Skip to main content

The Culture that Spawned the Crisis



John Bogle, Douglas Kmiec, and John Templeton Jr. share their views on current societal values and their effect on our behavior and the financial markets in, "The Culture that Spawned the Crisis: A Closer Look".

This talk provides an interesting follow up to the themes of capitalism and morality vs. immorality discussed in our last post, "BB&T prefer liberty & reason to bailouts".

A key point made by John Templeton Jr. early on in this talk: "Culture is Everything". As the opening argument suggests, changes in our cultural values have led to a marked change in the way that we live, interact, and do business with each other, and not necessarily for the better.

Hat tip to Stocktwits community member, Aiki14, for drawing our attention to this discussion.

When you find the time, please enjoy this video and the discussion on "the social, cultural, and moral causes of the current financial crisis in the United States"
. I hope it will spur some thoughts on the prevailing cultural & moral climate in our country (& in our world).

What lessons did take from the discussion? On what points did you agree or disagree? Please share your thoughts with us here.

Related articles and posts:

1. The Moral Case for Competitive Capitalism - The Freeman.

2.
John Bogle: The Free Market's Moral Crisis - Fora.tv.

3. Need for More Capitalism in our Financial System - Seven Scholars.

4. Friedrich A. Hayek at Stanford, 1970 - Finance Trends.

Popular posts from this blog

Clean Money - John Rubino: Book review

Clean Money by John Rubino 274 pages. Hoboken, New Jersey John Wiley & Sons. 2009. 1st Edition. The bouyant stock market environment of the past several years is gone, and the financial wreckage of 2008 is still sharp in our minds as a new year starts to unfold. Given the recent across-the-board-declines in global stock markets (and most asset classes) that have left many investors shell-shocked, you might wonder if there is any good reason to consider the merits of a hot new investment theme, such as clean energy. However, we shouldn't be too hasty to write off all future stock investments. After all, the market declines of 2008 may continue into 2009, but they may also leave interesting investment opportunities in their wake. Which brings us to the subject of this review. John Rubino, author and editor of GreenStockInvesting.com , recently released a new book on renewable energy and clean-tech investing entitled, Clean Money: Picking Winners in the Green Tech Boom . In Clean

Slate profiles Victor Niederhoffer

Slate's recent profile of writer/speculator, Vic Niederhoffer has been getting some attention from traders and finance types in recent days. I thought we'd take a look at it here too, to offer up some possible educational value from Vic's experiences with trading and loss. Here's an excerpt from Slate's profile of Victor Niederhoffer : " I've enjoyed getting your e-mails. It sounds like you've thought a lot about being wrong. Well, the reason you contacted me, to call a spade a spade, is that I'm sort of infamous for having made a big, notorious, terrible error not once but twice in my market career. Let's talk about those errors. The first was your investment in the Thai baht, which pretty much wiped you out when the Thai stock market crashed in 1997. I made so many errors there it's pathetic. I made one of my favorite errors: "The mouse with one hole is quickly cornered." That is key. There are certain decisions you make in li

Seth Klarman: Margin of Safety (pdf)

Welcome, readers! Signup for free email updates at the Finance Trends Newsletter . Update: PDF links removed due to DMCA notice. Please see our extensive Klarman book notes below. New visitors, please check the Finance Trends home page for all new posts. Here's something for anyone who has been trying to get a look at Seth Klarman's now famous, and out of print, 1991 investment book, Margin of Safety .  My knowledge of value investing is pretty much limited to what I've read in Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor (the book which originally popularized the investment concept of a "Margin of Safety"), so check out the wisdom from Seth Klarman and other investing greats in our related posts below. You can also go straight to Ronald Redfield's Margin of Safety book notes .    Related posts: 1. Seth Klarman interviews and Margin of Safety notes     2. Seth Klarman: Lessons from 2008 3. Investing Lessons from Sir John Templeton 4.