Newsletter 1051
Best of the Moment
The Role Of Financial Institutions
Yichuan Wang | Synthenomics | 6th July 2013
Not an easy read, but full of interesting ideas about financial-market theory and modelling. Most financial-market economics focuses on individual behaviour. But Wall Street doesn't look like that. Main actors are institutions with their own quirks and constraints. Shouldn't we focus more on institutional behaviour? "The burden must on the traditionalists to show that models of individual investing can subsume those of institutions in most cases"
Clive James — A Life In Writing
Robert McCrum | Guardian | 5th July 2013
Sad sketch of poet and critic approaching death. "Almost everything in the life of this great literary polymath is edged with darkness. James dwells in a kind of internal exile: from family, from good health and from convivial literary association, even from his own native land. His circumstances evoke a fate that Dante might plausibly have inflicted on a junior member of the damned in one of the less exacting circles of hell"
Why I’m Hiring Graduates With Thirds This Year
Rory Sutherland | Spectator | 6th July 2013
"Nobody has any evidence to suggest that recruits with first-class degrees turn into better employees than those with thirds. Some specialised fields demand spectacular mathematical ability, but these are relatively few. So my instincts suggest that if we confine our recruitment efforts to people in the lower half of the degree ladder we shall have an exclusive appeal to a large body of people no less valuable than anyone else"
Awaiting Renewal
Heather Havrilesky | Aeon | 3rd July 2013
On growing older, through the gulf separating mid-thirties from mid-forties. Reflections provoked by the need to get a driving licence, with a new photo. "This is the shape my mid-life crisis is taking: I’m worried about what I have time to accomplish before I get too old to do anything. I’m fixated on what my life should look like by now. I’m angry at myself, because I should look better, I should be in better shape"
Video of the day: Jonathan Mehring, Skateboard Photographer
Thought for the day:
"Before the 1980s, style was merely the opposite of content" — Peter York