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Reader Update

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Dear patient readers,

The manuscript has gone in after copy edits and some major revisions (some across the book reordering to tighten the argument and clear up redundancies, and a ton of work on one chapter which has some primary research). There is still pre-galley proofreading (they do it and I review it) and I may be able to do some surgical interventions, but the big push is past.

I had a great deal of help in the final phase of this Bataan death march from quite a few readers, two of whom, Andrew Dittmer and Richard Smith, were very intensively involved in the ten days, and two others (Tom Adams and a reader who prefers to remain anonymous) were critical resources in nailing down some technical details on a complex trading strategy that the book discusses at some length in one chapter.

Others who have been involved in the book on an ongoing basis (Tom Ferguson, Doug Smith, Satyajit Das, Marshall Auerback, Rob Parenteau) provided badly needed sanity checks on a range of topics. A team of readers who had volunteered to do research (Doru Lung, Ben Fisher, Olivier Daviron, Falk Mazelis, Marc Kelechava, Iain Simpson, Jason Windawi, Megan Fries) provided prompt and helpful responses when I could not run something down quickly on Google. Kristina Melomed took up the task of citation checking.

Ed Harrison stepped into the breach on the blog, not only providing quite a bit of his own commentary, but also taking on the additional task of vetting and posting guest post submissions.

This is only a partial list of the people who made important contributions to the book, but I wanted to single out the ones who helped with the final push to get it completed on time.

I am still a bit fried and want to get back to blogging, but I also did not read ANY news for a week, which makes me a bit nervous about the risk of saying something and missing a critical detail. So I will be in catch up mode on a number of fronts which probably means lighter than normal volume for the next few days.

Thanks again for your interest and support!

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20 comments

  1. IF

    Sounds like I’ve ordered an unlaid egg from Amazon. Gotta love ‘just in time’ delivery! Hope you’ll have more time now for yourself.

  4. walt

    I’m particularly impressed about the collaboration that has gone into your book. That plus your superior ability to analyze and think outside the box will make it unequaled. I wish you many happy editions.

  6. walt

    In case you haven’t heard, you are mentioned in http://www.nymag.com/guides/money/2009/59457/index.html, which is about Zero Hedge.
    Profile at end:
    “The Crisis Queen
    Naked Capitalism’s Yves Smith had worked at Goldman Sachs before she started blogging in 2006, distinguishing herself with a facility for deconstructing complicated economics. She is writing a book called Econned, about the flawed ideas that led to the crash.”
    Page 1: “Naked Capitalism, which features the work of a small gang of contributors, is overseen by a former Goldman Sachs and McKinsey executive who goes by the pseudonym Yves Smith.”

    1. Dave Raithel

      Also looking forward to the book. And thanks for the link to the New York Mag story. I nearly choked on my spit when I read:

      “In July, Zero Hedge joined Halogen Network, an online-advertising company … Halogen plans on conducting a reader survey for the site in the coming month … it will likely show the same demographics as other successful financial blogs: men between 35 and 55 who make $200,000 and up …”

      I’m still young enough, but I did not know I had such expensive interests …

  7. IF

    Hello from Amazon.com.

    We have received new release date information related to the order you placed on September 16 2009. The item(s) listed below will actually ship sooner than we originally
    expected based on the new release date:

    Yves Smith “ECONned: How the Myth of Free Markets Wrecked Our Economy”
    Previous estimated arrival date: March 29 2010 – April 02 2010
    New estimated arrival date: March 15 2010 – March 19 2010

    1. Richard Smith

      Classic Palin. Not 100% sure her speech writer is on her side, though. I particularly enjoyed this bit of syntax:

      “Complicated and beautiful, tragic and hopeful, we believe in the rights and the responsibilities and the inherent dignity of the individual.”

  9. Nik Kondratieff

    Welcome back! Eagerly awaiting the book. You haven’t missed much, we’re still on the precipice of disaster, though remarkably Tim, Ben & Co, have managed to forestall the inevitable so far.

  10. LeeAnne

    Congratulations Yves! and thanks for your “Intelligently written for the layman…” book, and Richard Smith for the link to pre ordering the book. Really looking forward to is and glad you’re back.

    LeeAnne

  15. Richard Kline

    The day was going to come, and I’m glad of it. In January, I had a good idea of what your September was going to look like . . . . It’ll be great to have you back up posting.

  16. Yves Smith Post author

    Thanks for all the kind comments.

    For the record:

    1. I didn’t include Leo here because this was to thank people who helped in the last 3 weeks. He does get an acknowledgment in the book proper.

    2. I was NOT an executive at Goldman or McKinsey. I was a drone (a.k.a “associate”) at Goldman and a mere engagement manager at McKinsey. I did start up and head an M&A department at Sumitomo Bank, which was sexy at the time, but perceptions of these things change.

    3. I did not start working on the book till March. No contract till then, and I am too pragmatic to work on something that may not come to pass, which of course did put more pressure on me when it did come through

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