Mother

When I was younger
I thought I had the best Mommy ever.
That wasn't fair and couldn't be true.
But now I'm older and have context to compare;
I've seen a bunch, now I'm certain I do.

On "how markets fail"

Here's the thing... This is an interesting and good book, but the title mis-sells and mis-lables it. It is not in any way a specific look at market failure. If you want that, look here: This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly

What it is is a history of financial markets through time, but focused on some of the intellectual ideas driving some policy. It suffers from recency bias and a short time frame. The history is shown through a left-leaning frame, and the great bogyman is an overwhelming adherence to Free-market Ideologies! They are scary, but it felt rather simplistic. It is a good starting point, but it lacks objectivity. The author didn't seem to even pretend towards objectivity. He was aware of his biases. I'm just afraid this is one of those books that is sold towards everyone but will sway no one.

To save you time, I will provide a summary here in a Q & A format.

Q: What causes market failure?

A: Neoliberalism

To define that term, look here: A Brief History of Neoliberalism.

On The Black Swan

I read and enjoyed this book a while back, but I neglected to review it. My thought was that it was far enough in the product's life-cycle that whatever can be said for it, good or ill, had already been said.

I am writing now only quickly to say that this book is amazing. While my marginal notes show that I didn't completely agree with Taleb's method or conclusions, this book has amazing impact. I am, even at my young age, pretty ossified in my positions about how the market works for all participants. What this book did is make me reevaluate those positions that were once set in stone. I have to admit, this is no easy task. I even sought out, and bought (though not yet read) the book that was the biggest influence on Taleb, The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence. I look forward to seeing the basis for the thought in The Black Swan.

I advise you to purchase this book to help you reevaluate your views on the market. Even if you don't agree with him, Taleb's book will make you stronger by forcing you to engage with his mode of thinking. I write this because I came across an unexpected and unqualified endorsement by another respected radical thinker: Daniel Kahneman in his recent Thinking, Fast and Slow. It seems counter-intuitive at first, but both men are in the same project but coming from different angles: How does the market fail, and why.