If you get into the mental habit of relating what you're reading to the basic structure of the underlying ideas being demonstrated, you gradually accumulate some wisdom.

Understanding both the power of compound interest and the difficulty of getting it is the heart and soul of understanding a lot of things.

Being rational is a moral Imperative. You should never be stupider than you need to be.

If we mix only a moderate minority share of turds with the raisins each year, probably no one will recognize what will ultimately become a very large collection of turds.

I do not think you can trust bankers to control themselves. They are like heroin addicts.

Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome

It's my guess that something like 5% of GDP goes to money management and itsattendant friction. I define it broadly - annuities, incentive pay, all trading, etc. Nobody else has used figures that high, but that's my guess. Worst of all, the people doing this are among the best and the brightest. Hundreds and thousands of engineers, etc. are going into hedge funds and investment banking. That is not an intelligent allocation of the brainpower of the civilization.