The End of Hubris: "They absolutely did think they were smarter than anyone else.”

Like a lethal virus, it seems, hubris never really disappears—it simply finds a new host. - Leslie Bennetts

NVDL: What's that saying again...Less is more?

clipped from www.portfolio.com Now his company lies in ruins, and his name is synonymous with greed, arrogance, and bad judgment. Yet his enemies couldn’t even gloat; the cost of his comeuppance was too great. As he and his counterparts drove major institutions into a death spiral, they took much of the world as we knew it down with them. The entire global culture was instantly transformed. “Excess isn’t just an American phenomenon,” Hilton says. “In the U.K., there was the same envy of the people in the financial sector who were having those £25,000 lunches and dinners. They absolutely did think they were smarter than anyone else.” How things change! “These days, you ask professional money managers what their performance goals for the end of the year are,” one young institutional equity salesman says, “and they say, ‘This year’s goal is employment.’ ”