Sunday Reading #4

From a finance illiterate's view, this is a wonderful article about the people who ran Goldman Sachs. Almost reads like a story.

Steve Friedman’s decision to quit as chairman of Goldman Sachs, in 1994, during one of its darkest hours, stunned and angered his partners. And despite Friedman’s maneuverings, it created a leadership crisis as the mismatched team of Jon Corzine (future New Jersey governor) and Henry Paulson (future Treasury secretary) took the helm. In an adaptation from his book on Goldman, William D. Cohan reveals how secret merger discussions put the expansive trader and the hardheaded banker on a collision course, setting the stage for the firm it would soon become.

About the Jan Lokpal bill, Of the few, by the few & At the Risk of Heresy: Why I am not Celebrating with Anna Hazare. Both good articles.


Next on my bookshelf, Why Loiter?

"Even in a city like Bombay, the so-called 'friendly' city, women have to strategise how to access public space. What will they wear; how long will they stay out till; who are they going out with; will they need to carry a shawl or a jacket if travelling by train, these are all methods of strategising," explains Sameera Khan.


Khan believes that one of the reasons women are given conditional access is the notion of 'virtue'.
"A woman has to establish 'respectability', [since] only if you're a 'good' girl are you worthy of 'protection'," she says. And 'good' girls don't loiter.
If they could, why do they still carry pepper sprays, safety pins and knuckle dusters in their bags, ask the authors.
"Women are having to constantly censure themselves, and are always in preparation of an 'attack'. Men don't carry that burden," says Khan.

Want to get something done? Help with work, a date or just wish to communicate better perhaps? Touch.

To get around in the world, we mainly rely on our eyes and ears. Touch is a sense that's often forgotten.
But touch is also vital in the way we understand and experience the world. Even the lightest touch on the upper arm can influence the way we think.

How language heals.

All couples play kissy games they don’t want other people to know about, and all regress to infants from time to time, since, though we marry as adults, we don’t marry adults. We marry children who have grown up and still rejoice in being children, especially if we’re creative. Imaginative people fidget with ideas, including the idea of a relationship. If they’re wordsmiths like us, they fidget a lot in words.”

And last, Amartya Sen on Rabindranath Tagore.