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If companies tell us more, insider trading will be worth less.

James Surowiecki

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James Surowiecki
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: April 30
Journalist
Writer
Meriden
Connecticut
James Michael Surowiecki
Less
Tell
Insider
Insiders
Trading
Companies
Worth
Company

More quotes by James Surowiecki

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Of course, presidents are always blamed or rewarded for the state of the economy.
James Surowiecki
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Companies, like people, don't much like to change.
James Surowiecki
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I tend to have a hard time working on pieces long before they're due. That's why I think the fact that I write a column is really good for me - the column has to be done, and there's no getting around it.
James Surowiecki
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The important thing about groupthink is that it works not so much by censoring dissent as by making dissent seem somehow improbable.
James Surowiecki
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Standards wars involve lots of variables, and understanding them often seems more an art than a science. They generally involve just two big players, and end in a winner-take-all situation.
James Surowiecki
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Real politics is messy and morally ambiguous and doesn't make for a compelling thriller.
James Surowiecki
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Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably smart - smarter even sometimes than the smartest people in them.
James Surowiecki
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Breaking tasks down into smaller sub-tasks can be very useful.
James Surowiecki
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When Americans are asked to rank professions in terms of honesty and ethics, insurance agents routinely end up near the bottom of the list - somewhere between politicians and car salesmen. Generally, insurers are seen as clever hucksters who prey on insecurity and ignorance to sell people what they don't need at prices they shouldn't have to pay.
James Surowiecki
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As technology improves, on-screen avatars look more and more like real people. When they start looking too real, though, we pull away. These almost-humans aren't quite right they look creepy, like zombies.
James Surowiecki
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No decision-making system is going to guarantee corporate success. The strategic decisions that corporations have to make are of mind-numbing complexity. But we know that the more power you give a single individual in the face of complexity and uncertainty, the more likely it is that bad decisions will get made.
James Surowiecki
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I typically don't adopt the ascetic approach. In part, that's because I do use the Net for research even as I'm writing (to check facts, or so on). But I think it's also because I find the possibility of distraction comforting.
James Surowiecki
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I tend to delay writing by doing more research - it's really the act of writing the piece that I have the hardest time with.
James Surowiecki
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Nike used to be known as Blue Ribbon Sports. What's now Sara Lee used to be Consolidated Foods. And Exxon was once Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. These were name changes that worked. But for all the ones that do, there are 10 or 20 that don't.
James Surowiecki
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In the auto industry, there's one thing you can always count on: if a new environmental or safety rule is proposed, executives will prophesy disaster.
James Surowiecki
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Now, modern economies have a very effective mechanism for deciding if salaries are really too high: it's called the free market. That's how most people's salaries are set, after all, including those of major-league baseball players and European soccer players.
James Surowiecki
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Politically speaking, it's always easier to shell out money for a disaster that has already happened, with clearly identifiable victims, than to invest money in protecting against something that may or may not happen in the future.
James Surowiecki
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In the business world, bad news is usually good news - for somebody else.
James Surowiecki
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The profit motive, indecorous though it may seem, may represent the best chance the poor have to reap some of globalization's benefits.
James Surowiecki
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What corporations fear is the phenomenon now known, rather inelegantly, as 'commoditization.' What the term means is simply the conversion of the market for a given product into a commodity market, which is characterized by declining prices and profit margins, increasing competition, and lowered barriers to entry.
James Surowiecki