The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
– William Carlos Williams, 1923
The latest wave of extreme summer heat made Richard de Chazal think longingly about cold plums, which naturally brought to mind William Carlos Williams’ famous This is Just to Say poem. Then he thought about Williams’ other famous poem, “The Red Wheelbarrow” (above), and how it may be just as apt today in the context of AI as when it was first written (and again when we first studied it in high school). In this Economics Weekly, de Chazal uses poetic license to adapt the interpretation of this poem to what is taking place today in the financial markets and with the evolution of AI—a shift from the enablers to the adopters, from narrative to the numbers, and from free cash flow spending to returns on that invested capital.