The Wash­ing­ton Post recently asked a host of ‘smart peo­ple’ for rec­om­men­da­tions on what book will help us make sense of the cur­rent eco­nomic cli­mate.

Those asked include Peter Orszag (Direc­tor, Con­gres­sional Bud­get Office); Greg Mankiw (pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity); and John Allen Pau­los (author and math­e­mat­ics pro­fes­sor at Tem­ple Uni­ver­sity). How­ever, my favourite reply came from Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dal­las Mav­er­icks, chair­man of HDNet, and the founder of Broadcast.com (sold to Yahoo in ’99 for $6 billion):

“I don’t think there is such a book. In my hum­ble opin­ion, peo­ple who actu­ally believe they can under­stand all the issues are the ones that got us to where we are today. In real­ity, there are so many vari­ables and so lit­tle data, it’s all a guess. I don’t think a book exists that can explain it. Is there a book out there called ‘No One Has a Clue What Is Going On and the Whole World Is Guessing’?”

via Paul Kedrosky