Ok, I know that zodiak is certainly not a scientific approach to know someone and I don't believe how 550 millions people in this world (assuming we have 6.6 billions people now) can be characterised by a page of description.

I firmly believe God is way more creative than that, hahaha. However, I just want to laugh on it as I found the 'most accurate to date' description of me using zodiak, hahaha.

The link is available on here for Libra and here for October 1. Let me know which part that made you laugh when you read it or which one that you think is wrong for me, hahaha.

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Libra individuals are artistic, affectionate, and refined. With Venus as the ruling planet, people born under this sign are considered to be attractive and fashion-conscious. They seek peace and joy through personal and professional relationships.

The Libra Man

When it comes to charm, there is no one more appealing than a Libra man. He is often the handsome tough-guy type but with a rare sensitivity that makes him irresistible. Men born under this sign are often drawn to artistic and creative careers. They usually marry, often at a young age. Because they are generally good-natured and accommodating, Libra men are happy to do their share of housework. They are supportive and enthusiastic about their spouse's career.

The Libra Lover

Libra men and women are the most romantic among the zodiacal types. Venus-ruled, they have an idealistic view of love and togetherness. Once these people fall in love, they start thinking of marriage. Libras don't enjoy romantic suffering. Whenever they are disappointed in a relationship, a Libra man or woman will spend a little time grieving and then move to another partnership.

The Libra Friend

Because they are very social people, Libras make good friends. Libras are great counsellors, because they have the ability to weigh the pros and cons of an idea fairly and without bias. They love giving parties, and they have talent for making people feel at ease. Although they may seem superficial at times, anyone who knows these charming men and women understands that they have an intriguingly profound side to their nature.

------

1. artistic?? my drawing can even scare mouse, hahaha

2. fashion-conscious?? come on, hahaha, i don't really care what I wear everyday, hahaha

3. okay, I maybe a charming-appealing person (now, you can call me a liar too, right? hahahaha) but honestly, "handsome tough-guy type" is perfectly not me, hahaha.

4. "drawn to artistic and creative careers"??? hahahaha, how artistic a programming or investment banking for a normal person will decide whether this statement is true or not, hahaha

5. "They usually marry, often at a young age." i am almost 21 and i don't think I will marry anyone at least until I am 24 or 25. I am not sure it's young enough, hahaha

6. Having said that, I agree to The Libra Lover description except the last sentence. (this is also provided that you believe I am not a liar, hahaha)

7. The Friend description seems accurate for me, haha, but you are the one who suppose to judge it as my friend,haha.

okay, here goes another ‘more personal’ one

-----

Libras born on October 1 have a bold and uncompromising spirit and an ability to come back from hard times. They enjoy being in the spotlight but have too much grace to appear egotistical or vain. October 1 men and women understand the need to build their future on past successes. They have an instinct for making the right decision.

Libra Information for October 1 You should embrace: Thoroughness, acceptance, happy memories You should avoid: A domineering temperament, disapproval, petty people

Friends and Lovers

Friends play a pivotal role in the lives of October 1 men and women. They have a wide variety of social contacts but a small circle of very intimate friends. October 1 individuals are extremely romantic. They fall in and out of love quickly. Once married, they will strive to keep the romance alive.

Children and Family

Family life has a major impact upon the lives of October 1 individuals. Their idyllic childhood may make them nostalgic for the past. They have the best intentions of fulfilling their parental roles, yet may find themselves preoccupied with career responsibilities. They do set rules that provide social and spiritual guidance.

Health

Because of their generally upbeat nature, October 1 men and women have little problem dealing with stress. Generally moderate in all things, these people usually keep their weight down. Even though they hate to sweat, they usually keep up a regular workout program.

Career and Finances

October 1 individuals are often drawn to careers that give them a chance to show their commitment to the less fortunate. Perhaps because they know only too well how much they enjoy spending hard-earned cash on beautiful things, they may not trust themselves with money.

Dreams and Goals

October 1 natives have the spirit to overcome adversity, which gives them great satisfaction because it allows them to demonstrate their true mettle. They seek harmony in all aspects of life. This can require some sacrifices in personal relationships, but they are glad to make those sacrifices if it provides peace of mind.

----

I should admit the ‘more personal’ one describes me better, but there are still some slight differences though, hahaha. I would leave it to you to guess which one doesn't suit me, so come and flood my blog with your opinions and comments, haha.

Nope, I know what you were thinking about, the last three words are not the official abbreviation of Cin(T)a.

