In the time he made his case to the people we came to learn that he believes “the” African-Americans live in hell — linguistically defining us as a monolithic block of existential misery worthy of pity and more police. We learned that racial paranoia can be expressed openly by whites and left unchallenged; that nonwhite voters left unmonitored would “steal” the election; that the powerful can grab women by the genitals without remorse; that finding every way he could to avoid paying taxes and betting on a housing crisis was just called “business.”
.. Trump secured a mere 8 percent of the black vote.
.. Baldwin wrote to his nephew in 1962, “[Whites] are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.”
Some thoughts on asynchronous API design in a post-async/await world
when we’re typing out code we don’t usually stop to think about all the wacky ways that things could be done differently. Yet these all had to be invented. In functional languages, f(); g() doesn’t express ordering. Back in the 1970s, the idea of limiting yourself to using just function calls, loops, and if statements – goto‘s hamstrung siblings – was *incredibly controversial*.
Why historians would make bad policy advisers
Although few today would endorse Thucydides’ view that the Peloponnesian War was the greatest event in human history, the idea that his account has lasting relevance and importance beyond the war is widely accepted. This explains why he is one of the most cited classical authors, evoked in media discussions of topics as varied as the Brexit vote, the Greek economic crisis, the Russian annexation of Crimea and, most persistently in recent years, the tensions between the United States and China, in the form of the so-called ‘Thucydides Trap’
.. But widespread acceptance of Thucydides’ authority disguises the fact that his approach to the past, and to the lessons that can be drawn from it, can be understood in very different ways, with radically different implications for modern history.
.. It’s time for them to start listening to historians as well as to economists – and for historians to develop a new discipline of applied history
.. The problem for any would-be applied historian lies in converting this necessary corrective of over-confident social-scientific assertions or politicians’ simplistic assumptions – the historian’s reflex ‘actually, it’s rather more complicated than that’ – into anything resembling the sort of practical policy advice that politicians or civil servants will ever take seriously.
.. faced constant demands for definitive statements about ‘the German character’ and whether ‘Germans’ could be trusted. Nuance and ambiguity are clearly regarded as an impediment to decision-making but they are the stock-in trade of the historian.
.. Their case for putting historians at the heart of government opens with recent examples of historical ignorance and naïve assumptions, about Islam, Iraq and Russia, which led to unnecessary mistakes; better knowledge of history would have revealed the complexity of those situations and, presumably, encouraged greater caution.
.. historical analogies are easy to get wrong
.. Some events are more familiar than others and come pre-loaded with meaning, which is why Nazi analogies are so popular and so invariably unhelpful.
.. His narrative is driven not by abstract and inhuman laws but by the deliberations and decisions of people, and so by the power of rhetoric, the rhetoric of power, and human susceptibility to emotion and self-delusion. Far from endorsing a search for simplistic historical analogies as a basis for policy recommendations, Thucydides would most likely regard this habit as further evidence of our limited capabilities for self-knowledge, deliberation and anticipation – another facet of the ‘human thing’ that leads us to make similar mistakes again and again.
How a Pillar of German Banking Lost Its Way
For most of its 146 years, Deutsche Bank was the embodiment of German values: reliable and safe. Now, the once-proud institution is facing the abyss. SPIEGEL tells the story of how Deutsche’s 1990s rush to join the world banking elite paved the way for its own downfall.
.. the collapse of Deutsche Bank is the result of years, decades, of failed leadership, culminating in the complete loss of control of the company by top managers during the period between 1994 and 2012.
It is a story about how Hilmar Kopper, Rolf E. Breuer and Josef Ackermann, the leaders of Deutsche Bank during those fateful years, essentially turned over the bank to a hastily assembled group of Anglo-American investment bankers before Anshu Jain, the prince of these traders, rose to the top and spent three more years sailing the bank full-speed-ahead into the shoals.
It is also a story of how these bank heads, along with numerous other members of the management and supervisory boards, stood aside as Jain and the many other new investment banking heroes modified the staid German financial institution to serve their own purposes — essentially looting it and robbing it of its very soul — without leaving behind a better, stronger bank.
