KunstlerCast - Conversations: Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century

Ben Hunt is the Chief Investment Officer at Second Foundation Partners, a consultant for large institutional investors, and the author of Epsilon Theory, a newsletter and website that examines markets through the lenses of game theory, history and nature. Over 100,000 professional investors and allocators across 200 countries read Epsilon Theory for its fresh perspective and novel insights into market dynamics. In prior positions, Ben has managed a billion dollar hedge fund and served as Chief Strategist for a $13 billion dollar asset manager. He has a Ph.D. from Harvard University, was a tenured Political Science professor, and has co-founded three technology companies. Ben spends lots of time on a family owned farm, which inspires many original ideas on the parallels between human and animal behavior The new theme music for the podcast is the Two Rivers Waltz by Larry Unger.

     Steve Keen is an Australian economist and author. He considers himself a post-Keynesian, criticizing neoclassical economics as inconsistent, unscientific and empirically unsupported. His books include Developing an Economics for the Post-crisis World (2015) and Can We Avoid Another Financial Crisis? (2017). He lives in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The new theme music for the podcast is the Two Rivers Waltz by Larry Unger.

Larry Kummer is The editor of the Fabius Maximus website. FabiusMaximus.com He has 37 years experience in the finance industry in a variety of roles, retiring as a VP and Senior Portfolio Manager at a global investment bank. He was a Boy Scout volunteer leader for 15 years, running a Troop for 7 years and retiring as Director and VP-Finance of the Mt Diablo-Silverado Council. For 20 years he was an active Republican, working on many campaigns — until the party abandoned its traditional principles. He began writing about geopolitics in 2003 A sampling of important posts from Fabius Maximus: America isn’t falling like the Roman Empire. We're falling like the Roman Republic. Welcome to ClownWorld, the final meme for America- It is the next phase of the "crazy years", long ago predicted by Robert Heinlein. A new, dark picture of America’s future- our institutions are falling like a line of dominoes. Larry says, “I’ve written 140 posts about ways to reform America. They are the least popular posts. We want simple morality tales, to cheer the good people and boo the bad. We flee from talk about responsibility and work like vampires from daylight. None of the risking 'our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor' for us. We see ourselves as customers in a restaurant, whining that the menu isn't good enough for people so awesome.”  

Larry Kummer. Are these the Crazy Years in America? Larry is The editor of the Fabius Maximus website. FabiusMaximus.com He has 37 years experience in the finance industry in a variety of roles, retiring as a VP and Senior Portfolio Manager at a global investment bank. He was a Boy Scout volunteer leader for 15 years, running a Troop for 7 years and retiring as Director and VP-Finance of the Mt Diablo-Silverado Council. For 20 years he was an active Republican, working on many campaigns — until the party abandoned its traditional principles. He began writing about geopolitics in 2003 A sampling of important posts from Fabius Maximus:  America isn’t falling like the Roman Empire. We're falling like the Roman Republic. Welcome to ClownWorld, the final meme for America - It is the next phase of the "crazy years", long ago predicted by Robert Heinlein. A new, dark picture of America’s future - our institutions are falling like a line of dominoes. Larry says, “I’ve written 140 posts about ways to reform America. They are the least popular posts. We want simple morality tales, to cheer the good people and boo the bad. We flee from talk about responsibility and work like vampires from daylight. None of the risking "our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor" for us. We see ourselves as customers in a restaurant, whining that the menu isn't good enough for people so awesome.”

#321 — Charles Hugh Smith writes the popular Of Two Minds blog (at https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html) and is the author of many books, most recently Will You Be Richer or Poorer; Profit, Power, and A.I. in a Traumatized World.) He lives in the world capital of Wokesterdom: Berkeley, California.

David Collum is the Betty R. Miller Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University, an intellectual utility infielder of internet commentary. He covers all the bases: culture, politics, finance, and technology, with often surprising views on the the predicaments of our time. He tweets at @DavidBCollum

Richard Vague, from Texas originally, is a Philadelphia-based managing partner of the venture capital firm, Gabriel Investments. He’s the author of A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises and The Next Economic Disaster: Why It's Coming and How to Avoid It. He’s been in and around the policy world for years and is considering a run for president as a Democrat. He intends to make his decision about that sometime this fall.

Doug Hill is a journalist and independent scholar who has studied the history and philosophy of technology for more than twenty-five years. His work has appeared in numerous national publications, including the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Atlantic, Salon and Esquire. He is coauthor of the bestseller Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live and lives in Pasadena, California.

#317 Rob Gourdie is Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics at Virginia Tech. He is also Director of the Center for Heart and Reparative Medicine Research at the same university. He writes under the pen name of Tom Therramus. In his “day job,” he works on the repeating waves of electrical signals that drive the heart beat. Over the last decade he has developed an interest in another repeating pattern - waves of price volatility in oil - that he speculates are a Peak Oil-related phenomenon. His writings as Tom Therramus on oil market instability, and its impacts on economics, politics and climate change, have been posted at OilPrice.net, Greentechmedia.com, Resilience.com, RealClearEnergy.org, Nouriel Roubini's Economonitor.com, and EuanMearns.com Energy Matters. His LinkedIn page (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-therramus-602b3721/)  lists his SKILLS as including “Asperger's", "Mild Numeracy", "Vague Literacy” and "Being Kiwi”.

Jason Bradford has been affiliated with Post Carbon Institute since 2004, first as a Fellow and then as a Board Member. After earning his doctorate at Washington University in St Lous, he worked for the Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development at the Missouri Botanical Garden, was a Visiting Scholar at U.C. Davis, and co-founded the Andes Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Group (ABERG). He bailed out of academia to learn and practice sustainable agriculture, trained at the Ecology Action (aka GrowBiointensive) in Willits, California, and then founded Brookside School Farm. For four years he hosted The Reality Report radio show on KZYX in Mendocino County. In 2009 he moved to Corvallis, Oregon, as one of the founders of Farmland LP, a farmland management fund implementing organic and mixed crop and livestock systems, where he worked until early 2018. He sits on the Economic Development Advisory Board for Corvallis and Benton County, and serves as an advisor for the OregonFlora Project based at Oregon State University. He lives with his family outside of Corvallis on an organic farm.