After all this time, this maybe the first movie for the last 1 year that I fell in love in the first sight with. The trailer is marvelous, it's a novel idea in any ways, and it's really making me proud of Indonesian movie producer.



The synopsis is pretty short but really engaging. It makes you wonder in your deepest sense what this movie is all about.

This is a story of a triangle love between
Cina (the boy), Annisa (the girl),
and Tuhan (God).

Cina and Annisa love God
and God loves them both
But Cina and Annisa cannot love each other
because they call God by different names

Casts

Cina, an 18 year-old college freshmen, was ready to conquer the world with a strong faith, yet naive, since it had never been tested by failure.

God (Tuhan) is the most unpredictable character. Everybody tries to describe Him. Everybody thought they knew Him. Every art tried to figure Him. But nothing is really like Him...or Her

Annisa is a 24 year-old college senior whose education was held back because of her career in the movie industry. Her fame and beauty left her so lonely that she drew a sad face on her finger as her companion. Until one day, another finger came and she was no longer lonely.

I have watched the below trailer several times and I still in love with this trailer. It potraits the religious difference so bluntly that a lot of discussin in Kaskus and other web forums predict that the film will be banned. However their premiere screening will be in London on 29 May 2009 and I really wanted to be there but I will be only in London on 10 June 2009 (if my visa application successful though, please help me God on this one, hehe)



Meanwhile, I can only do the same as what everybody else do in most of their lifetime, waiting.

I am sorry guys that I haven't had time to write about my previous trips. I am going to Lyon today until Sunday because HEC International Students association organized the trip and it's considerably quite cheap (50 euros for 2 nights and 2 days accommodation and transportation). Next week I'm going to Champagne because the HEC Office of International Relations organize it for free, yay!! hahaha

Meanwhile, my group just started a survey, please help us by filling it by clicking the button in the bottom part of the frame below. Your help is very much appreciated and your response will be handled confidentially. I promise, it won't take more than 10 minutes for a survey that I designed for 4 hours, hehe.

Thanks before people.

(the survey is done and my group managed to find enough respondents, so thanks a lot people!!)

I am not supposed to write this one now, since I have a submission deadline soon, but never mind, I need to update several things here for my loyal readers (if I have any, hahahaha)

1. Going to UK for assessment centre
Too bad, I just got news from JPM that I won't be eligible for Work Permit in UK. I did check the embassy website and it said the same thing too. Basically I need 70 points and I only have around 60 points. The point-based system was quite new, not even 5 months old, but it's ok. This means I am not going to be able to intern in UK this summer. However, the good thing is they said that I can get the work permit if I want for the graduate programme, and I will get priority access for the graduate assessment this October. Nevertheless, I still have tuition grant in Singapore, so I guess I have to skip on that one.

Don't worry, I'm not sad nor upset because of this. I believe God has a better plan than mine.

2. My life this summer??
Too bad that one of my goals this year is not going to happen. I will still try applying for internship in European mainland this summer to gain international exposure, but i am not really hoping for that.

I don't know why but I really want to go home (Indonesia) this summer (maybe more of my phase of adaptation here, but i feel it's a bit different), I don't care if I will get only 10% of what I got in Singapore. It's just feeling peaceful to me that I have a place called home in Tebet, Jakarta, which is replaceable neither by my condominium-like appartment in Singapore, nor my room in glamorous-and-glorious city of Paris (a bit outside of Paris actually, haha). At least I know that I don't have to cut expenses on anything and I can enjoy life in its fullest sense in Jakarta, hehe.

However, let God guides me. Everything will be beautiful in HIS time, not mine. I am waiting eagerly for that.

3. Holiday in France
My next couple of posts will be about retelling my 2 holidays for my already-7-weeks-without-noticing-it term in HEC Paris (it's just keep making me smile to really experience how Paris HEC Paris is, hahaha, in a bad way often times). I have not been outside of France due to budget and opportunity constraints but I will be at the end of May.

So guys, just wait until my next posts are ready to be published.

For a teaser
Holiday I
(3 days 3 nights) - Caen, Mont St. Michel, St. Malo, Bayeux, D-Day landing beaches, Rouen, Amiens, Lille, Robeaux

Holiday II
(3 days 4 nights) - Nice, Monaco, Cannes, Marseille, Carcassonne, Toulouse

Meanwhile, I need to do my obligation first.
Until then, GBU.

