Commentary on the economy, the markets, and business

The dangers of reading The Hobbit just before bedtime

I read most of The Hobbit last night. I'd been reading it in very small chunks to Curious Capitalist Jr. over the past few months. He's perfectly capable of reading it himself, but didn't seem to want to, so I started reading it to him. Yesterday we dropped CC Jr. off at summer camp, so I figured I'd read ahead in the book—which I read once 30-35 years ago, but the plot of which I had completely forgotten. I made it to the beginning of the very last chapter, then fell fell asleep.

A couple hours later I awoke in a cold sweat. The Hobbit is something of heist story—a bunch of dwarves and a hobbit attempt to steal (or, more accurately, reclaim) a vast treasure buried under a mountain and guarded by a dragon. I awoke from a dream in which I had written a book that was the (fictional?) account of a heist, involving treasure (or maybe just cash, my memories are a little vague here) buried under a mountain somewhere in South America and guarded by the local government. My book publicist had decided that it would be a good idea for me to recreate this heist—that is, go down to South America and steal the treasure/money—in hopes of getting more media attention for the book. I was getting extremely unnerved about this dangerous prospect when I awoke.

I remained unnerved for a few minutes—it all still seemed quite real. In fact, I got even more unnerved as a tiny bit of waking reality crept in and I thought, Not only do I have to risk my life on this South American caper to promote my book, but I also have to contribute to the TPMCafe Book Club all week (because mine is the featured book). No publicity is worth this!

Anyway, now I'm completely awake. There will be no South American heist. But I do still have to contribute to the TPMCafe Book Club all week. Here's my first post.

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    "But a couple of seeming certainties that emerged from academic economics and finance in the 1960s and 1970s have been showed by experience to be mighty uncertain. One was the contention that financial market prices were in some fundamental sense correct, or at least fluctuated in a reasonably narrow band around their fundamental values. The other--and the two don't have to be linked, although they often were--was that it was relatively easy to model the movements of markets and manage the risks thereof."

    It seems to me that Fisher's later views address these issues, although I think that a behavioral approach using Fisher's later theories is an even better approach. Fisher reminds me of Wittgenstein, who wrote a classic philosophy book from one point of view, and then spent the rest of his life showing that it was wrong, or, at least, incomplete.

    What saddens me is that Fisher's views on Narrow Banking, Reflation, Stamping, the Chicago Plan, are not really being considered ( Although I agree that Bernanke seems to be one of the few people using them. ). It seems to me that we should address the problems in the financial system slowly and with care, but that we should also examine the basic structures of our financial system. In my opinion, you need to go back to Fisher, Simons, and Knight, in order to do that. They strike me as more relevant than most of our current economists. Perhaps it's just that I find them easier to read.

    Too much is being left out of the current debate.

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