The author has been described by News Ltd as an "iconoclast", "Svengali", a pollie's "economist muse", and "pungently accurate". Fairfax says he is a "Renaissance man" and "one of Australia’s most respected analysts." Stephen Koukoulas concludes that he is "85% right", and "would make a great Opposition leader." Terry McCrann claims the author thinks "‘nuance’ is a trendy village in the south of France", but can be "scintillating" when he thinks "clearly". The ACTU reckons he’s "an enigma wrapped in a Bloomberg terminal, wrapped in some apparently well-honed abs."

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Prepare, plan and protect yourself against that which you don't want to happen

I said similar things in my Business Spectator columns this week. Here is John Cochrane (via Stephen Kirchner):

"So it’s not really the forecast that’s wrong, it’s what people do with it. If we all understood the essential unpredictability of the world, especially of rare and very costly events, if we got rid of the habit of mind that asks for a forecast and then makes “plans” as if that were the only state of the world that could occur; if we instead focused on laying out all the bad things that could happen and made sure we had insurance or contingency plans, both personal and public policies might be a lot better."
at 8:54 AM