Juggling Dynamite

I have been waiting to see this documentary, and it is now available on Youtube.  You can watch it here.

The main points are important: we humans are the most deadly virus the world has ever known.  We are too many and consume too much to be sustainable in our current course, and there is much room for fraud in many of the proposed solutions.  In many cases, old thinking and profit-maximizing models are operating under the banner of ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’, when they are everything but.  The film makes this point particularly well about biomass.

I have long noted that the most important of the three ‘Rs’ is Reduce and Reuse, but we have pinned feel-better hopes on Recycle.  In reality, most materials are not recycled.

My problem with the film is that it is long on criticism (which is the easy part) and short on solutions (the hard bit). It also paints all environmental efforts, technology and advocates with the same negative brush, which is lazy and dishonest.  If heavy metal batteries are toxic, it throws out the viability of energy storage even though there are many types of non-toxic storage which are already in use and development.  If we do not have one perfect energy source for every application today, then we should give up on developing alternatives or using the replacements and improvements we do have?  If Al Gore is a hypocrite then everyone who is trying to lower their carbon and waste footprint is too? Give me a break.

We do not have perfect solutions for every area that we need to change, yet.  Yet, is the critical word.  That doesn’t mean we throw up our hands in defeat and insist that change is impossible.  That’s an easy cop-out.

Most people dislike change and do not like to be told that they need to do things differently.  I get it.  Many attack and reject new ideas and behaviours in the hopes of continuing their old ways and habits.  Our present fossil fuel use and natural world degradation are not sustainable.  So, we can’t stay with the status quo, we have to go forward.  We humans are the problem and we will either find smarter choices or we will become extinct.  It’s that simple.

For my part, I will keep making efforts to consume less, waste little, eat plants, minimize garbage, walk and ride my bike, take public transport, drive my EV where needed, and maintain an open mind and heart for the rest of my days.  To hell with darkness.

The sudden income stop and financial market drop year-to-date have taken most by surprise and stories of hardship are far and wide.

Every one of us needs to make our financial decisions as if human life is full of risk every day in every way–because it is.  Against this universal truth, the same factors mitigate individual outcomes at every income level and they are these:  how much of our income is consumed by living expenses and payments, whether we have debts, how much of our income we save regularly, how much we have in savings versus our burn rate, and the extent to which our savings are exposed to the risk of loss versus safe, liquid and available when needed.

These are financial management basics for everyone.  Like people of lesser means, millionaires and billionaires often have financial problems when they mismanage these basic principles.  Big incomes don’t solve poor management choices.

As explained by Scott Terrio below, insolvency filings in the past couple of years were concentrated in households who did not own real estate.  Now, property owners are the new growth group for insolvency filings.  And so the credit cycle goes…

Consumer proposals and insolvencies are surging, as the skyrocketing cost of living pushes more and more Canadians to the absolute financial brink. For more on how some Canadians are “hitting the wall” when it comes to debt, BNN Bloomberg spoke with Scott Terrio, manager of consumer insolvencies at Hoyes, Michalos & Associates.  Here is a direct video link.

Aggressive risk-takers are widely declared ‘genius’ winners during speculative booms, while risk-managers concerned about downside risks and resiliency are discounted as pessimists and ‘underperformers’.  In the same vein, those who make money by selling ‘investments’ to others commonly espouse that ‘cash is trash’ since they are in the business of getting people to exchange their cash for goods and services.

In reality, no one knows exactly what’s coming next in life, but low financial leverage and high liquidity enable optionality and–as COVIV-19 has so quickly reminded–are the lifeblood of households, businesses and investment opportunity–the difference between resilience or demise in times of stress, like now.

To keep our heads and personal discipline when others are losing theirs requires preparation, patience and a plan to move against the herd in times of exuberance and depression.  This recent Hedgeye TV discussion with Dr. Malmgren is far-reaching and worth a mull as we think about the world.

Pippa Malmgren is a trend-spotting economist, entrepreneur, two-time bestselling author, former economic advisor to President George W. Bush and co-founder of H Robotics.  Here is a direct video link.