Exit Strategy

"The 737 charged across the taxiway at high speed. 'I stupidly unfastened my seat belt,' Koch recalls. He was hoping he could run to the exit and be the first in line to get out." "The Price of Immortality," by Gary Weiss, Portfolio, Nov. 2008.

I keep skimming newspapers and magazines, thinking that if only I could stick with an article long enough and retain the information for more than 1.5 seconds, I could understand the true nature of our economic crises. I think that Weiss' article on David Koch's (pronounced coke's) survival of a deadly airplane collision, is all I - and perhaps Greenspan - need to read. Then, in a Portfolio article on Dov Charney, the founder of American Apparel, Claire Hoffman writes about an incident involving Dov and a female reporter: "The reporter [Dov claims] took the masturbation out of context."

That's what I'm missing. I am incapable of reading financial reports with the same eye for a jolly "puh-lease."