Quants And Accounting Majors: Uncle Sam Needs You

4793929With an overwhelming focus on the resolving economic morass in his first 30 days in office, President Obama has muted his "hope" and "change" mantra and ratcheted up the "transparency" and "accountability" theme. With about $500 billion dollars to be doled out as quickly as possible, $350 million has been set aside to fund accountability for the American people (including $253 million to boost the inspector general corps).

According to the New York Times, the federal government might have a problem in hiring people who can provide the oversight: "Finding qualified auditors and investigators to supervise such a vast increase in government spending might be a challenge in itself, and some experts on government accountability programs warned that spending more on oversight did not always guarantee better results."

Indeed, the infrastructure needed to rebuild the U.S. financial infrastructure is shaky and understaffed to handle the rapid distribution and accounting for hundred of billions of dollars.

The notion of increasing transparency and accountability is worthy and will become a permanent facet of government operations, but that won't necessarily result in the most rational use of federal funds. Even with auditors, transparency boards and inspector generals, the left hand doesn't always know what the right hand is doing. Some of the information systems are archaic and unwieldy, and need to be revamped. Nor will influence peddling go away.

One point is clear, however. People with accounting, applied math and quantitative analysis expertise will fare better in the job market than most other professions. Accounting may become the new hot major on college campuses, and all the quants who helped screw up the economy devising complex financial instruments may resurface as auditors and analysts tasked with fixing the broken economy.

Daniel Farber is editor-in-chief of CBSNews.com.