The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

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“And so you might have good reason to pray for a tornado, whether it comes in the shape of swirling winds, or a politician. You imagine the thing doing the damage that you would like to see done, and no more. It’s what you fail to imagine that kills you.” Michael Lewis A thoughtful exploration of how the Trump Administration approached and still appears to approach the Executive Branch of US government. When taxpayers thought, let’s get a businessman to run the country because he knows how to run a business, what could go wrong? Absolutely stunning to see how little we as Americans, generally, know about each Office within our government and what it is responsible for doing. And how important many of these things are in our daily lives and yet those doing them cannot launch a PR campaign to educate us on their importance. This book is eye-opening for anyone who needs some understanding as to the conflicts of interest at play in choices made for high level leadership positions and how this impacts all of us. This really increased my insight into why decisions are getting made or ignored in various departments. Overall, my takeaway is that we as Americans have an obligation to educate ourselves on our government, good and bad. We need to understand how it works, why it works and when things fail or succeed. And we should expect our government to be more transparent about both success and failure. We are the taxpayers and therefore the stakeholders in this “business” and we should be active participants in the process and what we expect from it.