Briar Patch Research

First, sorry for the delay. I had problems with my site-host, and will need to completely redo this site.  Note that my new stuff will be mostly on substack.

November, 2025: Remember 2009? Of course not..

I apologize for this taking longer to post than expected. I tripped over some research I did during the Great Financial Crisis and it got me thinking. Did we learn anything? Just to make sure I re-did a bunch of the research, read some well-written, though depressing reports, rewrote this from Word One three times, and finally have some New! Improved! more generalized opinions. You may, if you wish, file this under “Old Man Yells at Clouds.”

Families must have a plan to operate in an environment of reduced safety.

Economic downturns have strained US government budgets at all levels. States, Counties and Municipalities face fiscal trouble due to reduced tax revenue and rising expenses. Unanticipated underfunding of civil service retirement plans are pushing many budgets into the red. Overoptimistic planners encouraged growth and building in unsuitable areas, forcing governments to spend unplanned billions on repairs and resilience. “Tax flight” is an issue for many governments.

Local property tax receipts initially rose sharply in-step with the pandemic-driven rise in property values, but this situation has flipped.  Reduced economic activity in city centers has eroded tax bases, especially in large cities. Many real estate analysts are projecting a nationwide crash in property values that will drive a drop in local tax receipts.

The Covid-driven 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) provided a temporary lifeline, boosting reserves and expanding programs. Increased federal aid should be seen as less likely for the foreseeable future in the face of increased “urban/non-urban” political polarization.

But as ARPA funds expire, cities are bracing for tighter budgets. Few places seem to have any plans on how to fund operations if there is a generalized drop in revenue from real estate taxes. Essential services (police, fire, medical, road maintenance, public transit, sanitation and education) may be curtailed with little or no warning, with reduced staffing leading to slower emergency response times and fewer police patrols. The annual report of the National League of Cities indicates that water systems, roads, and bridges are the most urgent needs for over 70% of municipalities.

Taxation and fees should be expected to rise as governments seek revenue. Property insurance, due to reduced civic services, may rise faster. Formal municipal bankruptcies (Chapter 9) are rare but possible; roughly 700 filings since 1937. Will yours be next?

Rational thinkers might expect public safety to continue to dominate spending: nationally over a quarter of municipal general fund budgets go to police, fire, and emergency services.  The current domination of most governments by “leftist” political groups may cause a focus on other issues. Pay close attention to business and social responses to the “capture” of the New York City government by socialists.

To belabor the obvious, it might be wise to take some pre-emptive steps to build Household Resilience

• Anticipate slower police, fire, or medical response times in fiscally stressed areas. Families should keep up-to-update first-aid kits and basic medical supplies. Learn CPR and basic emergency response skills.
• Water, power, and transit may face interruptions. Store clean water and non-perishable food for short-term outages, and have backup power options (portable chargers, generators if feasible).
• Expect increases in property taxes, utility fees, or service charges. Track municipal budget discussions to anticipate changes. Build a buffer in household budgets for rising local costs. Get active politically and vote your interests.
• Service cutbacks will increase insurance risks (e.g., slower fire response) causing insurance carriers to re-risk your area.  Review home and health insurance coverage for gaps and consider riders for flood, fire, or theft before local services weaken. If your insurance carrier thinks your neighborhood is “too risky” maybe YOU should too.
• Municipal IT and vital records systems “may” lag; families should keep independent access to copies of vital records tax records, and title documents.
• School districts will face cuts; parents may need to supplement with tutoring or community programs or home-schooling. This will take time, planning and funds.

You might also consider “voting with your feet”

October 5, 2025: Too Long, Did Not Watch.

Dear Finfluencers:

I follow you because you are smart about something important to me.  You were useful when your average video pitch was 15 minutes.  I do not care much about your dog, your kids, your favorite sports team, how much you exercise or most of your non-financial political opinions. I am specifically disinterested in you interviewing each other on those topics. I listen to as many of you as I can because I need a divergence of skilled opinions. 90-minute podcasts? Sorry. Too long, did not watch or listen.

I understand you need to do commercials but doubt your sincerity on high-priced snack foods and vitamin supplements.

In some cases I am actually paying for your opinions… and this will cease unless you FOCUS on financial issues. Unsubscribing is easy, and I started today.

Cordially,

Old Mad Dicky.

September 10, 2025: Measured steps

Just about all I can think to do right now is to screenshot the outrageous posts I see online and email them to their employers, if I can find them. 

