Read The Black Swan

Like Matthew Yglesias, I'm a non-economist without much to say about the ongoing financial meltdown, but one recommendation I can make is that you should read The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It is by far the best thing I have read about the ways in which humans -- and particularly arrogant hedge fund types -- fail to understand and account for risk. I recommend reading it with CNBC on in the background tomorrow...