I just finished The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson.  He has an interesting new spin on the current financial crisis.  I again failed in my quest to find a way to guarantee the preservation of assets at this point in the economic cycle.

When I ran Brandon (1981-2003) I was often asked how a current financial crisis (Mexico, Asia or Carters stagflation for instance) would effect our business.  My response was that financial shocks were like the giant ground swell waves in the ocean.  We would rise and fall along with everyone else to those.  What concerned me, because we were such a small boat, was the Chop.  The little waves that could capsize us or one of our major customers, technologies or suppliers.  How we acted could effect or results relative to the Chop.

I also used to say since we can’t effect the broad economy why bother to pay much attention to it.  Colloquially I put it: “Don’t try to effect the weather.  Just bring along an umbrella.

I suppose putting these two together I should spend less time paying attention to global finance and politics and more time making local investments.  Good idea.  Now I need to think about Chaos theory as explained in Deep Simplicity by John Gribbin and how it applies to this idea.