Authored by David B. Collum, Betty R. Miller Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology - Cornell University (Email: dbc6@cornell.edu, Twitter: @DavidBCollum),
“I hope David comes to his senses.”
~ Nassim Taleb (@nntaleb), best-selling author and Professor at NYU
Every year, David Collum writes a detailed “Year in Review” synopsis full of keen perspective and plenty of wit. This year’s is no exception.
Contents
Introduction
About the Author–A Brief Autobiography
Contents
Sources
Creation of the Year in Review
My Personal Year
Investing
Almond-Eyed Aliens and Other Conspiracy Theories
Gold
Bitcoin
Modern Monetary Theory
The Fed and Repo-Madness
Share Buybacks
Climate Change
The Jeffrey Epstein Affair
Thoughts on College
Political Correctness–Collegiate Division
Political Correctness–Adult Division
Political Correctness–Youth Division
Political Correctness–Corporate Division
Civil Liberties
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Books
The whole beast can be downloaded as a single PDF here, for those who prefer to do their power-reading offline.
If it happened this year & mattered, it's covered in here...
Introduction
It is that time of year again when I sit down and, in a frenzied stream of subconsciousness, bang out my view of the world. It’s my 11th chronicling of human folly and anthropogenic global idiocy (AGI).1 It’s like when Forest Gump jogs: I start writing, go on too long, and then just stop. Forty years of writing about organic chemistry has taught me that you do not understand something till you finish writing about it. Constrained by time—you can’t write an annual synopsis in May—I have made sure to sacrifice quality not length.
“Huge fan. Please continue to remain above the din.”
~ Guy Adami (@GuyAdami), trader and commentator on CNBC’s Fast Money
*I am the din, Guy.
Figure 1. An original by Candace E. Cornell (my wife) dedicated to Jeff Macke (my Bud and the Banksy of Wall Street).
There was a mad chemist named Dave
His Year In Review is the rave
With Epstein and Powell
And repos most foul
His comments are sure to be grave.
@TheLimerickKing
The writeup is a little different this year; there are fewer topics, especially on the finance side. Despite all the reading, sorting, and culling, I have little to add about Trump, impeachments, beltway politics, and swaths of the finance world. Our debts, pensions, and valuations were beyond repair last December; they have only gotten worse. The markets have been muffin-topping for too long; I am waiting for change and tired of being the Gail Dudek of the modern era. I also fought the Balrog way more than usual on a few topics just to get thumbless grasps. That pain is here for all to see.
For the newcomers, I am a non-Easter Worshipping, openly white male who vaguely remembers being heterosexual. The first section is my first-ever authorized autobiography. This is for parents who think their kids are incorrigible idiots; that won’t change, but your kids might become functional. The Table of Contents follows, allowing you to cherry pick topics.
About the Author–A Brief Autobiography
The question that I am always asked on podcasts is how does a chemist end up writing about economics and politics and why? With that said, here are some low- and high-water marks en route to the present. Think of it as my college essay, including the omnipresent dead grandparent that seems to be irresistible to high school seniors looking for a tear jerker. It’s tangential and vaguely inappropriate but free and worth every penny.
I’ve always had extracurricular stuff, been a little nuts, and located somewhere on the humor spectrum. There were plenty of sports and a smattering of school. The rest was “sex and drugs and rock and roll.” I was getting shitfaced and hitch hiking around town at 12, smoking pot at 14, and dropping acid by 15. I took a friend’s college boards to get him a Texas football scholarship with better scores than on my own. By 12th grade the drugs were in the rearview mirror. Having bagged a 3.4 GPA it was off to Cornell. Really? You can get into Cornell with a 3.4 GPA? In a word, no. Not even close. Rumors of being 1/1024th native American on my paternal grandmother’s side remain undocumented. I was a gymnast at Cornell but, having grown to a towering 6 feet, no Nike endorsements appeared. (Relatively speaking, I sucked.) The admissions mystery resolved itself decades later from my grandfather’s obituary revealing he was Vice Chancellor of the Board of Regents of New York, President of Cornell’s National Alumni Association, and member of the Cornell Council. You think that might have helped, eh? Don’t need bribes with that dossier.
A crash course in maturation—12 hours a day, 7 days a week in the library—got me another 3.4 GPA and a BS in biology. Survival skills? You betcha. Genius? Not a chance. The path, however, was tortuous. Following a one semester non-majors sophomore organic chemistry course—Yup: pre-med—I went straight into a second semester graduate-level organic chemistry course. There were a few bumps—some really big ones actually—but I survived. Taking physical chemistry for laughs but with no calculus and surrounded by engineers was problematic too. My only F on a test at Cornell was a physical chemistry test on “kinetics”, which I basically blew off being too busy trying to not flunk that organic grad course.
