To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway’s response to a bankruptcy question :
How did your country die?
Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.
Author: Edouard Chazal
How To Catch A Chess Cheater
Statistical evidence is immune to concealment. No matter how clever a cheater is in communicating with collaborators, no matter how small the wireless communications device, the actual moves produced by a cheater cannot be hidden.
Greenpeace Statement on Foreign Currency Exchange Losses
The losses are a result of a serious error of judgment by an employee in our International Finance Unit acting beyond the limits of their authority and without following proper procedures. Greenpeace International entered into contracts to buy foreign currency at a fixed exchange rate while the euro was gaining in strength. This resulted in a loss of 3.8 million euros against a range of other currencies.
The Disruption Machine
Disruptive innovation is a theory about why businesses fail. It’s not more than that. It doesn’t explain change. It’s not a law of nature. It’s an artifact of history, an idea, forged in time; it’s the manufacture of a moment of upsetting and edgy uncertainty. Transfixed by change, it’s blind to continuity. It makes a very poor prophet.
No Money, No Time
We tend to assume that pressure makes us more efficient. I work fastest when I’m on deadline. I stretch my grocery budget the most when my funds are running low. But in reality, it’s not that you’re working better when you’re stressed. It’s that the opposite situation, overabundance, often makes us less efficient.
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The poor are under a deadline that never lifts, pressure that can’t be relieved. If I am poor, I work or I churn until decisions like buying lottery tickets begin to seem like attractive alternatives. I lack the time to calculate the odds and think of alternative uses for my money.
