I try not to comment on current events directly. I think that we've got to progressively become a society where banks are deemed to be too precious for us, for our currency, to take too much risk. We need to have a banker who is just as responsible as someone working for the water company. [...]
Archive for October 2008
Banks are going to become a utility.
October 31, 2008only a single black swan is required to falsify the theory that “all swans are white”
October 30, 2008Mr. Taleb is fascinated by the rare but pivotal events that characterize life in the power-law world. He calls them Black Swans, after the philosopher Karl Popper's observation that only a single black swan is required to falsify the theory that "all swans are white" even when there are thousands of white swans in evidence. [...]
The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion …
October 25, 2008Capitalism, then, is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary. And this evolutionary character of the capitalist process is not merely due to the fact that economic life goes on in a social and natural environment which changes and by its change alters [...]
Paris Tampa during the Crisis, a Reply to my Nephew in Paris
October 25, 2008Groundhog Day and the Dropout Problem
October 24, 2008Obama’s chances, less than three weeks before the election
October 19, 2008the sneering and eye-rolling
October 19, 2008In Debate No. 1, you could put the volume on mute and see what has proved to be the lasting impressions of both candidates start to firm up. In Debate No. 2, McCain set the concrete: he re-enacted the troubling psychological cartography of his campaign “suspension” by wandering around the stage like a half-dotty uncle [...]
And justify the ways of God to men
October 17, 2008…what in me is darkIllumine, what is low raise and support;That, to the height of this great argument,I may assert Eternal Providence,And justify the ways of God to men.(John Milton,1608…)
people should be treated alike in spite of the fact that they are different.
October 16, 2008To rest the case for equal treatment of national or racial minorities on the assertion that they do not differ from other men is implicitly to admit that factual inequality would justify unequal treatment; and the proof that some differences do, in fact, exist would not be long in forthcoming. It is of the essence [...]
it is better to support schools than jails
October 15, 2008We believe that out of the public school grows the greatness of a nation. It is curious to reflect how history repeats itself the world over. Why, I remember the same thing was done when I was a boy on the Mississippi River. There was a proposition in a township there to discontinue public schools [...]
