As the US government shut down drags on, I figured it was time to learn more about the threat the Trump presidency poses to the day-to-day running of America. Turns out that, like basically every political story from anywhere in the world at the moment, it’s significantly worse than I thought. Michael Lewis books are almost their own specific little sub-genre now – relatively light and readable looks at deeply boring topics. The Fifth Risk has less of an overarching narrative than previous works […]
Maybe we don’t think so good
This book, by the author of Moneyball, is essentially a biography of the two men who did more to change the way we think about thinking. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman are Israeli psychologists who discovered heuristics and connected the fields psychology and economics, helping create the new field of behavioral economics. If you recognize either name, it is probably Daniel Kahneman who wrote the outstanding book Thinking, Fast and Slow a few years ago. At the beginning of that book he writes about his […]
“The CDO was, in effect, a credit laundering service for the residents of Lower Middle Class America. For Wall Street it was a machine that turned lead into gold.”
I took my time with this one, reading it slowly and carefully for over a week, trying to understand all of the really complex concepts outlined by Lewis. At least, complex to me — I dropped economics in junior college because it was going to ruin my otherwise perfect GPA. By a lot. I’m not sure that I understood everything (okay, I know I didn’t), but I did grasp enough to absolutely freaking terrify me. “What are the odds that rich people will make smart decisions about money […]