“We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life’s continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are.”— Stephen Jay Gould
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Doubt greets IMF bailout offers
The fund seeks to soften effects of the financial collapse, but many Asian leaders – citing bad advice from the ’97 crisis – are wary of conditions attached to assistance.
Doubt greets IMF bailout offers | csmonitor.com.
“Not only have individual financial institutions become less vulnerable to shocks from underlying risk factors, but also the financial system as a whole has become more resilient.”
— Alan Greenspan in 2004
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PBS NEWS HOUR Interview with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, famous economist and author of “The Black Swan” and Dr. Mandelbrot, professor of Mathematics (and originator of ‘fractal geometry’) .
Both say that the present economy more serious than the Great Depression, and the economy during the American Revolution.
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Fannie Freddie Phony – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com.
Klugman takes Arnold Schwarzenegger to task for his false statement about a Fannie/Freddie connection to the subprime mortgage crisie. He comes to the conclusion that the phony account of the crisis is now part of Republican orthodoxy: “part of what you have to believe to be a respectable member of the party.”
Nothing can be solved at the governmental level when politicans believe the lies of their own spinmasters, and the neocons have such a great machine in place that it even fogs reality for those that are in positions of governance.
http://www.irreligion.org/
Occam’s Razor
By dhcsoul on Monday, December 12, 2005
Another Squidoo Lens:
“An investigation into errors, especially those where poor design sets up humans to make mistakes…”
In this book by Simon Head (Oxford University Press, 2003) the author maintains that information technology is being used not to liberate workers from drudgery but to further their regimentation… as the HBR says “A sobering view of the new workplace.”
Head maintains that far from empowering, the net result of the implementation of the principles of industrialization to skilled (knowledge work, whether at the high income profession positions such
as the physician or with the skilled work of lower-inome workers such as call center agents)is what he calls “skill debilitation.”
Seldom do book publishers cover notes reflect the reality of the contents. Even rarer is the case where they understate the charm and impact that a book can have, but this is the case in this work of Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Taleb (Random House, 2005 2nd ed.):
” … here is the word of mouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. This book is about luck: more precisely, aobut how we perceive luck in our personal and professional experiences. Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill — the markets — Fooled by Randomness is an irreverent, iconoclastic, eye-opening and endlessly entertaining multidisciplinary exploration of one of the least understood forces in all of our lives.”