String theorists were Sorceror's Apprentices in Wall Street Collapse Sept 2008

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Category: Science News Archive (2010)


"I regard the amount of brainpower going into money management as a national scandal. We have armies of people with advanced degrees in physics and math in various hedge funds and private-equity funds trying to outsmart the market. A lot of…older people…can remember when none of these people existed…At Samsung, their engineers meet at 11 p.m. Our meetings of engineers [meaning our smartest citizens] are also at 11 p.m., but they're working on pricing derivatives. I think it's crazy to have incentives that drive your most intelligent people into a very sophisticated gaming system."

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/44457