by Ian Bremmer
Rating 3.8
Bremmer runs a firm specializing in analysis of business risks and opportunities for international companies. His firm advises big companies on political and related issues they might face around the globe. If you’re considering building a factory in Botswana, he’s the guy to go to for advice.
Bremmer has a wealth of knowledge and perspective on the realities and complexities of today’s global economy. In this book he attempts to demonstrate how financial factors are just one of the many issues to consider in decisions of where to locate your business. He cites numerous examples of the types of upheaval and threats faced by businesses everywhere. In similar fashion to the book ‘Black Swan’, he points out that revolution, military coup, expropriation and other presumed outlier events actually occur far more frequently than imagined.
The same can be said for stock returns, in which the so-called ‘normal curve’ envisioned by statistical theory is just that: a theory. Reality shows that the tails of the curve, as measured by the 3rd moment of a population of data (kurtosis), exhibits far more occurrences than predicted by the normal curve. To express this in the vernacular, shit happens way more than expected.
At the time of writing this review it’s been over a year since reading the book, so many details are fuzzy. However I do recall that the information was worthwhile, though his writing skills a bit lacking.
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