Did you read that book?! Is it crackpot or is there a there there?

Hell nah. I'm an Ockham's Razor kinda guy and Paul Wellstone's death was a secular tragedy... but if it was arranged, it was arranged better than most. Ultimately it doesn't matter. He died, things sucked, as Harari points out, history is generally written by the biggest dicks who commit the most atrocities.

I point out to my kid that we're all equal but some are more equal than others and that if you aren't very carefully making sure you're on the right side of the trade you're likely to fall victim to everyone else doing the exact same thing.

It's pretty funny to me that SIVB is the biggest crash since Washington Mutual, since Washington Mutual ate shit by going neck-deep in dumb mortgages and risky loans while their credit card department also lobbied like mutherfuckers to make bankruptcy debt harder to disburse. On the one hand they really wanted unsecured loans to be forever while on the other hand they generated secured loans well past their collateral. End result? People walking away from their underwater mortgages so they could make their credit card payments and WaMu ate shit.

It's the shareholder conundrum - when you conduct business one quarter at a time and your pathway to advancement is "impact" rather than "consistency" you're gonna crash the train every time.