In the interest of producing more light with less heat in discussing the financialization of the economy and how compensation within the various subsectors of the finance and insurance sector of the economy has changed over the years, I plan a series of posts analyzing the structure of the industry, the number of concerns, assets, revenues, employment, and compensation of the various subsectors, and how they have changed over the years. It’s not a simple task and all contributions will be gratefully accepted.
A good place to start would be with this link which describes the financial sector as having the following subsectors:
- Banking
- Asset management
- Insurance
- Venture capital
Unfortunately, the article doesn’t treat assets, revenues, etc. consistently from subsector to subsector so I’ll need to dig that information up. My next post in this series will discuss the number of companies in each subsector and how that has changed over the years. Onwards.
Once I’ve finished this exercise with the finance and insurance sector of the economy I plan to give the same treatment the healthcare sector. These are the sectors in which compensation is highest.
Good idea. Also, the idea that interest rates are “too low” remains problematic for me. It is not just Treasuries sitting at low rates. It is not just the US. I would like to think that private enterprise would be able to assess risk and then expect returns on their bonds that are appropriate. What we see is that yields on commercial bonds are very low. If the private sector thinks that those are appropriate rates, why are Treasuries too low? When I look at 10 years the gap between them and corporate Aaa doesn’t look a lot different from historical norms. Heck, Treasuries aren’t a lot different than they were in most of the 50s.
Steve
“Too low” can mean more than one thing. My comparison would be this. When your plane is crashing to the ground, saying it’s “too low” isn’t a misstatement even if the plane is obeying all of the fundamentals of physics, its condition, and the way you’re flying it. It’s still too low relative to a safe distance from the ground even if it’s exactly as low as you woul expect it to be under the circumstances.