Reading material

   While I overestimated the sagacity of Barry O Bomber regarding the foolishness of any further involvement in Afghanistan, there is a reason for the title of my blog. I had no doubt I would be regularly recording my misreadings of the current scene. At least I got that idea right initially!
    The question of what anyone wins if indeed they "win" a war in Afghanistan is another matter. It is a wonderful source for heroin and lapis lazuli, As nice as those items may be, are they really worth a trillion or so dollars that the U.S. does not have? Not that I believe for a moment that the U.S will prevail. I think we will simply declare victory and leave.
    In other areas, I have recently completed re-reading the financial classic Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. It is an amazing tale, and one I find worth revisiting yearly. As many incredible insights are contained within that classic, it is always sobering to realize its protagonist eventually committed suicide despite his success.
    In a similar vein, I think Murray Rothbard's revisionist history of the Great Depression should be much more widely read. America's  Great Depression will cause a careful reader to reconsider the standard accounts of that miserable period in a century of American primacy.
    Lastly, Vanity Fair's profile of  the young hedge fund legend Michael Burry is a wonderful read, as is Michael Lewis' account of the recent meltdown (The Big Short). And while I am mentioning authors, I will shamelessly plug two for purely personal reasons, Andrew Ross Sorkin (Too Big to Fail) and on a completely different theme Judith Shulevitz (The Sabbath World).