Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Burn After Reading as a Microcosm

"We will learn an enormous amount in a very short time, quite a bit in the medium term, and absolutely nothing in the long term." - Jeremy Grantham on the 2008 financial crash.

One can interpret most Coen brother movies in a multitude of ways, but I keep thinking about how their latest effort can relate to our society's current woes. The characters assume that people "above" them know what they're doing when they don't, they think that events happen for a reason when they are random, and their initial rash decisions are exasperated by further rash decisions.

What did we learn, America? Hell if I know. I guess we learned not to do it again.