Confidence men
Draws on hundreds of hours of interviews and in-depth research to relate the complete story of the nation's financial meltdown, from the trading floors of lower Manhattan to the power corridors inside the Beltway.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
5mentions
4people
2011–2018years
40% recommend60% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- For anyone interested in this line of thinking, I highly recommend reading Ron Suskind's "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President". [1]
As a Washingtonian, I can safely say that there are many actors who prefer the status quo, however flawed it might be, to an unknown other.
- The following list will introduce you to Western Economic Philosophy as it relates to modern history specifically. This list is weighted heavily toward neo-classical economics and does not get into computational model based economics - specifically microeconomics, which comprises the bulk of economics education today:
Schumpeter - History of economic analysis
Adam Smith - Theory of Moral Sentiments
Kaynes - The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
Marx - Capital
Benjamin Graham - The Intelligent Investor
Galbraith - The Affluent Society
Galbraith - The Great Crash
Milton Friedman - Capitalism and Freedom
Nassim Taleb - Black Swan
Ron Suskind - Confidence Men
Scott Patterson - Dark Pools
If you want to delve into heterodox economics afterward, start with the following:
Hayek - Individualism and Economic Order
Mises - Human Action
Rothbard - Man, Economy, State
- > So, millenials voting for Obama were wrong?
Hi, unfortunately, yes. I, like many others, wrote to him [and a few notable Democrat and Republican Senators who publicly champion(ed)] SL reform. My letter actually had supporting facts, and practical actionable policy suggestions. I heard back (directly) only from one Senator, a Republican, whose form letter was unrelated to SLs.
Though I didn't receive a direct response from anyone in Obama's administration, shortly after I'd sent my letter, the administration suggested cutting the SL interest deduction, which was polar opposite of what I'd suggested. And as you probably know, during last year's tax reform debates, the Republicans picked up, but ultimately dropped, that very same idea of removing said deduction.
There were some other policy changes that I saw effected after my letter that makes me certain that it was read and understood. Unfortunately, those changes, harmful to borrowers, were again the opposite of what I'd suggested.
Given what I am reading in Ron Suskind's Confidence Men, and have read/heard elsewhere, I'm not all that surprised.[1]
Young people will continue to be politically and financially expendable until they learn from history, organize themselves into strong blocks and directly involve themselves in the political process. Voting is merely a small part of participation. And I say that having been on the inside of the political machine.
- * In Defense of Liberal Edication By Farred Zakaria
* Confidence Men By Ros Suskind
* Dark Money by Jane Meyer
* Better by Atul Gawande
* The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
* Essentialism by Greg Mckeown
* Contagious by Jonah Berger
* Sapiens by Yuval Harari
* The Pentagons Brain by Annie Jacobson
* Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
* The Only Game in town by Mohamed El-Erian
* The Industries of Future By Alec Ross
- I've yet to hear anyone protest manufacturing or retail. The outrage is over the government subsidizing the banking industry while refusing to do anything for the roughly twenty percent of the population that is essentially jobless, uninsured and mired in debt.
As a case in point, right now the Federal Reserve is funneling free money to banks, which are using those funds not to lend but rather to engage in short-term arbitrage and leveraged trading activities. One example is taking almost zero-interest loans from the Fed and using them to purchase Treasury Bonds which pay much higher interest rates.
According estimates published by Ron Suskind in his recent book "Confidence Men", simply printing the money and giving it directly to the government to spend would save something like 350 billion in interest. Leaving aside the question of how many jobs could be created with those funds, I'm sure there are plenty of individuals at the protests in New York and elsewhere who would be willing to act as middleman for considerably less than 350 billion. Why shouldn't they be angry?
