Bill's Notes

Frequent commenter and former IB slumlord victim roommate Jim C. brilliantly sums up the reasons for Wall Street's trouble: thinking outside the box. Maybe a little more inside the box thinking would've kept Wall Street wizards from getting too cute by half and screwing the pooch. Here's the link.

Some choice quotes:

Keeping one’s thinking inside the box also prevents possible bad ideas from getting out and infecting others. For example, the current credit crisis caused by financial institutions lending money to poor credit risks could have been entirely averted if the borrowers had just shown up to the bank wearing boxes on their heads. [...]

On a less literal level, in-the-box thinkers are the folks who pay the bills on time, check the oil, set the alarm clocks, read the directions, and put the ideas of the out-of-the-boxers to practical use. Conventional, by-the-book thinkers help make the world orderly enough for out-of-the-box types to have the time and freedom necessary to dream up their wild schemes and pipe dreams that often fail but sometimes change the world.

That about sums it up.

Meanwhile, also check out Jim C.'s Odd Jobs video series, particularly "Husband for Hire." Jim's talking to a repairman, and the guy mentions that most of his work is from women who need assistance with household repairs, but sometimes he gets calls from husbands, too.

Jim can't resist and says: "Is that legal in Alabama?"

And the guy says, in all seriousness, "As long as we're not more than second cousins." Not — he didn't say that. But he should've.