BAFU. Billions and All Fucked Up.
Anti-intellectual resentment is common in all of American life and it has many diverse expressions,
After the war Avi, by then twenty-two years old, finally decided what he would study: psychology. Had you asked him just then why he picked psychology, I would say I want to understand the human soul....
When someone says something, don’t ask yourself if it is true. Ask what it might be true of. That
This conceit went hand in glove with the investment bankers’ belief that they could control their destiny, which, as we shall see, they couldn’t.
The way the creative process works is that .you first say something, and later, sometimes years later, you understand what you said.
The upper classes of this country raped this country. You fucked people. You built a castle to rip people off. Not once in all these years have I come across a person inside a big Wall Street firm who...
The source of his unhappiness was, as usual, other people.
The pleasure of rooting for Goliath is that you can expect to win. The pleasure of rooting for David is that, while you don’t know what to expect, you stand at least a chance of being inspired.
The markets were now run by technology, but the technologists were still treated like tools. Nobody bothered to explain the business to them, but they were forced to adapt to its demands and exposed t...
The entire health industry lies about what things cost to make, she said. I know what things cost because I made them.
The best way to manage people, he thought, was to convince them that you were good for their careers. He further believed that the only way to get people to believe that you were good for their career...
The U.S. stock market now trades inside black boxes, in heavily guarded buildings in New Jersey and Chicago.
That was the moment I gave up on decision analysis, said Danny. No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story. As Danny and Lanir wrote, decades later, after the U.S. Central Inte...
Take whatever is thrown at you and build upon it. Yes . . . and rather than No . . . but. The idiot is bound by his pride, he says. It always has to be his way. This is also true of the person who is...
TWO THINGS STRIKE every Irish person when he comes to America, Irish friends tell me: the vastness of the country, and the seemingly endless desire of its people to talk about their personal problems....
Leverage buys you a glimpse of a prosperity you haven’t really earned.
Ignorance allows people to disregard the consequences of their actions. And sometimes it leads to consequences even they did not intend.
He further believed that the only way to get people to believe that you were good for their careers was actually to be good for their careers.
Every form of strength is also a form of weakness, he once wrote. Pretty girls tend to become insufferable because, being pretty, their faults are too much tolerated. Possessions entrap men, and wealt...