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Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Fascinating: 10 Lessons From Michael Lewis' New Book, Boomerang - ABC News

Media_httpaabcnewscom_idlgb

Fascinating details In his interview with Jon Stewart:

"...3. Fishermen are a lot like American investment bankers.

Lewis describes the origins of Iceland's economic collapse, which included deregulation and the the privatization of its major banks.

The cornerstone of Iceland's economy have been fishing and energy, which begged the question how and why Icelandic financiers "who had no experience in finance were taking out tens of billions of dollars in short-term loans from abroad."

Lewis said the Icelandic financial crisis mirrored how the country's fishing industry took off in the early 1970s: "they privatized the fish," in which fishermen were assigned a quota based on past historical catches.

Lewis writes that like bankers, fishers' "overconfidence leads them to impoverish not just themselves but also their fishing grounds."

He writes: "The goal is to catch the maximum number of fish with minimum effort. To attain it, you need government intervention."

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

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