It’s Not a Complex Book (Although It Is Based on Complex Analysis)

For some readers, a really complicated, hard-to-understand book or research paper is best. It makes the reader (and the author) feel as if they know something that very few people can understand. This makes readers feel really smart. It also obscures the upsetting truth about the economy. This group may not want a cheerleading book, but they also don’t want to be too fundamentally critical of the economy or its future prospects. For example, this group might like to read about a detailed analysis of complicated credit default swaps and the intricate ways they might threaten the economy, even though the real threats to the economy are simpler and much more fundamental.

Many people in this group are very threatened by the real economy since many of them will lose their jobs in the Aftershock, including many economists and financial analysts and other professionals. But here’s a question: If the people writing these complex research papers and books could not predict or even talk about something as big and important as the Bubblequake financial crisis that just hit us in 2008, exactly how good is their comlex analysis? What good does their analysis do if it could not even warn us that so many banks would fail, and the U.S. stock market would lose half its value?

If these people cannot protect us from such a huge occurrence, what exactly can they do for us? The answer is, they keep us relatively happy and in the dark. ...

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