Thursday, May 24, 2012

Speech to Finance Graduates

NEW HAVEN – At this time of year, at graduation ceremonies in America and elsewhere, those about to leave university often hear some final words of advice before receiving their diplomas. To those interested in pursuing careers in finance – or related careers in insurance, accounting, auditing, law, or corporate management – I submit the following address:

Best of luck to you as you leave the academy for your chosen professions in finance. Over the course of your careers, Wall Street and its kindred institutions will need you. Your training in financial theory, economics, mathematics, and statistics will serve you well. But your lessons in history, philosophy, and literature will be just as important, because it is vital not only that you have the right tools, but also that you never lose sight of the purposes and overriding social goals of finance.

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Sunday, May 20, 2012

How National Belt-Tightening Goes Awry

WHY is there such strong political support for fiscal austerity, for government cuts and layoffs, at a time of widespread unemployment?

Maybe it’s because we have the wrong metaphor stuck in our minds, and it’s framing policy choices in a misleading way.

Clearly, metaphors and other symbols carry real weight in our thinking, as has been shown by George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist at the University of California, Berkeley, and Mark Johnson, a philosopher at the University of Oregon. In their 1980 book, “Metaphors We Live By,” they argue, “Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.”

Our metaphors are like the icons on our computer screen, little pictures by which we condense complexities into manageable packets to refer to in our decision-making. Our brains may be hard-wired for them.

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