Gladwell Outdoes Himself, Proves That Bankers Are Cocky

Perennially insightful Malcolm Gladwell outdoes himself in this week’s New Yorker, positing that overconfidence might have played a role in the collapse of Bear Stearns and, on a larger scale, the Wall Street meltdown. I repeat: Malcolm says the bankers were too cocky.

No really.

“[O]ne of the things that happen to us when we become overconfident is that we start to blur the line between the kinds of things that we can control and the kinds of things that we can’t.”

And if you won’t take Malcolm’s word on this whole overconfidence bit, he’s got a whole load of well-told examples — from Gallipoli to bridge to … On second thought, forget the examples; these things aren’t so fun when you think too hard about them.

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