For all you finance people

In Thomas Friedman's column from Tuesday about America's economic plight, he gets this part right:

To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money — rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions.

How did finance become the backbone of our economy?

Nagowski had a similar thought the other day over at Metaezra:

For the last several years, over twenty percent of Cornell graduates have enterred [sic] the financial services industry, including undoubtedly some students trained in mechanical or chemical engineering, labor relations, or consumer regulation. All things which we might need more of in the coming years.

There's nothing wrong with making money, but sometimes I wonder if some of Cornell's bright minds shouldn't be looking at different fields. Majors like AEM, ILR, and PAM, which were without question intended to not be fast-tracks to I-banking, have become exactly that for many graduates. I assume the same has been true at other universities.