"
2014 Year in Review: Pushing Out on the Existential Risk Curve in a Global Game of Tetris. David B. Collum Betty R. Miller Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology Cornell University Email: dbc6@cornell.edu Twitter: @DavidBCollum Background: The Author
“I don't write about what I know: I write to find out what I know.” ~Patricia Hampl Every December, I write a Year in Review
ref 1–7
first posted on Chris Martenson’s website Peak Prosperity
ref 2
with a secondary posting at Zero Hedge.
ref 3
What started as a brief introspective shared with a handful of e-quaintances has mutated into a detailed account that has accrued as many as 100,000 clicks. Each year I try to identify themes in events that evolve. As the title suggests, I have not seen a year in which so many risks—some truly existential—piled up so quickly. Each risk has its own, often unknown, probability of morphing into a destructive force. Groping for a metaphor—I love metaphors and similes—I feel like we’re in the final throes of a geopolitical Game of Tetris as financial and political authorities race to place the pieces correctly. But the acceleration is palpable. The proximate trigger for pain and ultimately a collapse can be small, as anyone who’s ever stepped barefoot on a Lego knows.
#
“If the world seems to be turning ’round faster than ever, you’re not alone. Grab hold of something, it shows no sign of abating.” ~Josh Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management My lack of credentials is absolute—the Paris Hilton of finance—but has not prevented me from being a poseur in the
Wall Street Journal
ref 8
and
The Guardian
ref 9
and on
Russia Today
,
ref 10,11
and a host of podcasts.
ref 1
On the heels of a threesome with Bob Lehman and Grant Williams on BTFD.tv following last year's review,
ref 12
2014 started with a bang on BTFD.tv in a New Year’s Eve hexabox shared with a trader who cut his chops selling dime bags on street corners and a person who on close inspection appears to trade the trannies.
ref 13
Subsequent interviews on
Peak Prosperity
,
ref 14
Wall Street for Main Street
,
ref 15
Kunstlercast
,
ref 16
Stansberry Radio
,
ref 17
and
Red Pill Radio
ref 18
offered more opportunities to Milli Vanilli my way through finance and politics. I shared the podium with T. Boone Pickens and Alex Jones as an invited speaker at the
Stansberry Investment Conference
: “Boone. I agree with you. That first billion is being a bitch.”
ref 19
(I took another swipe at the Roth IRA.) I almost made
Rolling Stone
, but Matt left me at the altar. (I still can't get that tune out of my head.) As this review is being uploaded to the web, I’m doing an interview with Erin Ade on
Boom Bust
(
Russia Today
), which will be posted on YouTube.
ref 20
“Risk means more things can happen than will happen.” ~Elroy Dimsen, London Business School
$
Content
Footnotes appear as superscripts and contain associated hyperlinks. The whole enchilada can be downloaded as a single PDF
here
or viewed in parts via the hot-linked contents as follows: Part 1: Background: The Author Content Sources and the Fourth Estate On Conspiracy Theorizing Investing The Economy Bending, Breaking, and Broken Markets Precious Metals Energy Personal Debt, Savings, and Retirement States and Municipalities The Bond Caldera Argentina Versus the Bond Vultures Inflation Versus Deflation Part 2: Wealth Disparity Banks and Bankers AIG The Federal Reserve Baptists Bootleggers Europe Asia China Japan ISIS Russia Ebola Government Clintons Barack Obama IRS Scandal Part Deux Bundy Ranch and Ferguson Militarization of Police Civil Forfeiture Civil Liberties Conclusion Books Acknowledgments Part 3:
|