.. Every detail in the sequence of its decline is controversial, partially because the financial world still considers it normal that nobody take responsibility for anything but themselves
.. Their leadership failures were not primarily the result of professional incompetence, since the people involved were and are extremely well educated, often proven professionals with significant amounts of experience. The source of their mistakes lies elsewhere, in cultural factors and psychological disposition.
.. It looks as though Deutsche Bank managers wanted to free themselves from Germany’s reputation for provincialism — and went so overboard the consequences can still be felt today.
.. In a June 1994 meeting at the Deutsche Bank branch in Madrid, Hilmar Kopper, then Deutsche Bank chairman of the board, resolved together with a handful of senior managers to transform the Frankfurt-based concern into a globally operating investment bank. The move was intended to propel the bank upwards, but after a few good years, the slide began — one which continues to this day.
.. In the wake of 1980s “Reaganomics” — named for the US President Ronald Reagan — and the anti-socialist doctrine of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, neoliberalism flourished. For its adherents, neoliberalism was considered a well-founded theory. But its opponents saw it as an erroneous belief in the self-regulating powers of the markets. Nevertheless, neoliberalism entered the mainstream and in Germany too, politicians were eager to deregulate and weaken state oversight.
.. In 1988, Deutsche Bank was the largest player in the German economy. It held large stakes in many, if not all, large corporations in the country: a quarter to a third of Daimler shares; co-owner of Karstadt and Südzucker; a stakeholder in Metallgesellschaft; a major shareholder of the construction firm Holzmann, the Hortmann Group and the porcelain producer Hutschenreuther. The list could go on. The bank’s senior managers and directors also sat on the boards of 400 companies around the country. Without the bank, nothing worked, and standing in opposition to the financial institution was fruitless. Deutsche Bank was Germany, Germany Inc., a small state within the state. Indeed, it was so powerful that many considered it at the time to be a danger to democracy.
.. The bank’s German clients were increasingly discovering the enterprising nature of international financial institutions and Deutsche had to be careful not to be left behind.
.. Those who valued good manners, timeliness and order — and who held the correct, center-right political views — tended to have good careers at the bank.
.. His coworkers admired Mitchell’s competitive nature, his directness and his chutzpah. He was, people said, “aggressive in a positive way,” always wanting to make bets and compete with others.
Kopper hired him and Mitchell brought along 50 of his best coworkers. It was a spectacular move, unheard of for Deutsche Bank, but one that would soon become standard in international banking. Investment bankers know no loyalty. They move in packs to the best hunting grounds — to where the most money can be made.
.. He was, in short, charged with transforming Deutsche Bank into an investment bank.
.. Because he personified the cultural break senior bank managers wanted, Mitchell was polarizing from day one. His direct employees swore eternal loyalty, but those who were not in close contact with him both hated and envied him from a distance.
.. he replied: “I’m God.” Another striking quote attributed to him: “If you don’t have $100 million by the time you’re 40, you’re a failure.”
.. Mitchell and his people felt differently, and saw themselves as “Indians,” as “mercenaries,” as “conquistadors.” They called their boss a “shark” or the “terminator.”
.. And, unnoticeably at first, they also gradually brought disrepute to the entire finance industry and Deutsche Bank, in particular.
.. That is when it started: Disdain began sneaking into the vocabulary of the traders. They treated clients like idiots who could be sold garbage as gold.
.. On Dec. 22, 2000, Edson Mitchell died in a plane crash on his way to celebrate Christmas with his family in Maine. He was just 47 years old.
.. Jain was completely at home in the alphabet soup of derivative abbreviations — CDO, CDS, ABS, RMBS — and his numbers made him to one of the best traders of the era. Deutsche Bank had him to thank for a growing balance sheet and huge profits — and a rise in renown and glamor. The London trading division that Jain led was responsible for a considerable portion of the company’s entire profit.
.. The Basel-based Bank for International Settlements, often referred to as the central bank of central banks, warned against the new tools being used to spread risk. But Jain was unconcerned, as were Financial Times reporters.
.. the former stars of the Deutsche Bank empire, they were no longer valued. Their loan portfolios, still as full as ever, were mocked as antiquated.