge sense of entitlement and overblown egos, who through countless hazing rituals lose all human decency (this is how they are portrayed in the article, I have met many fine young man at Michigan who were brothers) – then something is suboptimal. Let me stress this again: Robert Shiller is absolutely right that we probably need more and more intelligent finance, so we should not leave this in the hands of kids.

There is also an interesting aspect about how Dartmouth’ president (the new World Bank President) reacted to the situation, namely not at all. It is scary how powerful rich alumni can be. In such situations I think more positively about tax-funded public universities…