I sent money to His organization as well.  All we can do besides that is wait for the election. Did your congresscritter refuse the Moment of Silence?  REMEMBER IN NOVEMBER.

August 29, 2025: Flipping rocks, finding questions.

I just totally hate August... information flows dry up while everyone is on vacation, or doing the back-to-school thing.  Spacecritters could invade, and no one would notice until mid-September. So I "flip rocks", check my notes, stare out the window and drink too much coffee.

A lot of the rockflipping is reading the stack of peer-reviewed research papers from reputable journals, governmental bodies and international agencies which I downloaded but found expedient just to stack on the floor by my desk until my cleaning service complained, 

The papers raise a lot of questions, some of which refuse to go away.  We used to do a lot of "what if" research at my Final Employer, and it sometimes brought unexpected insights.  In that spirit:

What would US policy look like if senior planners thought…

Environment

• The “looming environmental and demographic catastrophes” that the media has been nattering-on about since 1970 were occurring now, and it too late to do anything about catastrophic global warming?
• The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation Collapse will indeed start no later than 2037, utterly ending agriculture in Europe and “many European cities might end up colder by 5 to 15 degrees Celsius”?
• “700 million people worldwide are at-risk of being displaced as a result of drought by 2030” and “severe water shortage will affect the entire planet by 2040” driving uncontrollable migration?
• Climate change will disrupt food-chains everywhere by 2030.

Geopolitics

• The drivers underlying the entire Bretton Woods Accord framework were no longer valid, and actively worked against US interests?
• Demographics are destiny. The PRC, Russia and EU are entering demographic implosions that will remove them as economic Great Powers over the next few decades?
• Humanity need to increase food productivity between 60% and 100% by 2050 just to keep starvation levels stable?
• Low cost AI systems will be able to trace “invisible data trails” and make it impossible to hide anything from even tiny national players

Defense

• Our current force structure, military technology and production capacity was incapable of meeting emerging threats and it is no longer possible to maintain a stable “world order”?
• Biological warfare, electronic terrorism and famine-driven mass migrations will be the new normal?
• Drug cartels, fragile narco-states and domestic political enthusiasts are a more “clear and present danger” to the US than failing communist regimes?
• A significant proportion of recent illegal aliens were highly trained guerillas intent on sabotage and terrorism?
• All Western weapons systems rely on parts manufactured in enemy nations.

Economics

• Globalization was collapsing now leading a generation-long worldwide economic depression and the rise of neo-imperial mercantilist trading blocs?
• The real story, looking forward, is massively overbuilt production capability on a planetary scale and declining populations?
• The US faces hyperinflation unless federal spending is slashed and taxes raised immediately?
• AI systems are firmly in control of US equity and commodity markets?
• Automated investing by US retirement funds and foreign investors are driving stock markets to very fragile peaks that will cause a crash no later 2026?
• Decades of low, zero and negative interest rates have set up a commercial and real estate bubble that is exploding under rising rates.

July 31, 2025 Last Month, Part Duh...

After writing last month’s entry, I heard… voices. Little nagging things as I walked past the box of vital record hardcopies and maps. After decades of research I ignored it for a while, and then decided to reality check my findings.

• Looking back over my 350-page formal history, I am surprised how thorough I was, and how neatly I summarized problems. All told, the holes are still there.  I have a couple of long-gones that pop up briefly in a Census, and vanish, never to be found again. Most were children. Hard to think there is no record, anywhere, but that seems to be the case
• Just to be sure I ran the same searches on three different platforms, starting with every factor I knew in the search, and adding wildcards as I went. I kept track of each search pattern, and repeated it.  While I understand that different vendors have different search algorithms… why did the results vary inside a vendor based on time of day?  Search results at 0630 were routinely different than those at 1930, for example. Weekend results were slower and lighter than weekdays.  Loading issues?
• I am still disappointed in the “AI-assistance”, as the results seem indistinguishable from just loosening up your search criteria and aggressively wild-carding. Applied to genetic data? Worse and worser still, even accounting for possible “accidents.”

I was able to root out some just plain bad writing on my part and have about 50 pages that need to be rewritten. The family history has text written over a ten-year time span and really needs to have a more unified tone and “voice.”  Honestly, I would rather root around in a Census database. I do resolve, thought to at least e-mail every genetic contact I have in the hope at least some might respond this time.

