U've written an excellent piece. There is a Hasidic saying that goes like this :
I can see that U are a fire-lighter armed with a heavy coatThere are 2 kinds of rebbes who experience the cold of winter. One buys a heavy coat, the other lights a fire. The first warms only himself, the second provides warmth for all who wish to draw near to his fire.
On a serious note :
Be sure you are in the correct 30years .
Your writing brings up so well the merits of learning from history. Not that history will repeat but that history, like genes, is often unpredictable. We do not always get 7 good years followed by 7 lean years. We can get 18 leans years followed by 18 good years
Prof Daniel Kahneman, father of behavioural economics, was profiled in BT's Raffles Conversation and this extract is revelant here :
Mr Kahneman, who won the Nobel prize for economics in 2002 and teaches at Princeton University, is widely credited - together with his collaborator for some 30 years, the late Amos Tversky of Stanford - as being the founder of behavioural economics.
One of the insights of this relatively new discipline is that when it comes to making decisions, people are often not the selfish, rational, far-sighted, 'profit maximisers' that mainstream economists assume them to be - and which forms the basis for many policy prescriptions.
'There are domains in which rationality provides a good approximation of behaviour, but there are other domains in which it is not even close,' explains Prof Kahneman. 'For example, individuals' attitudes to savings - at least in the US - are completely irrational, and there is a need for policy intervention to enhance rationality.'
A million thks for this light in the cold and fear of a bear market. And intervention to enhance rationality.
