Wednesday, January 6, 2016

George Akerlof and Robert Shiller — Everything You Need to Know About Free-Market Manipulation

Nobel laureates George A. Akerlof and Robert Shiller are authors of Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception, from which this article is excerpted.
Evonomics
Akerlof and Shiller: Everything You Need to Know About Free-Market Manipulation
George Akerlof, Professor of Economics at University of Berkeley, and Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University and the co-creator of the Case-Shiller Index of US house prices

1 comment:

Kaivey said...

I've been all over the net this morning and I hadn't realised that I picked up this link from here.

Superb article. I was taken back because I had found even more professionals who were very anti neoliberal. So I subscribed to their newsletter.

I felt it was scary how people get addicted to gambling and slot machines. And they say how by the rule of a averages we will all get done by a phishing scam eventually.

Well, I built my own PC but it went wrong when it picked up a virus the first time I went online. I did not know how to contact Microsoft so I went online and found their telephone number, so I thought. When I rang it the technician was very helpful and I eventually let him take over my PC. He then spent a long time trying to sell me some software that was supposed to make my PC run better and clear the virus. Well, I must have been pretty stupid because I ended up agreeing to buy the minimum package. Well, I did think it was Microsoft, after all.

He helped me to fill out the online form and I put in my name and address into the boxes, but he then he asked me to put my Visa card number into the box. But he had access to my PC and could see everything I did. I then realised it must be a scam and I quickly shut down my PC and I sat there shocked afterwards. How could I be so stupid, I thought?

I eventually went back online and found out that it was a scam, and lots of people had been done by similar ones. The scam was set up in India. Most are, or were at the time.