Still too hot to play outside.

June 28, 2025: Genealogy and the summer doldrums...

This should be read with the understanding that it is too hot and humid to play outside here starting in June, and I spend a lot of time doing research and writing. My first project each summer is updating my ongoing Family History… this month’s blog was delayed by actually getting to meet four of my newest relatives—may they live and grow in peace.

As usual, I start with “flipping rocks” on genetic links before fighting the vital records search engines. Most are pretty bad, and seem to throttle results after about an hour or so of use. Familysearch is useful on vital records, as is Ancestry if you have the money.... the others, not so much.

My genetic testing started in 2003 and includes primary testing by National Geographic (Test series1, 2 and 2NG), FTDNA (full yDNA, mtDNA, Familyfinder), Ancestry, LivingDNA, Crigenetics and 23&Me, with further analysis by yFull, dna.land, Prosapia, MyTrueAncestry, Genetic Affairs, GEDmatch and some others.

So far, this includes

• full scanning of mitochondrial DNA, (to track our mother-to child relationships) at FTDNA. mtDNA is relatively stable, and provides solid links to people who have exactly also have little to no clue about their matrilines.
• the “complete” “BigY700” (the father-to-son yDNA line), augmented by analysis from YFull.  Sadly, a lot of people are highly resistant to having this test.
• xDNA has been tested at FTDNA as well, but there just isn’t much data on it yet. It did confirm some known relationships, though.
• Autosomal “family finder” tests (NatGeo, FTDNA, Ancestry, 23&me, LivingDNA), which can potentially track all ancestors, with the resolution ability to make useful distinctions fading at five generations back. 

Honestly, I am a test slut and will generally throw money at any new lab, though I ignore anyone contracting their analysis to places I have already used.

As of the mid-2026 genetic testing has produced little information not already known from vital records.  FTDNA’s yDNA test, though,  enabled me to spot links maybe somewhat confirming some speculations on my patriline back to the Migration Period.  Maybe. The limited contacts I have been able to make with “new cousins” shows that they have hit the same dead-ends I have.

Honestly, by this point I have almost given up on this as a genealogic technique and may have hit the Edge of Data until more people test… privacy paranoia, and sagging economies world-wide seem to be unanticipated limiting factors. My strongest interest, tracing my matriline, via vital records is complicated. In addition to sometimes, but not always, taking their husband’s name at marriage, there seem to have been a limited number of “acceptable” Irish female first names: I.e. almost everyone seem to be named Mary, Margaret or Catherine. “Nicknames” were extremely common, and sometimes used instead of “Christian” names on documents… and the English equivalent to an existing Irish name could be vastly different from what we would expect.  Johanna was frequently familiarized to Jane, Hanna, Honora, Honoria, Hanora, Onny, Anna, Anne or Nora; Alisha could be Alice, Elizabeth, Elise or Eliza.  One recent ancestress was born as Mary Margaret, baptized Margaret Mary, held herself out her entire life as Marguerite Mary, and was listed in the semi-official City Directory as Margaret— but was known to her friends as “Peggy”.  Family names are complicated by a certain vagueness on how they should be translated into English.  Misspelling could be useful if evading government unpleasantness. mtDNA… offers ways around these issues.

Aside from that I am endlessly fascinated by odd stuff like deep history, as long-dead people do not seem to care what you find out about them. My “Otherly Human” ancestry, so far:

• According to the 2016 NatGeo2NG tests I am 2.3% Neanderthal, 1.9% Denisovan by ancestry. 
• 23&Me says the I have 285 Neanderthal traits, more than 65% of their clients.
• LivingDNA analysis from 2020 showed 2.7% Neanderthal, most closely associated with the remains from Spy, Wallonia, Belgium, dated 38,000 BP. This is higher than 67% of their clients. Denisovan results were minimal at 0.2%, but higher than 74% of their clients.

I really wish that more sample matching with “new finds” of deep ancestors was available and would be happy to throw money at a new vendor. I hate to endorse vendors, but Ancestry’s “Thru-Lines” has actually been useful, even if most people do not respond to email. Data changes here on a daily basis and I might be happily surprised tomorrow. Anyone serious about using genetics for genealogy should at least look at Genetic Affairs clustering tools.

May 24, 2025 Roma aeterna?

