"Have you ever come across the idea of 'purposeful stupidity'?" I asked the chairman of the improbably-sized investment company Prandeamus Asset Management when I dropped by to see him this week. "Surely there can't be many people on this planet who haven't," he replied.
"Purposeful stupidity is a fact of life - on occasion even, and I know you'll find this hard to believe, within Her Majesty's financial services industry." "No - I mean in a more specific context," I said. "Apparently during the Second World War, the Office of Strategic Services - the wartime intelligence agency that later evolved into the CIA - came up with the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, which was designed to assist both official agents and ordinary citizens in destabilising the regime of the Nazis and their allies. "The theory ran that, through the art of purposeful stupidity, th...
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