Mistake of the Year — and we’re off! Last year's winner was the People's Bank of China but in this era of heightened global rivalry, the US has already put forward a strong contender for 2025 by attempting to grow its economy through massive taxes on its consumers... 1/3

Two great events at the Library next week (also available on YouTube)...
www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

Our Keeper gets about. This weekend, he attended The Scottish Schools Pipe Band Championship at the William McIlvanney Campus in Kilmarnock – and saw this. Happy Monday!

Don't get taken for a ride! Join us in person, in May or November in London, to immerse yourself in our Practical History of Financial Markets course. And if you book before the end of March, you get a 10% discount!
Contact sofi@didaskoeducation.org for details.
www.libraryofmistakes.com/course/

Before our time, but this librarians’ bash sounds like a grand old affair.

"For a few months Brent Hoberman, Martha Lane Fox, Michael Smith, Kajsa Leander, John Pluthero and others believed they could defy gravity. Their ascent was enormous fun to watch, their return to earth equally spectacular."
dot.bomb – The Rise & Fall of dot.com Britain by @rorycj.bsky.social 2001

Looking for something to entertain you and get you thinking as we head into 2025? We now have stacks of videos on our YouTube page, and 30+ episodes of our popular podcast series. Happy New Year!
youtube.com/@LibraryofMistakes

“There is no one modus operandi. Some buy strictly on what someone tells them over the telephone; others must read hundreds of pages of reports; still others, distinctly a new breed, want to feed it to the computer and listen for the tone of the belch.”
New Breed on Wall Street by Martin Mayer 1969

“Investors need to understand much more than the intricacies of finance and economics. Sociology, technology, psychology, political science and, most importantly, history are required to inform the mental model of investors…
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"'Wall Street,' read the sinister old gag, 'is a street with a river at one end and a graveyard at the other.' This is striking but incomplete. It omits the kindergarten in the middle." – Fred Schwed Jnr.
From Den Of Thieves by James B Stewart 1992

Invasion is quixotic: we invent justifications, as though carving wooden idols, and then are guided by our own inventions. We carve from the same block the explanations of our failures.”
Occupational Hazards by Rory Stewart 2006