All models are flawed, but some are useful.  This is not the case with using Rome as a model for the US. Some thoughts:

• First, what is Rome?  Which Rome? Read some history. West Rome faced plague-driven population losses, a climate disaster and a serious drop in economic power to the eastern portions of the Empire before finally being overrun by, to be honest, MY ancestors. East Rome didn’t fall until the last Ottoman Emperor — who bore the title “Kayser-i-Rhum”- -fell in 1922. One could, in fact, say Ataturk restored the Republic
• Western Rome lasted 985 years, Eastern over 1,100 years— from start to finish (509 BC to 1453 AD). “Rome” lasted almost 2,000 years. The US is around 250 years old— 460ish if you count the early settlements in what became the United States.
• We are still mid-Republic, and just beginning to sort out the whole Optimate-Populare thing. Figure… 155BC or so by analogy. Our equivalents of the Assemblies, for example, are still strong. PANEM ET CIRCENSIS bribes to maintain social order are not a major issue yet but we are running a bit ahead of them in debasing our currency.
• It is possible to argue that an all-volunteer army could be a replay of Marius’ Mistake. Depending on when you slept through your history classes, you might see the end of the US military conscription and rise of a professional armed forces in the 1970s as being vaguely similar in some ways to what many no longer think of as the Marian Reforms of roughly 100 to 80 BC. (I am told I am very old for thinking this.)
• In Pre-fall Rome the economy was based utterly on agrarian and industrial slavery. Our wealth distribution is far more concentrated than might be ideal, but ownership of the means of production is widespread-- more than 60% of adult citizens own stocks and property.
  
• Rome had actual civil wars with actual fighting to gain control every decade or so. Eventually the military finally deposed the civilian government permanently, but what moderns would still characterize as civil wars did not stop.

Snarking at foreign leaders aside, major territorial expansion stalled over a century ago and shows no real sign whatsoever of restarting. We let an entire continent revert back to its own leadership after WW2, rather than keep them as provinces. IF you see a real attempt for former Canadian Provinces, Mexican States or Caribbean nations asking to join… get worried. I would get nervous if Five Eyes or anything close to an Anglosphere started to take off.

The Founders and Framers of the US were students of Roman and Greek history—it resonates through their writings. They were keenly aware of the mistakes that were made and structured their new government to avoid them.  

April 25, 2025: More depressing than usual

Work is prayer, work is life and you are what you do.

This is completely unofficial, but I keep hearing people say that the Trump Administration goal is to have a US economy where an average high school graduate will be able to marry, buy a house, have two cars, raise kids and retire on one income after living in peace.

I support this. Unemployed young people can get very scary very quickly, and few people are willing to burn down the neighborhood where they own a house. Usually. The best analysis I have seen is Nicholas Eberstadt’s Men Without Work- Post-Pandemic Edition. Doomberg, one of my favorite analytic services, reminds us that society is nine meals from crazy and the midpoint between abundance and starvation is riots.

There are real long-term problems, though.  Most unskilled and semi-skilled jobs are going away, and even skilled-trade jobs are vanishing: the real impacts of improved design, automated manufacturing and quality control are just beginning to be realized.  We are on the verge of permanent, “never break, never wear out” technology, with only incremental improvements unnoticeable to end-users remaining.  Yes, manufacturing will come back to, or adjacent to the US, but actual jobs? Not so much. Robots can often do the work fast, better and cheaper. This is not news.

White collar has already been affected by these trends.  I distinctly remember the impact of things like QuickBooks, Quicken and TurboTax on the book-keeping and accounting community.  MSFT Office killed off far more white/pink collar jobs than it created. From my recent experience, Grok3 does a better job of ad-hoc research than most of the people I have worked with. There are real, physical problems with AI introduction—intractable things such as a fading power grid and local opposition to things like new power plants, but it will keep clipping knowledge-worker jobs off the edges for the foreseeable future. This is also not news.

And, of course, it gets worse. The population of potential consumers is dropping worldwide. There are very few places where the populations are growing… and even there the rate of growth is usually dropping. Nothing drives an economy like household formation and growing families. Declining populations? Not so much.  Not at all, as far as I can tell. Eventually, what wealth that is left is concentrated enough by inheritance to spark a new cycle.  (David Kotok’s The Fed and The Flu: Parsing Pandemic Economic Shocks covers this in depth, a set of special cases with wide application.) Remember when overpopulation was the issue?

I hate it when trends intersect.

March 25, 2025: How hard is this?

