From Capital Spectator:
● What They Do With Your Money:...MORE
How the Financial System Fails Us and How to Fix It
By Stephen Davis, et al.
Summary via publisher (Yale University Press)● Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines
Each year we pay billions in fees to those who run our financial system. The money comes from our bank accounts, our pensions, our borrowing, and often we aren’t told that the money has been taken. These billions may be justified if the finance industry does a good job, but as this book shows, it too often fails us. Financial institutions regularly place their business interests first, charging for advice that does nothing to improve performance, employing short-term buying strategies that are corrosive to building long-term value, and sometimes even concealing both their practices and their investment strategies from investors.
By Thomas H. Davenport and Julia Kirby
Review via FT● Who Needs the Fed?: What Taylor Swift, Uber, and Robots Tell Us About Money, Credit, and Why We Should Abolish America’s Central Bank
An IBM executive told a recent conference that when supercomputer Deep Blue was halfway through its 1997 chess match with Garry Kasparov, it made a random move, due to a software bug. Assuming the machine was smarter than it was, Kasparov later made a strategic error that helped hand Deep Blue victory in the match.
Thomas Davenport and Julia Kirby warn that humans could, like Kasparov, cede the future to machines too easily. “Many knowledge workers are fearful,” they write. “We should be concerned, given the potential for these unprecedented tools to make us redundant. But we should not feel helpless in the midst of the large-scale change unfolding around us.”
By John Tamny
Summary via publisher (Encounter Books)● Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance
The Federal Reserve is one of the most disliked entities in the United States at present, right alongside the IRS. Americans despise the Fed, but they’re also generally a bit confused as to why they distrust our central bank. Their animus is reasonable, though, because the Fed’s most famous function—targeting the Fed funds rate—is totally backwards. John Tamny explains this backwardness in terms of a Taylor Swift concert followed by a ride home with Uber.
By Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna
Summary via publisher (Bloomsbury)
Age of Discovery explores a world on the brink of a new Renaissance and asks: How do we share more widely the benefits of unprecedented progress? How do we endure the inevitable tumult generated by accelerating change? How do we each thrive through this tangled, uncertain time? In Age of Discovery, Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna show how we can draw courage, wisdom and inspiration from the days of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci in order to fashion our own Golden Age. – See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/age-of-discovery-9781472936387/#sthash.5gFRhwhe.dpuf
