How Making the Irrational Decision Sometimes Pays Off (Big) Nicholas Frederick Brady was Secretary of the Treasury in the 1990s during the infamous Salomon Brothers scandal in which Warren Buffett, a major shareholder in Salomon, took over as CEO. Brady liked Buffett, not because he was famous and beloved, as he is today. It just so happens, Brady's family were investors in the old northeastern textile mill known as Berkshire Hath...

If It Were Obvious It Would Not Be Insightful (What We Have Missed by Disparaging)Must things be obvious for one to get it? Should ideas and principles be clear and easy to understand? Must they be laid out on a silver platter? It is precisely that they are not easy to understand which makes them valuable. Thou shalt not conflate the desire for clarity and simplicity with an expectation of obvious insight. The rewriters of history ...

The following is an excerpt from a larger work in progress, tentatively titled Intelligence Hath No Party. I plan to post a working draft at IntelHathNoParty.com in the near future.Who Shall We Hang Today? (Or, Why Bad Solutions Lead to Bigger Problems) "the basis of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is baneful; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing m...

Clip source: Monopoly I: (Re)Normalizing Bad Arguments —USA v. Google Monopoly I: (Re)Normalizing Bad Arguments —USA v. Google Neither I nor my firm own shares in Google. I do not have any ties to (nor do I desire to be an apologist for) Google. This piece is the first in a series which uses the topic of monopolies to discuss consequences of faulty and often partisan arguments. Foremost, when you use bad arguments for your purposes...

Imagine for a moment the following faux conversation between a political master strategist and his operative. From: [The Operative] To: [Guru Strategist] Mr.[redacted], Our multi-year, diversionary bait-and-switch tactic has proven effective. The launch of Project Q was, above all, the masterstroke. Key columnunists at the Post and Times have shown exceptionally useful, particularly due to their rapid acceptance of the message. ...