Reading On the brink

As a person who follows the economy closely, the wait to get my copy of  “on the brink” was insufferable. It allowed me to go through the crisis chronologically from the regulator’s point of view while reminiscing my own experience and anguish felt at each major event. that led to the fall. First, some quote from the beginning of the book where Hank Paulson shared his insights on life which I find myself agreeing with more and more as I age.

P23: Real happiness, my father liked to say, came not from anything that was given to you, or that was easy to get. It came from striving to accomplish things and then accomplishing them. You had to do things right. If you left grass tufts sticking up when you mowed the lawn, you had to do it again.

P28: Never be awed by title or position.

P29: My time in government had taught me that whom you work with is as important as what you do.

P31: Remember, you are not going to get ahead, in any case, being a grunt.

P39: There are no dress rehearsals in life. Do you really want to be 75 and telling people I could have been treasury secretary?

P40: My epiphany came while I was flying out to the Microsoft meeting. As I thought through my decision, I recognized that it was simply fear that was causing me such anxiety. Fear of failure, fear of the unknown: the uncertainty of working with a group of people I had never worked with before and managing people I had never managed before.

The nature of a democratic political is such that nothing can be done until a crisis happens. The deadlock between two major political parties of equal influence means that nothing can get done during time of peace when problems are only just brewing. Everything has to wait until the last minute, until your arteries are cut open.

The congress is a glamorized version of high school popular kids who often make decisions not based on what is good for the country, but what makes them appear good in public. Or, what we want them to do to appear good. They are a reflection of our internal desires of what someone in power should be like and it doesn’t necessarily mean in depth knowledge of the economy when it comes to making economic decisions.

I’ve always wondered why the government doesn’t just go ahead and do what I think is right. What every trader in the market know they should do and eventually ended up doing too late. This book explained it all. The amount of political, legal and personal restrictions on any action that is to be taken at all makes it impossible for the ruling party to react in a fast enough way facing a crisis. We are doomed to the cycle of boom and busts and we just have to accept it as it is.