Pages 1-40 and Agree
Posted by: Tom Keene on August 4, 2011
Clarity is the first word of Flying on One Engine, my book from an eon ago, an eon known as pre-crisisolithic. (Memo: David Goldman was way, way out front. Bill Dudley & Ed McKelvey, too.)
Today, the first word would be simplicity. Occam’s Razor, as described nicely here, is a wonderful exercise in relativity and not absolutism and certitude. We, of economics, finance and investment, get Occam’s simplicity wrong.
The economist Mark Twain got it right. Where was I? We get simplicity WRONG. We, and politicians, and moi Les Media, and various and sundry gurus, we get it wrong.
I suggest we need to drive the analysis away from complexity towards simplicity until we find value in a simpler process without being too simple. In housing (the seemingly unclearable market), or Greece (the seemingly unclearable Peripheral), or AUD-CNY (simply distant) we require a better, nuanced simplicity to win, and move on.
This will be hard to do. This will be hard to execute. It is simple as that.
As we strive to understand the cacophony of issues as year 5 (year five!) beckons of our crisis, we need to fight complexity. We need to read, listen and watch for a marginally simpler analysis.
In recent interviews, Feldstein, Coronado and Bandholz, provide a clearer, simpler view forward. Some things do not. Like Apple iTunes (that insane and complex legal change and App upgrade) requests that I read boilerplate of Pages 1-40 and Agree. Discuss.
