James Surowiecki Quotes - Page 5

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• If army ants are wandering around and they get lost, they start to follow a simple rule:Just do what the ant in front of you does. The ants eventually end up in a circle. There's this famous example of one that was 1,200 feet long and lasted for two days; the ants just kept marching around and around in a circle until they died.

  James Surowiecki

  Army, Simple, Circles

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• In order to work well, markets need a basic level of trust.

  James Surowiecki

  Order, Needs, Levels

  "Bankers Gone Wild". www.newyorker.com. July 30, 2012.

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• Most corporate name changes are the result of mergers and acquisitions. But these tend to be unimaginative.

  James Surowiecki

  Names, Acquisition, Mergers

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• Movies' mistrust of capitalism is almost as old as the medium itself.

  James Surowiecki

  Mistrust, Mediums, Capitalism

  "The Business-Movie Business". www.newyorker.com. October 11, 2010.

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• Of course, plenty of people don't think that guaranteeing affordable health insurance is a core responsibility of government.

  James Surowiecki

  Responsibility, Thinking, Government

  "Beware of Romneycare". www.newyorker.com. October 29 & November 5, 2012.

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• Of course, presidents are always blamed or rewarded for the state of the economy.

  James Surowiecki

  President, Economy, States

  "Second Helpings". www.newyorker.com. September 20, 2010.

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• On Wall Street, fraudulent schemes tend to thrive during economic booms, and to blow up when times turn tough.

  James Surowiecki

  Wall, Blow, Tough

  "Cheat, Pray, Love". www.newyorker.com. January 12, 2009.

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• Real politics is messy and morally ambiguous and doesn't make for a compelling thriller.

  James Surowiecki

  Real, Thrillers, Messy

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• The autocracies of the Arab world have been as economically destructive as they've been politically repressive.

  James Surowiecki

  World, Autocracy, Has Beens

  "The Tyrant Tax". www.newyorker.com. March 7, 2011.

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• Wall Street has come a long way from the insider-dominated world that was blown apart by the Great Depression.

  James Surowiecki

  Wall, Long, World

  "The Stock Spinners". www.slate.com. January 16 1998.

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• What the investment community does like is short-term measures designed to boost share prices.

  James Surowiecki

  Community, Doe, Investment

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• The essence of procrastination lies in not doing what you think you should be doing, a mental contortion that surely accounts for the great psychic toll the habit takes on people. This is the perplexing thing about procrastination: although it seems to involve avoiding unpleasant tasks, indulging in it generally doesn't make people happy.

  James Surowiecki

  Lying, Procrastination, Thinking

  "Later". www.newyorker.com. October 11, 2010.

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• Academics, who work for long periods in a self-directed fashion, may be especially prone to putting things off: surveys suggest that the vast majority of college students procrastinate, and articles in the literature of procrastination often allude to the author's own problems with finishing the piece.

  James Surowiecki

  Fashion, Procrastination, College

  "Later". www.newyorker.com. October 11, 2010.

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• The world's central banks and the International Monetary Fund still have vaults full of bullion, even though currencies are no longer backed by gold. Governments hold on to it as a kind of magic symbol, a way of reassuring people that their money is real.

  James Surowiecki

  Real, Government, People

  "Why Gold?". www.newyorker.com. November 29, 2004.

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• Lower oil prices won't, by themselves, topple the mullahs in Iran. But it's significant that, historically, when oil prices have been low, Iranian reformers have been ascendant and radicals relatively subdued, and vice versa when prices have been high.

  James Surowiecki

  Iran, Oil, Vices

  "TROUBLED WATERS OVER OIL". www.newyorker.com. February 19, 2007.

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• Markets work best when there's lots of information available and a historical track record to go on; they excel at predicting things like horse races, election outcomes, and box-office results. But they're bad at predicting things like who will be the next Supreme Court nominee, as that depends on the whim of the president.

  James Surowiecki

  Horse, Race, Track

  "The Age of Political Risk". www.newyorker.com. May 24, 2010.

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• Since the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland wants to remain a part of Great Britain, and since Ireland itself has shown little interest in reunification, the IRA's prospects for success through political channels have always been limited.

  James Surowiecki

  Political, Majority, Ira

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• The Xbox 360 is the best game console ever designed. It's fast and powerful - games look as good on the 360 as on high-end PCs that cost six times as much. It's easy to navigate and has lots of useful secondary features - the ability to play digital video, stream MP3s, and so on.

  James Surowiecki

  Xbox, Powerful, Mp3

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• There are certainly valid reasons for taking a company private, and it's also possible that C.E.O.s perform better when monitored by a small number of owners in a private company rather than by the dispersed and often uninterested shareholders of a public corporation.

  James Surowiecki

  Small Numbers, Corporations, Reason

  "Private Lies". www.newyorker.com. August 28, 2006.

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• Tough times have always lent themselves to nativist sentiments and closed-door policies. But in the case of highly skilled immigrants these policies are a recipe for stagnation.

  James Surowiecki

  Doors, Tough Times, Recipes

  "The Track-Star Economy". www.newyorker.com. August 27, 2012.

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• Unlike fuel-economy standards, the most common method of reducing demand for oil over the past thirty years, a gas tax doesn't tell people what kind of car to drive. It simply raises the price of gasoline and lets people adjust their behavior accordingly.

  James Surowiecki

  Past, Years, Oil

  "Pump Pressure". www.newyorker.com. September 26, 2005.

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• Unlike most government programs, Social Security and, in part, Medicare are funded by payroll taxes dedicated specifically to them. Some of the tax revenue pays for current benefits; anything that's left over goes into trust funds for the future. The programs were designed this way for political reasons.

  James Surowiecki

  Government, Payroll Tax, Political

  "In Funds We Trust?". www.newyorker.com. December 24 & 31, 2012.

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• What an economy really wants, after all, is not more investment per se but better investment. It wants capital to flow to companies that will create value - not in the form of a rising stock price but in the form of more goods for less cost, more jobs, and rising wages - by enhancing productivity.

  James Surowiecki

  Jobs, Cost, Wages

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• What corporations fear is the phenomenon now known, rather inelegantly, as 'commoditization.' What the term means is simply the conversion of the market for a given product into a commodity market, which is characterized by declining prices and profit margins, increasing competition, and lowered barriers to entry.

  James Surowiecki

  Mean, Competition, Profit Margin

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• When all is said and done, cheap gas is an illusion, because our reliance on gas creates a whole series of costs that aren't factored in to the pump price - among them congestion, pollution, and increased risk of accidents.

  James Surowiecki

  Risk, Cost, Done

  "Pump Pressure". www.newyorker.com. September 26, 2005.

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