Juggling Dynamite

We welcome back a very special guest, and that is billionaire and legendary investor Mr. Jeremy Grantham. I have been continuously amazed at how accurately Jeremy has been predicting future events over the last couple of years that we’ve been chatting. Still, it should be no surprise because he’s one of the few who have accurately predicted nearly every single bubble bursting over his career.  Here is a direct video link.

 

Taleb is a character, to be sure, and he offers many cogent insights in this segment. I especially resonate with the idea that, unlike sales skills, expertise comes from first-hand risk work: seeing what goes wrong and cleaning up mistakes and messes; then designing systems and approaches to minimize the impact of bad outcomes.

The term antifragile was popularized in Taleb’s book of the same name to refer to how systems can be strengthened during extreme disruptions, citing examples from mathematics and science.

In a wide-ranging interview, Taleb admits that he made a mistake when he first studied Bitcoin — failing to appreciate the fact that the cryptocurrency is ultimately fragile because it’s dependent on miners staying operational, whereas gold will always be gold even a thousand years from now.

And when it comes to tech and the recent turmoil around Silicon Valley Bank, Taleb says venture capital exhibits “Ponzi-like” characteristics. In his view, many high-profile VCs “feel that society owes them something because we use an iPhone. They feel that if we use an iPhone, we owe them something and should bail them out if needed.” Here is a direct audio link.

Some seniors across Ontario are at risk of losing their homes in an elaborate scam that involves door-to-door equipment rental contracts, low-quality renovations and unaffordable high-interest mortgages. Marketplace speaks to people who feel they’ve been scammed, some on the brink of losing their homes and someone who already has. Here is a direct video link.