Only invest in something you truly understand.

It’s fair, I suspect, to characterize a lot of what has happened in terms of people putting money into something which sounded good and felt good but which they didn’t actually understand.

If a person invests in something they don’t truly understand, then they’re taking risks that they are unaware of.

I happened upon this article in ‘National Geographic’:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/iceland/del-giudice-text
which seems perhaps to express the dilemma in part the people of Iceland are presently facing. Which way forward?

Since I know it, I’ll speak from the United States perspective, feeling the experience of this nation and others might serve as example and warning. We have gorgeous national parks but they are only small, ‘managed’ islands within a land that bares only a passing resemblance to the wild beauty it once possessed. It has been developed and divided into fences, spreading tract shopping malls and houses, ever so many roads, and the remnants of industries that allowed this, now often empty save the lingering toxic pollution.

And where are we now? In a deep recession no one can see the bottom of. More and more people are losing jobs that in many cases barely supported them to begin with. Of the more fortunate, most but one serious illness away from bankruptcy and worse due an unhealthy healthcare system. Many people are increasingly asking why, prompted now in desperation to at last look more deeply, and are beginning to see so much of this, their houses which have declined to much from overinflated value, and all the rest but one big ponzi scheme. It is the American way. Ever bigger and better. Not so much the better part, but certainly bigger and ever more. Growth at all cost. This advertised and simply accepted as good and right. But perhaps now the faintest understanding this advocated by government and industry as it serves their interests in the short term. But it is not balanced or sustainable. Never mind. As long as there is more and ever more no one will notice.

And once it stops. Now we do. All the many without roofs over their head, and more joining them every day. In fear of this, of becoming sick even as their diet insures it, of endless enemies we must always protect against. The essential nature of this pyramidal system that insures fabulous riches to a few that the many so far below can aspire to but in reality never attain. So now we see just a bit of all that has been wrought and its true nature. And most would happily be blind if able once more to live the illusion of the American way. Their children can deal with the mess later.

V. – one has to have one’s priorities straight, no?

Peter – must be because of all those things I told him off the record.

Kelp – yes, that interview with Eva Joly was a great eye-opener for me. For example I would not have gone so far as to think that there were two parallel economies in the world – the legit and the illegit. And obviously everything she said relating to Iceland – including how crucial truth and justice are in the whole scheme of things – was very inspiring.