Risk Management, PRMIA

November 03, 2008

The Excommunication

Shining tempters formed of air, symbols of desire
And so we act, beckoning, alluring foolish men
Through their dishonest dreams of gain to overwhelming
Ruin. There, schooled by suffering, they learn at last
To fear the gods.
(Aristophanes, The Clouds)

No recent economic congressional testimony was perhaps more shocking than former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspans. The 82 year old Oracle states his world view was flawed. Thunderous shock echoes out the Manhattan canyon and past New Jersey to Japan like a bad Saul Steinberg New Yorker magazine cover. The clatterers pile on, the noise deafening, culminating in Alan Greenspans excommunication by the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

From Greenspan: An infectious greed seemed to grip much of our business community.

From Rand: Since time immemorial and pre-industrial, greed has been the accusation hurled at the rich by the concrete-bound illiterates who were unable to conceive of the source of wealth or of the motivation of those who produce it.

I am going to put a thumb on this event for the future. Underlying assumptions about component motivations of the architects and inhabitants of a (risk management) worldview is worthy of future reference.

Is greed easier to finger than complexity?

Posted by jtunkey at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)