Stuff That Interests Me

I’ve had it beaten into me from an early age how important it is to write clearly and simply. My father, himself a writer, drilled it into me. In my teenage years and into my 20s, we used to work together like mad on things I had written, trimming them down, rephrasing, editing, and he would always talk about the importance of clarity, as he taught me the craft of writing. “Make it easy for the reader,” he would say.As I’ve said many times, the discipline of comedy also forces clarity. If the audience doesn’t understand, they don’t laugh and you die.But in academia and across the financial world, and probably elsewhere, no such discipline applies. In fact, it often pays not to be clear. In the case of finance, if you can obfuscate a little, you are less likely to be caught out or have things thrown back at you. Former Chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, who could speak in total gobbledygook if he needed, called what he did “purposeful obfuscation”. How right was George Orwell, another clear speech a