My book needs a subtitle. Can you help?
So, as reported, I turned the book manuscript in Monday. Now I need a subtitle. There are those who think I need a title. I disagree, but I'll get to that. The title of the book is The Myth of the Rational Market. The current subtitle, which is left over from the days that the people at Collins were thinking our best shot was to market the book as something of an investor guide, is Wall Street's Impossible Quest for Predictable Markets. That doesn't really work for me or my editor.
The book is a history of the rise and fall of the idea that financial markets are perfectly rational. It's mostly about finance professors and economists, but I also follow them and their ideas as they migrate from campus to the real world. Here are a few subtitles we've toyed with so far:
A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street
The Story of Free Markets, Modern Finance, and the Delusions of Wall Street
A Theoretical History of Wall Street's Undoing
Then there's the argument that the current title maybe belongs as subtitle to something catchier. "There are idiots," is one possibility that has come up. It's a line from an early paper by Larry Summers about what later came to be called noise traders--market participants who had no idea what they were doing but nonetheless drove prices and sometimes made lots of money. But I dunno. First of all, There Are Idiots: The Myth of the Rational Market, doesn't really work together. Also, I think the current title, while a blunt instrument, is well suited to the times and makes clear what the book is about. It's also already in the catalog.
Although ... I did just think of one I kind of like, a reference to Alan Greenspan's testimony last month when he said that "the whole intellectual edifice … collapsed." I make a big deal out of this in my introduction, so how about The Edifice Collapsed: The Rise and Fall of the Myth of the Rational Market? Or maybe, just because it sounds better, even though he didn't say it: The Edifice Crumbled: The Rise and Fall of the Myth of the Rational Market. Or just The Edifice Crumbled: The Myth of the Rational Market.
Anyway, suggestions are welcome. And a suggestion that is actually used of course gets you a free signed copy of the book when it comes out.
Update: Ezra Klein's commenters are at work on this too.
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or "Why Your Retirement Plans Just Went Down the Toilet"
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How about:
Crazy Returns: The Myth of the Rational Market
or,
The Myth of the Rational Market: The Economy is Stupid, Stupid
(I like that last one best without the penultimate comma.)
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It's going to be a little cliched but:
Over the Rainbow: The Myth of the Rational Market.
(And ringing the changes, The Good Witch: The Myth of the Rational Market, or Welcome to Oz: The Myth of the Rational Market. Hey, Baum was writing about the unlimited coinage of silver at 16 to one!)To get a little darker, Never Again: The Myth of the Rational Market. Does double-duty! (Heh: Here Be Dragons:... Double-heh: Race to the Hole:... A. Scott would understand! Prester Greenspan!)
Or to really slam people, Trojan Horse: The Myth of the Perfect Market.
What Goes Up Should Keep Rising: Myths of Perfect Markets.
OOOOOOOOOOOO. Legends of the Fall: the Chimera of Perfect Markets.
max
['Fables of the Reconstruction.'] -
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The Random Walk Isn't Random When You're Sober
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Hate the title. Everything is so literal (and boring).
- "Standard Deviants: Crapstistics Destroys the Financial Markets"
- "Market Risk Returns and Throws the Curve"
- "Idiots sans Savants"
- "Wall Street: The Blind Leading the Poor"
- "The Market - Spock It's Not"
- "Wall Street - Making Megabucks as Outfitters to the Gold Rush"
- "How 0's at the Fed Caused the Same in Your Investment Account"
- "Marilyn Monroe Never Saw this Many Bubbles!"I should trademark all these. Your offer of a signed copy is a little cheap! How about a good meal or a bottle of rare Scotch?
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Icarus on the Trading Floor: The Story of Economists Who Flew Too Close to the Free Market Sun
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Well under the theory that immature writers imitate and mature writers steal, I say steal from the best:
The Myth of the Rational Market: Capitalism and Freedom
As long as we're stealing, though, might as well complete the title larceny:
The Myth of the Rational Market: Why Capitalists Choose Bad Investments
Or:
The Myth of the Rational Market: How the Quest for Impossible Profits Destroyed Wall Street
The Myth of the Rational Market: The Rise and Fall of Free-Market Fundamentalism
(That should get Bryan's goat...)
Or hey!
The Myth of the Rational Market: The Road to Serfdom
Or one last one,
The Myth of the Rational Market: The Death of Nations
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Bubbles: The Myth of the Rational Market
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How about
The Myth of the Rational Market: Faking Out the Shell Game
The Myth of the Rational Market: Ya Wanna Buy a Tulip Bulb?
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CC -
I like the Greenspan tie-in: how about "The Edifice Crumbled: The Unraveling of the Rational Market Myth"
Best wishes to Mrs. CC and CC Jr. from our crew.
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Thought of one more - Friedman's Folly and the Myth of the Rational Market.
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@Steveroth,
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You can have the goat. The cow. Hell, I'll let you have the farm if you will assume the mortgage!
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The Science of Hope, Fear and Greed: Myth of the Rational Market,
or, of course,
Myth of the Rational Market: the Science of Hope, Fear and Greed
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The Rational Market Debunked: When Intellectuals Got It Wrong and The Economy Got It Bad
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