Corruption, lobbying, corporate malfeasance, and frauds: a weekly unconventional selection of must-read articles by investigative journalist Bethany McLean.
At the risk of stating the obvious, there are many ways in which this crisis is different from 2008. An under-appreciated one is that coming out of the global financial crisis, fracking, which was just getting started in 2008, provided millions of jobs. This time around, it’ll be the opposite:
Of course, equity markets are seemingly unfazed and relatively unscathed, despite the relentless torrent of bad news. But what are financial stocks telling us?
Is your view of history Hegelian (“we learn from history that we do not learn from history”) or Santayana-ian (“those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it”)? Of course, maybe both are true. And when it comes to viruses, well, we’ve got history.
“The long history of germs as agents of historical change can provide needed perspective,” writes Jared Diamond. And perspective, right about now, is valuable, whether we learn from it or not.