Last Sunday was a bright and cheerful day in Paris. I went off from my 'apartment' room when it was still a bit dark, around 8 in the morning. (yup, it's still dark in Jouy-en-Josas, it's almost spring, hahaha)

I went with a very ambitious plan to go around Paris. That time, it was with Adel, one of my junior in SMAN 8 which is from 2009 & 2010 batch, and I am from 2006 batch. She is also an exchange student, but still in her high school.

This time, I won't tell by words, it will be using pictures, hehehe. You can click on the picture to get a more detailed view.

9:00 - 10:00 Church service at American Church. (my church is the other tower you can see, other than eiffel)
These are the only photos that are not coming from my camera



10:00 - 13:30 Musee du Louvre. It was free for the first sunday of the month, hehe.

From top left, Napoleon III's dining room, The Winged Victory of Samothrace, Venus de Milo (Aphrodite)
From bottom left, coronation crown of Louis XV, and I don't think I have to mention the name for you to know it, right?




One of my favourite statue is this one, Psyche and Cupid (A. Canova)

13:30 - 16:00 Lunch at Jardin du Luxembourg, walking around Sorbonne, Universite de Paris, and Pantheon




16:00 - 18:30 Centre Georges Pompidou and Marche de St Ouen (the world's biggest flea market, I heard, too bad I didn't take any picture there)



18:30 - 19:30 Basilica de Sacre-Coure, Montmarte, Moulin Rouge





20:00 - 22:00 Trocadero, Eiffel tower, and Champ Elysees

It's another busy week at HEC Paris.
I'm glad it's over.
Since two weeks ago, a lot of things have been happening in the world (of course), especially my world. Here are things that were happening for the last 2 weeks in my world, just the interesting one for me, haha.

Tour de Paris
Sunday, 29 March
Michelle (8, 2006, PK X) and her UGM friends were coming to visit Paris. I went from my 'apartment' room to Paris at 8 o'clock and the weather was terrible, I even still remember that it was -2 degrees Celsius that morning. Luckily the weather was getting better in the afternoon until around 12 degrees (felt like Winter to Spring in several hours, haha).

We went to Eiffel (of course, this is Paris, what can you expect from a tourist, haha), walked to Trocadero, walked again to Arc de Triomphe and Champ Elysees, went to Notre Dame by train (some of them lost in Chatelet Metro, if I remember correctly, it was because they were adjusting their watch because it was Daylight Saving Time that day, the only day in my life that was only 23 hours in a day), walked across the romantic right bank of Seine river (which made them stopped every few metres because of pictures of topless ladies or kissing gay which were everywhere along the book, poster, and souvenir sellers at bank of Seine river), before arriving at Louvre.

That day, I learned a new thing, which is kind of funny to be learned in Paris, Javanese culture, "Alon alon asal kelakon" (literally means "slowly but sure"). I thought it was only a slogan, but I realized it was really apparent that day. Having lived about 99% of my life in metropolitan cities, I regarded that at first as one of the most expensive way to waste the time. I mean, they only in Paris for 2 days yet they didn't have any clear plan about where to go and what to see except posing for the camera every few minutes. (Please don't be offensed guys, if you read this post, it's going to be compliments all the time this point onwards, hahaha, so keep on reading).

However, things were not meant the same between me and them, they were enjoying their time very much, it looked like no matter what the place is, as long as I am with my friend, it's enough. It strucked me when I wrote that phrases, I just realized that maybe my metropolitan life has corrupted my heart. There are a lot more meanings for travelling than just sight seeing as much tourism site that one can, and thanks God they reminded me about that.

Monday, March 30
Not much, except classes until afternoon and I got an email saying that my application for tickets for UEFA Champions League Final were not successful. I didn't really dissapointed because of that though, maybe because it's very expensive also. Either way, if God permits, I'll be in Rome when the Final match being played there. Watching in Piazza and seeing all the crowd is more than enough for me, haha.

Invitation for Assessment Centre at JPM UK
Tuesday, March 31
It was a big day for me. Not a lot of people have the privilege to get a second chance, thanks God I was one of them. Two months ago I was being invited for an assessment center (sort of more complicated and longer job interview) for an intern position at Operations and Business Services division of a company with an initial of JPM in London. I was still interning in another company with an initial of BC in Singapore then, and the invitation came two weeks before the date, which was certainly not enough for me to apply for visa (yes, Indonesians need to apply for visa to almost every countries, haha). However, my commitment to my project was the biggest hindrance for me to push for that, so I just gave up that opportunities.

