Sunday Posts

I have been to many interviews where the dreaded question - what's your greatest weakness (or variations thereof) - came up. This was always a strange, conversation stopping, awkward moment. As an interviewee, this is a moment of judging the mood: Should I be honest or not? I have blown my chances before by trying to be honest. On the other hand, it is that moment when one can look arrogant or plain dumb. I have no weaknesses - whichever way you say it - proves that you are either lying, or completely self-oblivious. For the interviewer, this is an important question. That question establishes power equations in an interview: The candidate can not turn around and say, what's yours? It is the interviewee who has to disclose his weaknesses, he is obligated to have a sense of waekness because he is sitting at the other side of the table. There are some 'strategies' for handling this question, indeed. Some good advice came from this month's Harvard Business Review, whic...

In this video, tThe ex-Chief Economist of European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, Willem Buiter, discusses how Eastern European countries handled the recession, and seemed to be coming back from the brink. I found this interview on The Economist website and believed it is worth sharing.

Amartya Sen recently wrote that while the current recession has shifted back the focus on Keynes, in fact the other economist who deserves a reading now is Arthur Cecil Pigou , Keynes' colleague and a rival in his time, who actually gave human psychology a greater role in economic studies than any other professional economists. Here, Bob Shiller argues that our economic models went wrong as we have not allowed psychological implications in the modelling exercise: We put too much faith on Homo Economicus, the rational economic man. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From Animal Spirits For years, the world economy has been on a roller coaster. Yet not until it began to veer off the tracks did the passengers realize that they had embarked on a wild ride. Abetted by their thoughtlessness, the amusement park’s management didn’t set limits on how high they could go or even provide safety equipment. Why didn’t people recognize the warnin...