OK, what part of exact, mirror reciprocity of all tariff and non-tariff trade barriers do you fail to understand? Some thoughts... ok, rants, directed at Talking Heads and not my Gentle Readers:

• Every country has favored industries, national champions and treasured local companies that they will defend to the last drop of gold.  The various agriculture industries are central to this—everyone protects their farmers.
• USMCA was a temporary agreement scheduled for review in 2026. Even if the three signatories chose to extend it the Agreement expires in 2036. Going forward (at least through 2028) expect the US to negotiate for mirror reciprocity in tariffs, subsidies for “national champions” and non-tariff trade barriers of all sorts
• The Cold War is over. The current economic order was essentially handcrafted by the US after World Wars Two in the Breton Woods Accords. The goal was to keep World War Three from starting. Free trade and economic expansion were side benefits. It pretty much worked for the world for a long time. The Soviet empire failed in 1991, and we have been losing interest in spending our tax money helping others since then. I firmly expect a worldwide return to mercantilism and neo-imperialism over the next decade or so.
  

Have you actually read The Art of the Deal? Why not? Trump's preferred negotiating style is laid out in exquisite detail and remains largely unchanged. 

February 16, 2025: Sort of an expansion of last month...

Guesstimate: Senior planners in the Trump administration firmly believe in the Global Climate Change model.
Under a potential Warming Scenario

• the fabled Northwest Channel will be open at least during summers. This opens up the fabled Northwest Passage and brings and entire new ocean into play. Greenland offers control of ALL of the Atlantic/Arctic choke points. The only other access point is… the Bering Straits. We already own one side of that and a chain of Islands to block passage to the Pacific. National security requires control of this “New Front."
• sea level along the U.S. coastline is projected to rise on average, 10 - 12 inches (0.25 - 0.30 meters) in the next 30 years (2020 - 2050), per NOAA, which will be as much as the rise measured over the last 100 years (1920 - 2020). Failing to curb future emissions could cause an additional 1.5 - 5 feet (0.5 - 1.5 meters) of rise for a total of 3.5 - 7 feet (1.1 - 2.1 meters) by the end of this century. The US would lose cities under this scenario
• drought and famine will drive mass migrations. Climate-related shortages in water resources, per The World Meteorological Organization, could affect two thirds of the world’s population by 2050. The WHO states as many as 700 million people are at risk of being displaced as a result of drought by 2030. In 2022, per the UNHCR, 84 per cent of refugees and asylum seekers fled from highly climate-vulnerable countries, an increase from 61 per cent in 2010. Globally, 800 million to 3 billion people are projected to experience chronic water scarcity due to droughts at 2°C warming, and up to approximately 4 billion at 4°C warming.  The IPCC, a UN body, states the number of people suffering from hunger in 2050 will range from 8 million to up to 80 million people, with the most severely affected populations concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Central America
• climate zones are moving, negatively impacting US and world agriculture. The UN reports 3% of humanity is already “food insecure “in 2024. World food production must double just to meet projected population growth.

Oddly, perhaps, there are Renewed Glaciation Climate Change Scenarios as well, driven by …Global Warming. Some recent peer-reviewed papers indicate:

• Recent research paints a 1-in-10 chance that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation will collapse by 2057, reducing arable land by 50%, essentially ending agriculture in Europe and Russia.
• Many European cities might end up colder by 5 to 15 degrees Celsius, and the UK might spend winters surrounded by sea ice. Temperature drops of 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit could occur in a single decade. “An AMOC collapse would have global consequences and could lead to reduction in surface air temperatures of up to 10 °C in the North Atlantic.
•  Other projections suggest a Sahel Megadrought as climate zones “move south” causing desertification of prime farmlands.  No estimates were given as to population effects

Optimistically we would see a reversion to the conditions prevalent in the Little Ice Age. Pessimistically, we would see renewed glaciation.

These scenarios might be separate or sequential, with warming surging until the 2050s followed by rapid cooling.

January 16, 2025:  Some Random Thoughts and unqualified amateur opinions on pre-Inauguration Trump Derangement Syndrome...   

There has been entirely too much whining about things the President Elect might do. You have no clue what he might do. Some thoughts:

Greenland:  Do you believe in climate change? How the “Arctic will be ice-free” in a few decades? Global warming will open the fabled Northwest Passage and bring an entire new ocean into play. Greenland offers control of ALL of the Atlantic/Arctic choke points. The only other access point is… the Bering Straits. We already own one side of that and a chain of Islands to block passage to the Pacific. We just cannot depend on historic NATO deadbeats such as Canada and Denmark to secure our northern flank.

