[Pen-l] Benoit Mandelbrot and the wildness of financial markets: SciAm

[Charles Brown <cdb1003@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The New Republic 
Free Larry Summers 
Why the White House needs to unshackle
 its economic oracle. 
 
On a typical day, Larry Summers, the top 
White House economic adviser, 
sits in his office overlooking the Rose 
Garden and receives a 
near-endless succession of aides
 working on a stunning variety of 
issues. In a single, several-hour bloc, 
Summers might have meetings on 
housing, the auto industry, health care,
 technology policy, and the 
financial crisis, all of which he's 
exploring in subatomic detail. 
Summers is said to be fascinated 
with such off-the-beaten-path topics 
as the switch to digital television--
he insists on understanding the 
physics behind the technology.
 
-clip-

 
During his senior year of college, Summers 
was considering graduate 
school in both theoretical physics and
 economics. For weeks, he 
anguished over whether to pursue his 
passion (physics) or the family 
business (in addition to his economist 
parents, Summers has two 
uncles--Paul Samuelson and Kenneth 
Arrow--who won Nobel prizes in the 
field). After he finally decided on the 
latter, he explained his 
thinking to Rollins: "What does a bad 
theoretical physicist do for a 
living? He walks into an office, sits at a
 desk, and stares at a plain 
white sheet of paper." "But," Summers 
added, "there's a lot of work in 
the world for a bad economist."
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