Scientists give grubby children a clean bill of health Guardian
100 Stray Icebergs Approaching New Zealand Clusterstock
Alpha males must trade on more than machismo John Coates Financial Times
The Ides of March and the Fed exit strategy John Hempton. I don’t agree with this (that the financial system was not insolvent, particularly now that I have researched the crisis even more deeply) but I am willing to be persuaded that the dollar bearishness short term is overdone. Anytime consensus is this strong that a trade is one way, it is subject to abrupt short-term reversal. But trying to trade that view can get you killed.
Give us fiscal austerity, but not quite yet Martin Wolf
Charitable Giving Epicurean Dealmaker.
Antidote du jour (hat tip reader Richard):
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Anonymous Jones 
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MyLessThanPrimeBeef 
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@ “Alpha males must trade on more than machismo”
This passage from the article, commenting on traders with stellar performance, is most insightful:
Learning was encouraged by the compensation scheme at the trading company where they worked. Banks, with their yearly bonuses, may attract traders with an appetite for risk rather than prudence; but the traders in our study received only profit sharing, so if they lose money for the firm they lose it for themselves. These traders have, therefore, a strong incentive to damp the swings in their earnings.
These findings offers pretty conclusive evidence that the performance-enhancement hype used to justify multi-million dollar bonuses is just that, a bunch of self-serving, over-hyped bullshit.
I see the writer, John Coates, is a former trader who is now a research fellow in neuroscience.
I personally have great hope in neuroscience. Essentially what it does is to pull back the curtain on the brain, allowing us to see what sort of chemical and electrical phenomenon correspond to certain human behaviors. It breaks down the barrier between the natural and the behavioral sciences, and hopefully this ability to link measurable natural phenomenon to specific human behaviors will allow a flushing out of some of the myths that have been perpetrated within the behavioral sciences, especially those that are used to justify greed and selfishness.
One half-truth that has already become a casualty of neuroscience is the “red in tooth and claw” fiction hyped by New Atheists like Ayn Rand and Richard Dawkins.
In their perverse universe, and their depraved reading of Nietzsche, the “Will to Power” (read high testosterone levels) is of and by itself deemed sufficient for exceptional performance. But as Coates points out, the “Will to Power” is by itself not sufficient. “A high tolerance for risk – predicted by pre-natal testosterone exposure – is needed,” he says, “but, like height or speed in sports, may count for little without proper training and management.”
Nietzsche figured all this out without the aid of modern neuroscience. As Jacques Barzun puts it:
In health man feels within him the will to power, a drive to action and achievement, including self-mastery that will characterize the superman and establish a new ethos.
What the New Atheists and their Wall Street acolytes do is to leave out the part about achievement and self-mastery and go straight to the superman part. They take Nietzsche and turn him on his head. As Barzun goes on to explain, Nietzsche formulated his philosophies in reaction to hollow philosophies like those espoused by the New Atheists:
Nietzsche’s assault on the character of both the mass man and the intellectual conformist was launched in the 1870s and 1880s, a time when the booming of industry, the ruthlessness of capitalist enterprise, and the ravages of renewed imperialism were at their height, filling the air with rejoicing and self-congratulation…
–Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence