How a 24 yr old got hired by Bush to rebuild Iraq's stock market

I thought it was weird they gave the job to such a young man, you doesn't have much experience and wasn't the best at it's school.

By YOCHI J. DREAZEN
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

From The Wall Street Journal Online


BAGHDAD, Iraq -- At Yale University, Jay Hallen majored in political science, rarely watched financial news stations and didn't follow the stock market.

All of which made the 24-year-old an unlikely pick for the difficult task of rebuilding Iraq's shuttered stock exchange. But Mr. Hallen, a private-sector development officer for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, was given the job immediately after arriving in Baghdad in September.

The headquarters of the old Iraqi exchange, where brokers in blue vests scribbled trades on boards, was looted after the war and is now occupied by squatters. Several listed companies no longer exist, and many Iraqi companies' majority shareholders -- Saddam Hussein and his friends and relatives -- are either dead or in prison. A new exchange is supposed to open in temporary quarters next month, but impatient brokers already meet privately in their homes and offices to trade shares.

Entire Article

Doesn't this smell like familly ties or something?

Doesn't this smell like familly ties or something?

Yup it sure does. Almost no 24 yr old is qualified to rebuild a non-existant securities exchange pretty much from the ground up. It would take a team of senior economists but they are too smart to volunteer to go to Iraq so they stuck the job to the first shmoe that walked through the door

I know from experiance that just playing the market is a challenge for almost everybody esp. the so called 'professionals'.

It looks like that article is from Wednesday, 28 January 2004. I can find very little concrete information on Jay Hallen, and it seems like another person had trouble as well:

guntherconcept.blogspot.com...

blog.lordsutch.com...


I suspect favors as well as family ties. It doesn't make any sense.

Does anyone else have a father who says, on a regular basis, "(so and so) is 24/25, and he's in charge of (such and such) project? What are you doing with your life?"

As much as I flinch at such overt good ol' boyism... there is a chance that this guy was qualified for what he was doing. A lot of young men were put in charge of serious projects during and right after WW2... and the source story might be exagerating his role.

Well apparently he worked for the SEC on restructuring policies of the system. At that time, he was trying to get a Washington job through an individual who later became an advisor to the CPA governor in Iraq. It seems as though he got the job through incessant calling to the individual who later gave him the job.

Now, it seems that no one else wanted it, but that was probably because of the choice of the government to deny the Army a prominent role in rebuilding Iraq. Check out this article:
216.239.39.104...:N9M_wMAs0IQJ:www.dean.usma.edu/sosh/Conferences/senior/Meese-Morgan%2520SRC%252004.pdf+%22 jay+hallen%22+high+school&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

The Army had a guy set up that was a former vice-president and chief economic advisor for NASDAQ.

These choices in the CPA are apparently the result of denying the Army a prominent role in Iraq.

The Army had a guy set up that was a former vice-president and chief economic advisor for NASDAQ.

OMG COL Edleson is a much much much much better candidate than Jay Hallen.
He is clearly much more qualified and probably would accept the job that no one wanted if asked/ordered wichever....

Now before I was pretty sure the Bush Administration was incompetent but now they are either Insane/They Dont Care/It was in the plan all along...but who knows.:puz

As one of the articles said (i forget which.)

That doesn�t inspire a lot of confidence in the Coalition Provisional Authority's ability to turn Iraq into a stable democracy.

well... in all fairness you wouldn't want to hand the entire rebuilding process over to the military.

So, no, i wouldn't want some colonel to run a brand new stock exchange... but I also wouldn't want some 24 year old to do it. I'm sure there was, in the real world, some retired broker who got the job and that the source story blew things up a bit...

Letter from Hallen while in Iraq

Check out his job duties:

My main job responsibility here is to manage the re-establishment of the Baghdad Stock Exchange. There's an Army civil affairs guy who's been working on the project for a few months, has made some good contacts and has found some good potential properties that I'll view this week, so there's some good groundwork. But I'm the head CPA person in charge. My job is to know exactly what needs to get done, what skills and expertise and money and equipment are needed, and to contact/hire the right people.

Originally posted by onlyinmydreams
So, no, i wouldn't want some colonel to run a brand new stock exchange.

The Colonel is the former Vise-Prez of the NASDAQ. This makes him a star candidate IMO not just some colonel picked out at random...