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How do you know an economist has a sense of humor?
He uses decimal points. #nerdjokes
The joke means this…no one f*cking knows anything.
Any human who is self-delusional enough to think they know what the future is going to hold down to the penny, is an instant write-off. “I think” are two of the most dangerous words to ever have been said. It’s even worse to have people believe “I think” means “will happen.” They most assuredly do not.
If this most recent beginning of a recession taught me anything, it confirmed my belief that even those on high do not know their a$$es from their elbows. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
We saw Chamath Paliapatiya, a billionaire and self-proclaimed “King of Spacs,” forced to close 2 of his 3 special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) unsuccessfully. He lost himself and his investors tens of millions to potentially hundreds of millions of dollars.
We saw Andreesson Horowitz launch tokens and NFT investments faster than Elon posts Twitter memes. Spoiler: a majority lost money and a few may even be quasi-illegal in their execution with the tokens they utilized (IMHO).
We saw an entire cadre of the world’s smartest people bamboozled by the likes of FTX, Celsius, and 372 of the other crypto platforms. I made that number up, but that feels good.
Smart humans exist. But they are far from foolproof. Truly – the bigger you get, the harder you fall.
I remember working as an underling at Goldman Sachs in 2008, and then-CEO Lloyd Blankfein came to speak to us. We all said what we did, and I explained my group at the time was “third-party private equity distribution” or “fund distribution.”
His response: “What does that group do?” Sigh.
My CEO a few companies back told me, ”Investments will never be raised over the internet from strangers.” I could feel myself thinking, “I hate it here.” Alas, he was and is a billionaire, and I am still not.
What is the lesson to learn here?