Tag Archives: commentary

A World Without Black Swans

by robokow
Contrarian-du-jour Nassim Nicholas Taleb has published Ten Principles for a Black-Swan Free World in the FT. My favorites:
3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus. The economics establishment (universities, regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organisations staffed with economists) lost its legitimacy with [...]

Moving Past Profligacy

by dalylab
(per Infectious Greed)
Normally I don’t think too much of Time Magazine, but Kurt Andersen’s article “The End of Excess” really caught my eye. It takes a view as to how the current crisis can result in an improved version of America. The whole thing is worth reading, but this blockquote is particularly good:
“History [...]

Stupidity wins over Greed

by Muffet
David Brooks, in a recent column, contrasted two perspectives on the root cause of the financial crisis. The first, put forth by Simon Johnson of MIT, posits that the root cause is no different from financial crises in developing countries. The second, put forth by Jerry Muller of Catholic University, argues that epistemological [...]

How Obama Won

Great piece in the New Yorker this week by Ryan Lizza on how Obama won.
It is already being said by the great army of bloggers and commentators that the Obama campaign was the best-run in modern history. Much the same thing was said about James Carville’s work for Bill Clinton in 1992 and Karl Rove’s [...]

Go West

In Ryan Lizza’s compelling portrait of Bill Ritter we see the latest version of a new theory of democratic ascendancy that seems to be taking hold and which suggests a number of significant shifts in American thinking and politics in the coming decade.
Leave The South Behind
Lizza makes mention of Whistling Past Dixie, a 2006 book [...]

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