The Raj Trial and Wall Street’s South Asian Elite:

This new South Asian Wall Street elite includes the CEO of Citigroup, Indian-born Vikram Pandit; Ajit Jain, also from India, a money manager emerging as the likely successor to investment guru Warren Buffett; and a half-dozen hedge-fund managers who use strategies based on mathematical algorithms to routinely rake in $50 million or more per year in income. Chief among the latter group is the Sri Lankan-born Rajaratnam, who ran a $7 billion hedge fund, Galleon Group, and largely to the disgust of this justifiably proud community, has emerged as the face of this new ethnic order.

In much the same way that the upwardly mobile Jewish community of the 1930s viewed Jewish gangsters as a “shanda fur die goyim” (shame before the gentiles), the “Raj trial” has put the South Asian financial clique on full display, for all its success–and insularity.

I actually had some media inquiries in relation to the Galleon trial in terms of how I thought it impacted the South Asian American community. Since I’m primarily a science blogger who isn’t even part of the South Asian American community, even the Bangaldeshi community, I just passed the inquiries on.

Those “in the know” can comment further, but my impression is that an analogy between a South Asian clique on Wall Street and a Jewish clique is weakened by the fact that brown folk are much more diverse. There’s a commonality in the U.S.A. due to how we’re perceived by others, but it isn’t as if a Sri Lankan quant is going to arrange a marriage with Neel Kashkari’s future children. More pointedly I think many of us perceive brown bankers and hedge fund guys and gals as bankers and hedge fund guys and gals first and foremost. Or at least that’s how the rest of America should view them.

In fact the journalist who contacted me admitted that they were having a hard time fleshing out the South Asian angle, since so few people in “the community” seemed interested or concerned about the Galleon trial. It was a different matter apparently when it came to management consultants and people on Wall Street, who thought their image was being tarnished further (yes, it is being tarnished further, but you’ll keep your bonuses, so I hope that’s just compensation for your reduced esteem!). Continue reading →

…receive some sort of state assistance / welfare today. That surprisingly high number (well, to me anyway) is from a recently published report by the Center for Immigration Studies that’s sure to generate some interesting (and perhaps heated) discussion.

Households with children with the highest welfare use rates are those headed by immigrants from the Dominican Republic (82 percent), Mexico and Guatemala (75 percent), and Ecuador (70 percent). Those with the lowest use rates are from the United Kingdom (7 percent), India (19 percent), Canada (23 percent), and Korea (25 percent).

While 19% “feels” higher than I’d expect, it’s still a little less than half the rate of “native households with children” (39%). And, the Indian number is positive relative to those hordes of poor, illiterate, malnourished, Americans-of-Canadian-descent (23%) and is the lowest rate of use of any of the Asian communities identified. A model minority?

Interestingly, I’ve always generally assumed that immigration patterns from India vs. Pakistan into the US were basically the same. However, the Pakistani-household rate of assistance – 32.8% – is substantially higher than the Indian one and on par with the rate for Chinese families – 32.7%.

CIS’s intro to their study notes the issues being raised and points out that the data collected is primarily self-reported (with all the issues/concerns entailed) –

Concern that immigrants may become a burden on society has been a long-standing issue in the United States. As far back as colonial times there were restrictions on the arrival of people who might become a burden on the community. This report analyzes survey data collected by the Census Bureau from 2002 to 2009 to examine use of welfare programs by immigrant and native households, particularly those with children. The Current Population Survey (CPS) asks respondents about their use of welfare programs in the year prior to the survey,1 so we are examining self-reported welfare use rates from 2001 to 2009.

Any mutineers have insight into these differences?

Continue reading →