Jan 5, 2009

Jeremy Grantham on the bubble in risk taking

The combination of favorable conditions and irrationally exuberant encouragement from the authorities produced an even more poisonous bubble – that in risk-taking itself. Everybody, and I mean everybody, got the point that risk-taking was asymmetrical and reached to take more risk. The asymmetry here was that if things worked out badly they would help you out (this sounds very familiar!), but if all went well you were on your own, poor thing. Ah, the joys of pure capitalism!

~ Jeremy Grantham, "Reaping the Whirlwind," GMO Quarterly Letter, October, 2008

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