Basel group launches highbrow “Go for the Dough” campaign aimed at undergrads

NEW YORK – Citing overwhelming success with their three-year campaign to increase the visibility of financial professionals, the Basel-based Centre for International Finance Certification (CIFC) announced this week that it will begin similar programs aimed at undergraduate students considering careers in finance. Called “Wall Street Simply Isn’t Saturated Enough Yet,” the program will involve a multi-pronged cross-sectional look at the finance, insurance, legal, and tax industries, as well as reasons to stop pursuing impractical career paths in the arts and sciences “like Mom and Dad told you to.”

“This is a considerable step forward for us,” said Genevieve Soubriet, the executive director of the program’s offices in Lausanne, Switzerland. “For the entirety of their early lives, young people are told to follow their dreams, to make their lives extraordinary and superlative, to get out there and change the world. It’s high time we stopped giving them such imbalanced counsel, and just told them to make some serious bank.”

The program, which will be piloted in continental Europe this summer before a Q4 2014 release at US universities, will commence with a variety of breakout sessions piloted by The Apprentice’s Donald Trump, former GE CEO Jack Welch, and Arturo Pinzotti, a distant descendant of the 16^th-century statesman and author Niccolo Machiavelli. Titles include: 

• “Becoming the Billionaire’s Toady: Reflections on the Soul-Crushing but Financially Rewarding Indentured Servitude of Family Office Personnel”
• “Hedge Fund Performance Reviews: How to Minimize Physical Violence and Other Aberrant Investor Behavior”
• “New Adventures in MS Office: How to Turn Emerging Market Power Grids on and off at Your Leisure with Excel (and what it will do for Your Fund’s NAV) 

Joel Redmond, a CNY financial planner and author of the not-yet-galactically-acclaimed book Tradecraft: What Spymasters Can Teach us About Investing, said he wasn’t surprised about the CIFC’s efforts. “We live in an uncertain world,” Redmond said. “Take Family Guy – I never thought a show with such surgical ‘80s humor would make it into a fifth season, usurping even The Simpsons as a comedy iconoclast,” he said. “I suppose there have been current events that have indicated uncertainty as well, of course.”

Redmond, who mentioned that he posts a weblog also aimed at would-be students of finance called The Bricklebrit Algorithm, mentioned a slightly different goal. “I remember Einstein said ‘things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler,’” Redmond said. “Fortunately, anyone reading this blog would agree no jury in the world would ever convict me of making anything in finance simple. I view myself as a solemn steward of the mysteries of finance, sort of like those 9^th century inquisitors who would tie people to the stake if they found prayer books in their room. I think sometimes scarcity gets a bad rap,” he said.

The book Tradecraft is available here: www.unlimitedpublishing.com/redmond

The Bricklebrit Algorithm is here: http://www.tumblr.com/blog/thebricklebritalgorithm

###