In my third week in Paris, I tried to send an email again to JPM asking whether I could apply to other location. At first, they seemed to be a bit reluctant to changed it because of possible technical difficulties in the system. However, thanks to God, they wanted to do that after I made an essay about why I wanted that location based on their request. On March 31, I received another invitation to have an assessment centre in their office in Bournemouth, UK (their headquarters for Europe operations) with transportation and accomodation being covered by them. That was amazing and none other than God could give me that opportunities.

However, there was still a bit hindrance, the assessment was dated on 8 April, which means I should get a UK visa in 5 working days.

Visitation to KBRI Paris
Wednesday, April 1
April mob, April fool day, or April fishy day, you name it. Nothing special for me on this day except planning for the trip to UK which really ate a lot of time and I went to KBRI (Embassy of Republic of Indonesia) in Paris to get a residency stamp and I finally saw the famous KBRI's Koperasi which sells Indonesian products from Kecap Manis ABC to 1 dus Indomie goreng and Sari Jahe, haha. However, 1 bottle of sambel ABC cost around 3 euro there, whereas the same product only cost about 33 cent euro in Indonesia.

Submitting Documents to UK Embassy Representatives
Thursday, April 2
I was going to WorldBridge, a UK embassy representative who handles matters related to Visa. It was very tiring to go to Paris for 2 days in a row, haha, now you know how far HEC Paris is from Paris. Other than that, nothing special except I skipped one of my class because I was so tired that I felt I was going to sick that day, so I just skipped the class for a rest.

Friday, April 3
Did not really remember what I did that day. Maybe studying for the exam for the following day, and some assignments. I believe I was busy that day, haha.

Saturday, April 4
Exam of Doing Business in Europe Today. Writing a business report in 2 hours was not as easy as I thought though, but thanks to God that it went well for me.

Sunday, April 5
This will be covered in the next post.

Monday, April 6
Started making a report for my Globalization, like it or not class. Not as easy as I thought. I read almost 12 newspapers and spent several hours of research in Factiva, NYT, FT, WSJ, Reuters, etc. for this assignment.

I am going to WEMBLEY to watch England's World Cup Qualification Match
Tuesday, April 7
Hadn't finished the report and I didn't know when I was going to study for my Theory of Finance class which is my first finance class and the course is mainly Pricing and Hedging for Options and Futures. I was struggling for that course; I think I still am.

That day, I bought a ticket for fulfilling one of my dreams. England's world cup qualification match at Wembley!!! After spending almost 1 hours of looking the best seat that the system can give to me, I finally selected mine at row 18 (around 18 metres from the field I guess) class I seat, near the left hand corner spot. I suppose to be able to see Beckham, Lennon, Rooney and Gerrard closely from there, haha. Even though it's only against Andorra and the match is still in June, I am still very excited about watching my favourite national team in one of the best football stadium in the world. I didn't really think about it anymore because I spent 2 weeks to search for a ticket to Liverpool's match but I haven't managed to get one until now. So I really know how hard it is to get one.

Wednesday, April 8
Full of doing the assignment and studying, with a break of watching the dissapointing Liverpool vs Chelsea match in the evening.

Thursday, April 9
Studying from morning until 3:30 PM and having exam after that. One of the worst exam I ever had in my whole life I guessed. Lesson learned, don't try derivatives when you haven't even formally take Finance 101, hahaha. But never mind, I took the subject mainly for learning, not for grades. After all, I never really care about my grade as long as it's not decreasing (haha, a bit paradoxical, right?). Hopefully I passed the exam, because it is counted as 90% of the final grade.

A little help of prayer from you for that will be greatly appreciated, hehe.

Really love this letter!!
Reminds me of how it feels to fall in love.
------

Kepada kamu,
Dengan penuh kebencian.

Aku benci jatuh cinta. Aku benci merasa senang bertemu lagi dengan kamu, tersenyum malu-malu, dan menebak-nebak, selalu menebak-nebak. Aku benci deg-degan menunggu kamu online. Dan di saat kamu muncul, aku akan tiduran tengkurap, bantal di bawah dagu, lalu berpikir, tersenyum, dan berusaha mencari kalimat-kalimat lucu agar kamu, di seberang sana, bisa tertawa. Karena, kata orang, cara mudah membuat orang suka denganmu adalah dengan membuatnya tertawa. Mudah-mudahan itu benar.

Aku benci terkejut melihat SMS kamu nongol di inbox-ku dan aku benci kenapa aku harus memakan waktu begitu lama untuk membalasnya, menghapusnya, memikirkan kata demi kata. Aku benci ketika jatuh cinta, semua detail yang aku ucapkan, katakan, kirimkan, tuliskan ke kamu menjadi penting, seolah-olah harus tanpa cacat, atau aku bisa jadi kehilangan kamu. Aku benci harus berada dalam posisi seperti itu. Tapi, aku tidak bisa menawar, ya?

