What We Hear

I heard a long interview a few days ago with Professor Niall Ferguson-author or The Ascent of Money . He had an interesting observation about economic literacy and our overall poor understanding of economic history. He said "we don't teach financial history- we only talk about the generals and not the bankers". Well put- this poor (or factually flawed) view of history is at the root of our current problems.

On the same day I heard an interview with Dr. Nassim Taleb- author of 2 books on our list. Taleb is a difficult interview as he is highly charged and acerbic. He made a couple major points. First, he proffers that all asset bubbles are driven either by inflation (tech stocks in the 90's) or debt (housing in this decade). He also thinks banks are operating as "utilities " (like the electric company or cable company) and should be regulated as such. Finally, lending to the themes in his books, he thinks institutions should have "robustness to rare events" or they should be allowed to break (fail).