Author: Edouard Chazal

A Resurgent Goldman Can Reshape Wall Street

Indeed, had such a plan been in place in the years leading up the collapse of Lehman, I bet the bank would still be around, because former Chairman Richard Fuld and his acolytes would have been far more prudent. They would have taken the time to analyze the risk the company was taking on, which is exactly what Goldman Sachs did in late 2006 when it decided to short the mortgage market to take advantage of its competitors’ foolishness.

William D. Cohan is certainly right about his statement. But the problem doesn’t simply lie behind prudent behavior, it is also Goldman not being in-line with its clients, to the mind of general public. Take a look at the comments, no one seems to care about Goldman changing its internal compensation model for the top-tier of the payroll, because to most people’s mind Goldman is morally bankrupt.

→ Bloomberg

Rebuilding Violent Places

The architectural task in the long aftermath of such shootings is not only to repair structural damage but to calibrate a balance between remembering and forgetting sufficient for daily life to continue nearby—and to figure out how the shapes, materials, and details of buildings can participate in that calibration.

→ The New Yorker

Greed + Confirmation Bias = Disaster

It’s a natural human tendency to seek out conforming opinions – people who agree with us. It makes us feel “right” and good about our decisions. In the investing world, however, this is dangerous. When I form an investment thesis, I’m always trying to figure out why it’s WRONG, not why it’s RIGHT. I want to know the thesis of the guy on the other side of the trade as me – and then I can evaluate whose thesis is stronger.

→ Kid Dynamite’s World

Let’s Save Great Ideas from the Ideas Industry

Guernica doesn’t offer any solutions to the problem of human suffering: it asks us to do something more vital, and more worthy: to reflect on, consider, and perhaps so gain a truer intimacy with the problem of war, violence, atrocity, and its permanence throughout history. Picasso would never have been invited to deliver a TED talk about Guernica because it offers no quick, easy, palatable solution. Instead, it offers the precise opposite: a hard, unflinching, uncompromising portrait of grief.

→ Harvard Business Review