Recognizing that my concentration in genetics was leading me into a dying field, I used electives to take more graduate-level organic chemistry courses and then headed off to the Big Apple to study organic chemistry at Columbia. Their peachy idea was to make me take graduate level quantum mechanics—the real stuff with Bessel functions, second-order perturbation theory, and unrecognizable symbols. This time, lacking calculus transcended problematic to third-trimester fugly. An 8 on a test and a totally unearned D foreshadowed greatness. (They had to fake a pass on the now-defunct German test too.) After dodging expulsion, in cahoots with another second-year grad and brand-new assistant professor, I synthesized a molecule that was sufficiently ginormous and complex to catch the world’s attention. After completing my second year of graduate school—two friggin’ years—I was on the job market. WTF? Unsolicited interviews from Cornell and Cal Tech were particularly heady stuff for a total meatloaf. One thing was clear: I was the most overrated graduate student in the 1,000-year history of graduate education. I got my PhD in a little over two and a half years, skipped the usual two-year post-doc, and returned to Cornell at the ripe old age of 25 as the most unprepared assistant professor in history. (It was awkward running into my freshman chemistry TA—the one from whom I earned a C+— trying to finish his degree.)
Undeterred by my lack of prowess in math (polymathless) or kinetics, and never having studied anything with a metal in it, I set out to become….wait for it…an organometallic kineticist. I thought it would be fun. With considerable pride I am now a reasonably prominent organometallic kineticist, although I still can’t count to 21 without removing my shoes and dropping trow. (That joke caught me some serious flak at a meeting from angry prototypes of social justice warriors.)
As an assistant professor, I was also head gymnastics coach for two years and casual gymnast for four. I took up Taekwondo, eventually attaining the rank of 3rd dan (3rd degree black belt). The TKD team members and I loved the symbolism-rich beatings on each other. It was probably my happiest decade. After some health issues, a subsequent back surgery, and a failed comeback, my next goal was to get fat as shit and way out of shape. I was a natural. I also am now a chair professor and was director of undergraduate and graduate studies, associate chair, and department chair for four years (four years longer than I should have been), prompting many to channel Scott McNealy and ask, “What were they thinking?” I have enough scars—chicks dig scars—to guarantee I will not be a dean of any flavor. All this time my wife’s chronic health problems called on me to do waaaay more child rearing of two boys than I had bargained for. I really don’t want to hear whining about how hard it is to balance personal and professional lives. It’s fiction. If your gonads are big enough, gravity keeps you grounded through the chaos.
So now you can see that writing about politics and economics as a chemist follows the pattern. I became a financially woke boomer and hunkered down. I will retire from chemistry at either 70 or 75, identify as a 20-year-old super model, and walk the runway for Victoria’s Secret.
Trigger Warning:
This is satirical and comedic. Somebody has to get hurt. Today it may be your turn.
If you are a douche bag who cannot take a joke, remember: nobody is making you read this.
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I think I like this guy,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
VERY LONG ARTICLE,,,,,,
http://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/dave-collums-2019-year-review-i-fought-fed-and-fed-won-0?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29
Over my 40 years I’ve done pretty well despite painfully sitting out the most recent decade-long equity ‘roid rage hunkered down with gold (about 25%), laddered 2-year treasuries, and a TIAA fixed-income account paying out guaranteed 3.6% per annum. My house is too costly to not call an asset and will likely track inflation over the years when taxes and expenses are factored in.1 For me, investing is all about valuations and process. While many were selling in fear in ‘08–’09, I was buying way too timidly out of greed. I had joined the ranks of those who could not fathom that central banks would dump over $20 trillion into the system and acted on that disbelief while others rode the rip. Thousands saw the bubble and ensuing crisis in ‘08–’09, but nobody saw the interventions. The central banks clipped 5–10 years off a standard secular bear market and pulled markets off valuations that never dropped significantly below historical “fair value”. (Read that again: it is true.) I am pondering how not to repeat mistakes made in the next recession while not making even bigger ones when the Fed is shown to be impotent. I hope to buy stocks that act like real bonds—pay you to own them—because I don’t think capital gains from story stocks will be the game (see Japan).
Last year I spilled my guts providing 20 metrics showing equities were >2x over historical fair value.2 It’s only gotten worse, so go read it cause I am not gonna repeat it. What I will do is offer a plot that I created last year (Figure 3). Those blue lines represent blocks of time that the inflation-adjusted capital gains (ex-dividends, fees, taxes, and demographics) treaded water. It should scare the crap out of y’all because they are 40–75 years long. As the boomers become more and more late cycle and old enough to be carbon dated, their days of averaging into the markets are over. If you are fully invested at a secular top, your pain will follow you to the old folks home or to a van down by the river.
“Noah: How long can you tread water?”
~ God
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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