Monthly Archives: June 2013

Why Is It Always About You?

Management, Personal Developement

I finished reading Sandy Hotchkiss’ book upon which the Wikipedia Seven Deadly Sins section is based:

Why Is It Always About You?: The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism [Kindle Edition] by Sandy Hotchkiss

In a word, fascinating.  Part 1 covers the 7 deadly sins, Part 2 is on the origins of a narcissist, Part 3 is on survival tactics, Part 4 on the narcissists in your life (family, love, work), and Part 5 on narcissism in society and preventing it.  I’m still thinking about Part 2 – the theories (dating back to Freud) on how children develop from age 3-18 months.  Its in this window that a child’s future as a normal person or narcissist is determined, where a narcissistic parent or other caregiver can create another narcissist.  A drug users drug of choice is related to what goes wrong with this stage of development and represents an attempt to go back to that wonderful time of 3-18 months.  Just fascinating – how did Freud and others figure this out?

The Devil’s Derivatives

Financial,

The Devil’s Derivatives: The Untold Story of the Slick Traders and Hapless Regulators Who Almost Blew Up Wall Street . . . and Are Ready to Do It Again – it follows Nicholas first book, and in this book he has a much better ability to articulate the significant of financial technology in lay terms.  For example, derivates are essentially loan mechanisms.  As new loan mechanisms, they initially competed with the old style of actuarial loans, e.g., mortgages, bonds, etc.  He also discusses LTCM in hind sight – that they were so big that they were the derivatives market.  Thus, there performance could not be derived from past historical data (since that data did not include their influence).  Moreover, as the market started to learn their techniques (become efficient), it actually started to guess LTCM’s moves and arbitrage them!