Canada… while there was no official transcript, “Castreau” seems to have objected to Trump’s proposed tariffs, claiming it would be an economic catastrophe. Trump agreed and offered statehood to those provinces that exercise their right to opt out of their confederation and secede. (Indeed, there are allegedly secessionist movements in more than one Canadian provinces.) Canada’s central government needs to stop acting like two-bit grifters with a flag, raise their defense spending to meet NATO’s minimum standards and get control of their border—If they do this, things will calm down very quickly. Sometimes you have to be quite vivid to get someone’s attention.

The American Canal In Panama will be among the first wave of PRC targets when they start the Great Pacific War but controlling it to secure access by the US Navy is vital until the ChiComs drain it dry. Y’all even faintly aware that the PRC/PLAN are “managing” ports and maritime chokepoints, including ports in Panama at BOTH ends of the Canal? Or that all PRC companies are subject to direct CCP control under their Military-Civil Fusion program? The Canal was not defendable when Carter gave it away and isn't defendable now. That doesn't mean you do not have to try, though.

If you think the noise is loud now, just wait until Trump offers full normal relationships with Cuba if they open their economy to US investments.

December 22, 2024: Ran late with my Yearly Reading List, because I was still reading it.

Another year, another pile of words.  I am just happy these were all in electronic form, as the stack is getting high enough to be potentially dangerous. 43 more lie in wait to ambush me. I still seem obsessed with Rome.

Fiction this year was pretty much restricted to the ongoing John Ringo festival… we have seen the “pre-editor” versions of one complete novel, parts of six so far.  All gorgeous. You will love them when they come out. I refuse to look and see how many other novels are being bought and stockpiled. As always, books that significantly changed my thinking are shown in bold type.

Recommendation of the Year:
Peter Zeihan’s The Accidental Superpower—Ten years On. I have been following his work since he was the StratFor staff generalist more than two decades ago. This book is an update of the 2014 original, handled by clearly marked additions to the text.  Honestly… I would like more footnotes, and it read like it was dictated.  That is most likely jealousy speaking though. It is rare indeed for a pundit to revisit old work in this way. It stood up very well, by the way.

Business and Investing:
I had two other books in this section, both on electronic currencies but they were such shrill harangues I gave up.  None of these were particularly useful, most likely because by the time they get into print and distribution it is too late. I am pretty sure that, by page count at least, most of my input for this theme now is via more timely sources such as podcasts, blogs and Substacks.

Bahtia, Nick: Layered Money: From Gold and Dollars to Bitcoin and Central Bank Digital Currencies.

Ballou, Brendan: Plunder: Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America

Carret, Phillip: Art of Speculation

McDonald, Lawrence G.: How to Listen When Markets Speak: Risks, Myths and Investment opportunities in a Radically Reshaped Economy

Business Podcasts and Substacks I actually pay for:

• (Paid) Fleckenstein Capital, Mariusz Skonieczny’s Microcap Explosions, Michael Gayed’s Lead-Lag Report, Adam Taggert’s Thoughtful Investing, John Polomny’s Actionable Intelligence, Diane DiMartino-Booth’s Quill Intelligence.
• (paid substacks) Trader Ferg, Doomberg, Value Degen, Melody Wright, Rudy Haverstein

Climate and Disease
Elliot, Collin: Pox Romana: the Plague that Shook the Roman World. This was tightly focused on the Antonine plagues but went into depth on the economic issues leading to and springing from it. None of my teachers ever covered this adequately.

Harper, Kyle: Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease and the End of an Empire.  This is the best summation of the subject I have read and is useful to refute the “America is falling just like Rome did” idiots you might encounter. It took plagues, volcanic climate change and, well, my ancestors to beat half of Rome.  Keep that in mind.

Kennedy: Jonathan: Pathogenisis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues.

Kingamen, William and Nicholas: The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano that Darkened the World and Changed History.  This was very useful for the social, cultural and artistic factors most just do not cover.

General History
Cline, Eric:  What a nice man!  He updated 1177BC with much new material and analysis.  Sadly, no one still has a clue what happened. These are useful if only to demonstrate how history gets re-written as the facts change. In 1970 this was taught as a single discrete event, rather than an ongoing set of disorders.

