End of the Year Reviews...

It's a little early for end of lists, however my two favorite ones are out now. The Time Magazine List Issue, and the New York Times Magazine Eight Annual Year in Ideas Issue. What I love about these issues is everything I missed...

From Time, which offers its top ten on many topics: Apparently I missed some of the top buzzwords of the year: "nuke the fridge," and "topless meetings.".

Time on Food Trends: how did I miss the Clover? The best coffee machine in the world? Guess so, since Starbucks purchased the company. Anyone know of a Clover in Chicago? Next, the Mex-Italian trend? Haven't found it anywhere in Chicago yet, but it can't be far away.

Their top ten gadgets I can't wait to try? The Optoma Pico PK-101: a projector for IPods and IPhones. Tiny, powerful, totally cool. Several boys in our family are getting the Flip MinoHD(an incredibly small, hi def camcorder that's idiot proof and comes with its own editing software (please don't tell the boys!). I'm also hoping for a Kindle for myself under the tree.

From the New York Times Year in Ideas: Ideas that I hadn't heard of: Automated Anesthesia, Gallons Per Mile (not miles per gallon), and moonvertising.

The Best Explanation of the Financial Mess to Date

Michael Lewis' seminal book on the excess of the finance industry in the 80s, "Liar's Poker," seems positively quaint today. A CEO bringing home 3.1 million? Were we really upset by that?

In his recent article in Conde Nast Portfolio, The End, Lewis performs a masterful deconstruction of the sub-prime mess, but his real insight is that transformation of private investment banks to public corporations created a dangerous concoction of infallability, idiocy and arrogance. Transferring financial consequence from partnerships to shareholders, Wall Street freed itself from the rigor of common sense that somehow the rest of us seem to know instinctively: don't spend more than you have, don't buy a financial product you can't understand, don't buy it from someone who doesn't understand it either.

Another recent article in the New York Times dissects the lack of oversight from top down at CitiGroup. It's as informative as it is scary. Click here to read.