Gyroscopic Investing

Smith1776 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 14, 2020 5:25 am

Mark Leavy wrote: ↑Mon Jul 13, 2020 8:32 pm I'll be watching you, Smith.
Behave.
Mark

If I do invest (and I might not), it will all be via the Variable Portfolio and the appropriate policy of money you can afford to lose.

Promise!

People watching each other's backs is what a forum should really be about. Thanks.

For anyone who has read "The Black Swan" you will recall that Taleb tells the story of his family in Lebanon and how they basically went from being upper class and wealthy to losing everything as a result of the chronic political problems and civil war.

The same story could probably be told about many wealthy families in the Confederate states during the U.S. civil war.

No matter how much political and economic stability exists today, it can unravel faster than one would think.

It doesn't have to happen, but it's happened often enough in the past that it makes sense to prepare for it.

I would suggest that it is misleading to call these "disaster" scenarios. The term "disaster" is really just an interpretation of an event, usually from people whose worldview was not realistic to begin with.

The fact is that so-called "disasters" occur quite often. To be fair, it might be more accurate to call these events "amazing failures to plan for the utterly foreseeable."

As I noted a few posts back, Hurricane Katrina is a nice microcosm of the way the natural world rubs up against human civilization and its treasured delusions. People called the hurricane a disaster, but to me the real disaster was to build a city below sea level in an area of the country with a chronically corrupt government. By doing that, you are all but guaranteeing that something bad is going to happen.

Applying this idea at the more macro level, think about how what the Fed is doing right now is basically the monetary equivalent to building a city below sea level, and Congress is completing the analogy by providing the corrupt and incompetent government to make sure that any response to the problem is completely ineffective.

But pointing these things out, to me, is not really predicting a disaster, it's more like pointing out the obvious and asking yourself what you need to do to protect yourself.

In the same way that entropy applies in the physical world, it also applies in the economic and political worlds, no matter how much those in power seek to deny it. The PP makes allowance for all of these processes. That's why I like it.

Smith1776 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 14, 2020 5:25 am People watching each other's backs is what a forum should really be about. Thanks.

Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Wed Jul 15, 2020 11:29 pm It's July 2020

and my finger is hovering above the "Buy Now" button for a genuine Black Death Plague Mask and Hat.

But I repeat myself.

Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Wed Jul 15, 2020 8:58 pm

Smith1776 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 14, 2020 5:25 am People watching each other's backs is what a forum should really be about. Thanks.

Yo, as a budding superstar comedian (comedienne, in Canada?), you have to listen to Bill Burr's latest appearance on the Rogan podcast. It's awesome front start to finish, but they talk a lot about advice for young comedians.

Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Thu Jul 16, 2020 11:10 am Hah, Rogan's latest podcast features..... Peter Schiff!

IT'S LIKE THEY'RE LISTENING TO US

Smith1776 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 16, 2020 3:43 pm What a disappointment. Easily [Schiff's] worst interview on JRE. Don't get me wrong, he had great insights as always. He just never bloody took a breath. He just kept going and going and kept bulldozing Rogan every time he wanted to ask a question or change the pace of conversation. It wasn't a podcast, it was just a rant.

Tortoise wrote: ↑Thu Jul 16, 2020 4:11 pm Funny you should mention this, because I listened to the first 15 minutes of that interview last night and had the exact same impression. I eventually just lost interest and stopped listening.

For what it's worth, Schiff always seems that way in his interviews: Talks loudly (half-shouting), runs his mouth non-stop, and hardly lets the host get a word in edgewise or ask questions. It generally rubs me the wrong way. When I listened to a lot more of his interviews back in 2007/2008 during the Ron Paul Revolution, he was the same way.

Tortoise wrote: ↑Thu Jul 16, 2020 4:11 pm

Smith1776 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 16, 2020 3:43 pm What a disappointment. Easily [Schiff's] worst interview on JRE. Don't get me wrong, he had great insights as always. He just never bloody took a breath. He just kept going and going and kept bulldozing Rogan every time he wanted to ask a question or change the pace of conversation. It wasn't a podcast, it was just a rant.

Funny you should mention this, because I listened to the first 15 minutes of that interview last night and had the exact same impression. I eventually just lost interest and stopped listening.

For what it's worth, Schiff always seems that way in his interviews: Talks loudly (half-shouting), runs his mouth non-stop, and hardly lets the host get a word in edgewise or ask questions. It generally rubs me the wrong way. When I listened to a lot more of his interviews back in 2007/2008 during the Ron Paul Revolution, he was the same way.

Xan wrote: ↑Fri Jul 17, 2020 9:13 am
Interesting. A lot more often, at least in my experience, is that things go the other direction. A terrible (or great?) example of what I'm talking about was an interview that Maria Baritromo did with Ray Dalio a while back. She was constantly interrupting, asking long-winded non-question questions like a Senator at a hearing, and generally making the whole thing about herself, her thoughts, her opinions. I just wanted her to shut up and let Dalio speak.

Maybe there's a happy medium, and maybe that medium depends on the interviewee.

Smith1776 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 17, 2020 12:30 pm

Xan wrote: ↑Fri Jul 17, 2020 9:13 am
Interesting. A lot more often, at least in my experience, is that things go the other direction. A terrible (or great?) example of what I'm talking about was an interview that Maria Baritromo did with Ray Dalio a while back. She was constantly interrupting, asking long-winded non-question questions like a Senator at a hearing, and generally making the whole thing about herself, her thoughts, her opinions. I just wanted her to shut up and let Dalio speak.

Maybe there's a happy medium, and maybe that medium depends on the interviewee.

Ugh, I know exactly what you're talking about. Dalio likes to expound on topics in a thoughtful and deliberate way. Interviewers on CNBC just love to interrupt him just as he starts to get going. Dalio ends up finishing half a point before he gets pulled into another thread of discussion and the cycle repeats. His non-CNBC stuff is much better.

Xan wrote: ↑Fri Jul 17, 2020 12:47 pm
hah, it's been talked about here before:
viewtopic.php?t=3132
...

Mark Leavy wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2020 5:55 pm Smith...

Did you buy a bunch of bitcoin to send to Elon Musk so he would send you double back?
We need to talk

Mark

dualstow wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2020 6:20 pm I would have guessed you went for Bill Gates, Smithers. So much to learn, so much to learn.
Yes, the last I read was that hackers may have paid an inside man at Twitter.
Maybe next time they’ll dox* all the conservative posters on that site who have aliases. What a shitshow.


*For those who don’t know, and Vinny I know you’re getting ready to ask: doxing is publishing someone’s name, address and/or other private info online without permission. The etymology is dox, slang for documents.

Libertarian666 wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2020 6:25 pm
The Babylon Bee has weighed in on this event too: https://babylonbee.com/news/hackers-sus ... on-twitter