• 1177 BC- The Year Civilization Collapsed
• After 1177 BC

Davidson, James: Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens.  I thought this was a blowoff spoof, did some further research and I suppose I was asleep when this came up in class.  Sumptuary patterns are useful, and I had never seen the “everyday life” style applied in this way before. I had not one single clue. Not sure it is important, but… what will they write about us in 2000 years?

De Le Bedoyer, Guy: Gladius: The World of the Roman Soldier.  We get an image in our head from bad movies, and usually miss the steady changes over time.  Frankly, this book made me worry a bit about having a professional military.

Dickson, Paul: The Rise of the GI Army, 1940-1941: The Forgotten Story of How America Forged a Powerful Army before Pearl Harbor. I was absolutely shocked to find how much detailed build-up had been done so far in advance.  This was totally skipped- over in history classes. I am shocked that no one has done a movie about it.

Hanson, Victor David: The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern. Elegant essays on why we need to study war.  I have no idea how he writes so much quality stuff so fast and is on TV every time I turn it on.

Jones, Bruce D: To Rule the Waves: How control of the world's oceans shape the fate of the Superpowers.  You really need to read this to understand the underpinnings of globalization.

King: Charles W: The Ancient Roman Afterlife.  I thought I knew something about Roman religion…. Nope Wrong again.  This was very much worth the read if you have any interest in Roman culture at all. I would be delighted to see his work on any other culture.

Mead, Walter Russel: God and Gold: Britain, America and the Making of the Modern World. This is an important work on the continuity of finance, shared economic culture and individualist ideology.

Nelson, Scott Reynolds: Oceans of Grain: How American Wheat Remade the World. So, what happens when Some New Guys suddenly start flooding the known world with seemingly limitless supplies of cheap, high-grade grain.  Well… the decline of the Hapsburgs, Romanov and Ottoman power bases was just the start.

Petersen, Randy; The Printer and the Preacher: Ben Franklin, George Whitefield and the surprising friendship that invented America.  Most of the history I have read on the lead up to our Revolution mentions the Great Awakening in passing, and moves on. This was an interesting history of … perhaps the intersection of the GA and the Scots Enlightenment?

Reader, John: Cities.  OK, it never occurred to me that cities are ecosystems.  My bad. 

Situational Awareness

Colby, Elbridge A: The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict. He is going to be highly influential in the next Trump Administration.

Eberstaff: Nicholas: Men Without Work: Post Pandemic Edition. Stop what you are doing so you can buy and read this important book.  I sincerely hope his projections are incorrect.

Elizondo, Luis: Imminent: Inside the Pentagon Hunt for UFOs. This is going to be a major issue breaking at inconvenient times.  I have no clue how it is going to turn out but, after watching his podcasts and interviews, my “gut” thinks he is honest. I suspect that this is a “reserve pre-planned crisis”  for when we really need to be distracted.

Friedman, George: The Storm Before the Calm: America’s Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond. This is my second reading—he seems to have been pretty much directional, even if the timing might be a little off. 

Heather, Peter; Rapely, John: Why Empires Fall: Rome, America and the Future of the West.  Interesting, but they miss the point on the PRC’s imploding demographics.

Katusa, Marin: The Rise of America: Remaking the World Order. He is actually more optimistic than Friedman and Zeihan, which takes a lot of effort.

Kemp, Christopher: The Lost Species: Great Expeditions in the Collections of Natural History Museums.  Ransacking the files is often a useful way to generate New Truth… had not occurred to me that

Zeihan, Peter: The Accidental Superpower- Ten Years On.

Philosophy
I never did finish Seneca's Letters, but he has the patience of the dead.

Cicero, Marcus Tullius: On Duty

Robertson, Richie: The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness 1680-1790.  This was a shockingly detailed study that pointed to things I just had not thought of. 

Aurelius, Marcus: Meditations.

My rule of thumb remains when in doubt, READ.  Next, read more.  When you are done, keep reading. Read people you don’t agree with. Importantly, read science fiction.

November18, 2024: Idle ruminations...