Aku benci harus menerjemahkan isyarat-isyarat kamu itu. Apakah pertanyaan kamu itu sekadar pancingan atau retorika atau pertanyaan biasa yang aku salah artikan dengan penuh percaya diri? Apakah kepalamu yang kamu senderkan di bahuku kemarin hanya gesture biasa, atau ada maksud lain, atau aku yang-sekali lagi-salah mengartikan dengan penuh percaya diri?

Aku benci harus memikirkan kamu sebelum tidur dan merasakan sesuatu yang bergerak dari dalam dada, menjalar ke sekujur tubuh, dan aku merasa pasrah, gelisah. Aku benci untuk berpikir aku bisa begini terus semalaman, tanpa harus tidur. Cukup begini saja.

Aku benci ketika kamu menempelkan kepalamu ke sisi kepalaku, saat kamu mencoba untuk melihat sesuatu di handycam yang sedang aku pegang. Oh, aku benci kenapa ketika kepala kita bersentuhan, aku tidak bernapas, aku merasa canggung, aku ingin berlari jauh. Aku benci aku harus sadar atas semua kecanggungan itu…, tapi tidak bisa melakukan apa-apa.

Aku benci ketika logika aku bersuara dan mengingatkan, “Hey! Ini hanya ketertarikan fisik semata, pada akhirnya kamu akan tahu, kalian berdua tidak punya anything in common,” harus dimentahkan oleh hati yang berkata, “Jangan hiraukan logikamu.”

Aku benci harus mencari-cari kesalahan kecil yang ada di dalam diri kamu. Kesalahan yang secara desperate aku cari dengan paksa karena aku benci untuk tahu bahwa kamu bisa saja sempurna, kamu bisa saja tanpa cela, dan aku, bisa saja benar-benar jatuh hati kepadamu.

Aku benci jatuh cinta, terutama kepada kamu. Demi Tuhan, aku benci jatuh cinta kepada kamu. Karena, di dalam perasaan menggebu-gebu ini; di balik semua rasa kangen, takut, canggung, yang bergumul di dalam dan meletup pelan-pelan…

aku takut sendirian.

—

By Raditya Dika

*Tulisan ini terdapat dalam buku Kepada Cinta (Gagasmedia, 2008), buku kumpulan surat cinta dari berbagai macam penulis. Selain memuat 25 cinta para pemenang Sayembara Menulis Surat Cinta GagasMedia 2008, ada juga surat cinta dari Adhitya Mulya, Christian Simamora, Andi Eriawan, Ita Sembiring dan penulis lainnya.

I just read the below article and thought a lot about it. I'll comment on it once I have the time. So, watch out here for more writing from Suta. Meanwhile here is the article.

Thanks to Erlina who sent the article.



Gordon does God by stealth

If you want to make Gordon Brown squirm, just ask him to talk about his Christian faith in public

What is it about British politicians that makes them so uncomfortable with the "God" question? Today, at St Paul's Cathedral, Gordon Brown in the company of Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia, gave a half hour speech on the importance of what he called "our shared global values" in the context of the current economic crisis. "The Washington Consensus was over" we were told, and "markets need morals". Such sentiments are wonderful and can hardly be challenged until you ask Gordon for the basis of those morals and the shape of those values. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/mar/31/religion-christianity-gordon-brown

If flight training schools produced this number of crashes, we’d be asking questions
-------
an interesting tag line indeed. I won't comment too much since my week is busy enough to refrain me from thinking how come I have a time to write this post or even such a silly statement like this. However this tag line struck me when I was reading SMU Daily Alerts. It is easy enough to refute the statement with one argument: if non-flight training schools are allowed to run the flight, "this number of crashes" is surely an wonderful performance for them. Same like the case in business, who else except the MBAs? Honestly I don't know the answer too (it's not a rhetorical question, haha).

But one thing that is a bit out of this topic but interesting is George W. Bush is having an MBA from Harvard Business School!! The man with the 3 trillion dollars war, the man who changed the biggest surplus ever in US history (post-clinton era) to the biggest deficit ever in US history at the end of his service (I should add the last few words because Pres. Obama certainly has the biggest deficit now) is the man whom I thought never really has an undergraduate degree. What a powerful negative campaign that I heard before. I only knew just know that he is actually alumni of Yale and Harvard.

