The Writings and Speeches of Gerry Smedinghoff

www.GerrySmedinghoff.com

Economics

Black Swan or Black-Scholes: The Crisis of the Actuarial Profession — Contingencies May/June 2008 — Book review of The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb (Random House 2007). A monumental philosophical work that exposes the limits scientific reasoning, and its gross misapplication to the non-scientific realms of economics, financial markets and human behavior

The Art Philosophy & Science of Data — Contingencies May/June 2007 — Book reviews of Fooled By Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Texere Press 2001) and The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki (Anchor Books 2004). Professional credentials are meaningless in the financial markets, where actuaries and Nobel Laureates can look like fools.

Go Ahead, Try This At Home — Contingencies September/October 2006 — Book Review of Freakonomics by Steven Levitt (HarperCollins 2005). Despite some sloppy methodology, Levitt’s book is worth reading.

The Prisoners Dilemma of Health Care — Speech to Association of American Physicians & Surgeons Annual Meeting September 14^th, 2006 Phoenix, Arizona and published in the December 2006 issue of Vital Speeches of the Day — Why everyone is a prisoner in the health care system, and how to bargain with your captors.

Driving Your Information Costs to Zero (Slides) Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) speech to Society of Actuaries Annual Meeting October 16^th, 2000 Chicago, Illinois — The economics of information costs: why information gravitates to the Internet and how it transforms the fundamental relationships among employers, employees, customers and vendors. This speech was delivered many times before the dot-com crash. Judge the accuracy of the predictions for yourself.

Why Everyone Hates HMOs — Society of Actuaries Health Section News December 2000 (see p. 32) — The failure of the Health Maintenance Organization business model.

Shopping at the IRS Mall — Association of American Physicians & Surgeons pamphlet — The economics of monetary segregation and its insidious impact on the education, health care and housing.

Fire the Actuaries — Contingencies May/June 1996 — How monetary segregation and the Internal Revenue Code have corrupted the actuarial profession.

An Alternative Perspective Redlining — Contingencies November/December 1994 — The economics of discrimination: No need for regulation when the market rewards success and punishes failure.