Q4 always sucks, as I spend a lot of time going over forecasts and making new ones. This year has been "somewhat lucrative", but for reasons other than the ones I used--- as Ferg says, "you need to position yourself to be lucky". Far too much of this is considering "what ifs"-- sort of like writing a sci-fi novel in a lot of ways. This is some of the stuff I am considering at this point:

What would US actions look like if senior US planners

• Confirmed the “looming environmental and demographic catastrophes” that the media has been nattering-on about since 1970 were occurring now?
• Realized globalization was collapsing now, inevitably leading a generation-long worldwide economic depression?
• Believed it is no longer possible to maintain a stable “world order?
• Had done the math and realized the US faces hyperinflation unless federal spending is slashed and taxes raised immediately?
• Determined that the PRC had entered a terminal demographic implosion?
• Believed biological warfare, electronic terrorism and mass, famine-driven migrations were the new normal?
• Found our current force structure, military technology and production capacity was incapable of meeting emerging threats?
• Thought drug cartels and fragile narco-states are a more clear and present danger than failing communist regimes?
• Had proof that a significant proportion of recent illegal aliens were highly trained guerillas intent on sabotage and terrorism?
  

November, 6, 2024: Some Initial Thoughts---

Disclaimer: This is a free opinion, likely worth far less than what you paid for it.  See what happens when you ask strangers questions? NOTHING I say is investment, political or legal advice. Ever.

I admit I was somewhat surprised… at least we had the direction right. 

• RFKjr vs the Medical Industrial Complex is going to be very interesting.  So would his inevitable attack on the secrecy still surrounding the assassination of his father and uncle.  I suspect there is a lot of deeply buried information that will explode in sunlight.

• Trump vs NATO Deadbeats has already borne some fruit—Germany is planning to “re-introduce National Service” for men, optionally women too.  Others will follow as the shock spreads. I expect everyone will be making “defense kissy-face” when, not if, the NATO partners significantly increase spending. What if the “plan to end the Ukraine War in 24 hours” means “sending troops”?

• The whole set of stories around UAPs/UFOs got buried… but will be back. If nothing else it will be a very useful distraction... ummm “bipartisan effort”. No, I am not kidding. Expect things to heat up no later than Thanksgiving.

• Conflicts between Musk and the Big Spenders is going to be fun to watch. I checked, and it doesn’t look like he can actually just fire civil service, but… he is very creative and deeply annoyed. Retire them at full pay? That would be cheaper than letting them do things...

• Trifecta?  This Red Wave seems to have done down to the city level… no one has any idea how this is going to play out, but politicians everywhere just Got a Message. The 2026 races began as soon as the 2024 voting ended.

• I shouldn’t say this, but you might want to take a serious look at your investments. Was everything based on “more of the same, forever”? Make sure you know what you have and why you bought it.  Anything change?

Lots of people are very upset.  Be gentle.

October 24, 2024: I collect quotes..

I might read too much, but it is often safer than just "learning from experience." Sometimes I am smart enough to write stuff down. You may notice some themes in common. In the Old Days people kept "Copy Books" where they wrote down things that might be useful later, and I decided to follow the practice some years back. Here are some of the Official Axioms that are embedded in my investment planning documents-- none of this is investment advice!

Fergus Cullen:

• “50% asymmetry, 50% luck, the rest is talent & insight."
• “Your position size is your stop-loss."
•  “Being too far ahead of your time is indistinguishable from being wrong."
• “Being certain about something being inevitable is very different from being able to profit from it.”

James Aitken:

• “I am just trying to be less wrong.”

Nassim Taleb:

• "It takes five years to learn how to make money, and twenty-five to learn how to not lose it."

Doomberg:

• “Society is nine meals from crazy."
• “The midpoint between abundance and starvation is riots.”

Jesse Livermore:

• “There is only one side of the market and it is not the bull side or the bear side, but the right side.
• “Money is made by sitting, not trading.”

Reportedly Warren Buffet

• “Markets are the most efficient method of transferring wealth from the impatient to the patient.”

Rick Rule

• “Contrarian or victim—your choice"
• “Diversification is a hedge against my ignorance”

John Maynard Keynes:

• “Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.”

Dutch fighting the Hapsburgs

• "It is not necessary to hope in order to persevere."

Grant Williams

• “How do I stay rich?”

Stanley Druckenmueller

• “You do not get paid extra for complexity.”

Charlie Munger

• “Everyone is trying to be smart, I'm just trying NOT to be stupid."
  

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​​​​​​​​​​Welcome to the Briarpatch...

I am Richard J. ("Rick") DeLotto, MBA, former knowledge wrangler, ignorance manager, Cassandrist, competitive intelligence worker and research analyst... currently wandering around unattended exercising my curiosity.  This is almost indistinguishable from being retired.​