ABSTRACT
And together they have been an essential feature of every ›nancial crisis, large and small, since history began. It was greed and unreason which drove forward the spectacular Wall Street Crash of 1929; greed and unreason which lay at the heart of the Japanese property bubble of the 1980s, and greed and unreason which foreshadowed the global ›nancial crisis of 2008. Even today, many of our well-known corporations and ›nancial institutions will have abbreviated lives principally due to greed and unreason. Many of our industrial leaders, even those who are titans of our time, will falter and fail principally due to greed and unreason. Very many of today’s hard working, hard saving citizens will fail to garner enough wealth to enjoy a leisurely retirement, in large part because of greed and unreason. Corporations and ›nancial institutions, industrial leaders, and hard working individuals who stumble at the hands of greed and unreason do so precisely because they are unaware when greed and unreason have come to dominance; they lack a clear understanding of the fundamental rules of risk management-and that is their main problem.
