On finance

Oct 13, 2024 1 min read Noteworthy

From an article in the LRB, discussing three books on finance, one of which focuses on Jim Simons who founded and ran the most successful hedge fund ever, but whose successor was Robert Mercer of Breitbart and Trump funding fame:

I'm not sure if this counts as an irony. Perhaps it is too gloomy for that. But the fact is that the main impact on the world of Jim Simons, both a deeply brilliant man and a good person, was to make enough money for his Renaissance colleague to get Donald Trump elected president. That's all Just a consequence of what modern finance is, and of its grotesquely outsize role in the way we live now. It is easy to diagnose decadence in a society historically and geographically distant from us. It is harder to see at close range.