Anyway, back to the topic, something fishy in his view though. I believe the MBA or any other education is just like a technology. It's only a tool, even though it's more like a bigger tool that actually can control someone if one is not wise enough. It depends on the person. We just can't blame the system behind the people all the time. If it's people's fault, then let it be. It's the moral values of the educators that may become the reason of all these mess. But, once again, who knows except God?

Nevertheless, enjoy the article, it's quite a thought-provoking one if you enjoy business and economy.

-------

Weekend • March 28, 2009

Matthew Lynn

WHEN King Henry VIII broke with the Church in Rome, he shut England’s monasteries. When Fidel Castro took power in Cuba, he did the same with Havana’s casinos.

So let’s close down business schools to get into the spirit of the new financial order.

In the past 20 years, the Master of Business Administration factories have created the conditions that have helped land the global economy in the current mess.

They legitimised a pseudo-scientific approach to finance that turned out to be bogus; they promoted a management style that was too mechanistic; and they formed a managerial elite more interested in rewards than producing lasting wealth for the economies they operate in.

There is little mistaking the growth of business schools, especially as the economy contracts and jobless bankers seek to boost their qualifications. Applications to MBA programmes last year rose at the fastest pace on record, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council.

The trouble is, the last batch of MBA graduates who rose to the top made such a hash of things it is hard to believe the next will do much better.

The people who steered the global economy onto the rocks in the past year all benefited from the finest management education that money can buy.



Famous alumni

Mr Richard Fuld, who was chief executive officer of Lehman Brothers when it collapsed, has an MBA from New York University. Mr John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, is a graduate of Harvard Business School. Mr Christopher Cox, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has an MBA from Harvard University. And so does former US President George W Bush.

The record isn’t much better in Europe.

Mr Andy Hornby, the CEO of British bank HBOS is another Harvard Business School alumnus. HBOS had to be bailed out in a merger with Lloyds Banking Group and then both had to be rescued by the British government.

Mr Peter Wuffli, who as CEO presided over the huge losses that took Zurich-based UBS to the brink of disaster, studied management at Switzerland’s University ofSt Gallen.

Of course, it is unfair to assign all blame to business schools. Over the last three decades, taking an MBA has become just another qualification, a hoop to be jumped through on your way to getting a good job on Wall Street, or in London or Zurich’s financial centres.

If we studied the records, we would probably find that most of the CEOs who led us into the crisis also did finger painting at kindergarten — and it would be wrong to pin the credit crunch on that.


Clueless leaders

Still, it raises the issue of what business schools are teaching, and how they managed to create leaders who were so unable to spot the flaws in the companies they were running. If a flight-training school produced this number of crashes, we would be asking some questions. There is no reason that business studies should be exempt from the same kind of scrutiny.

The schools should be called on to account for several things.

First, they encouraged a quasi-scientific approach to business, sermonising that everything could be nailed down in a textbook.

By preaching a set series of formulas, they encouraged students to believe that running a company could be mastered by anyone. The entire private-equity industry is founded on that principle. So are mergers and acquisitions.


An acquired skill

In reality, management is a skill that is acquired through experience, judgment and flair. Billions are about to be wasted relearning a simple fact that should never have been forgotten.

Second, the intellectual tools that led us into the financial meltdown were largely invented within academia. Complex models for pricing risk created the market for the options and derivatives contracts that have caused so much trouble in the past year.

The business schools took something that was mysterious and unknowable — risk — and tried to make it as easy to count as peas in a pod. By doing so, they encouraged a whole generation of young men and women to go into investment banking armed with the belief that they had mastered risk; that it had been tamed and brought under control.

The truth, of course, turned out to be different. Bankers can no more tame risk than sailors can tame the oceans. All they can hope to do is steer a safe course through it.

Third, the schools created a managerial elite that acted like a caste apart. One reason the bonus culture ran out of control was that many of the people involved were trapped in a bubble. They thought “guaranteed” bonuses, private jets and multi million-dollar payoffs were normal. That process started in business schools.

No doubt, we will hear a lot in the next year about how the schools are reorganising themselves. We will see lots of papers and proposals, and probably a few equations, explaining how to stop the credit crunch from happening again.

But as Henry VIII and Castro both concluded, for different reasons, sometimes an institution is beyond redemption. It can’t be fixed, simply because it is the problem.

Just shut them down.

---
The writer is a Bloomberg columnist.

The opinions expressed are his own.

Copyright MediaCorp Press Ltd. All rights reserved.