It was a rainy Saturday morning, so I did some research on how the academics came to advise the government on going into lockdown.  This podcast uses the model governance techniques such as follow the data to figure out whether the bold claims are justified.  The research is also a reminder to read the footnotes if you want the truth.

A lovely friend and ex-colleague of mine asked me to do a podcast on my opinion of Bitcoin.  I cannot say any more than that in this intro other than to start with the photo for this episode of Conrad Gesner who lived in an age when they were classifying all the plants around them for the first time.

Most people think that numbers are the objective truth.  Marketers and pollsters exploit this misunderstand to bombard their audiences with important sounding statistics to push the narrative that consumers what to have the sense of belonging.  This podcast provides examples of the art of making numbers personal.

Several of my podcasts draw on historical financial calamities.  This time round I am making the prediction that because the loose lending for car purchases, the bubble for everyone to drive around in fancy cars, regardless of financial situation can only end badly.  The podcast introduces to a critical technique of risk management that is to have a risk nose and to join the dots.

(In the seventies, the late Bon Scott was the front man for AC/DC.  Their Powerage album has a track called Downpayment Blues.  This episode title is its chorus line)

In politics, parenting and large organisations, there are those that make rules and those that have to implement them.  I have noticed that the effort in creating rules is much less than implementation, mainly because the rule-maker is not remotely near the implementer.  Too many rules stifles children's capacity to evolve into useful adults.  This podcast outlines the argument for lesser rules to all areas of life.  To let us all breathe.

One aspect of corporate life and the world of entrepreneurship is that those higher up in an organisation or a potential investor get inundated with reports and presentations.  Each time they have to decipher what the presenter is saying and whether they are credible.  It is not possible for them to absorb the information and at the same time make good decisions.  This episode cuts through the powerpoint slides to "de-risk the decision-making"

One type of risk that is the scourge of any initiative is scope creep.  This podcast extends the episode "Who's gonna tell you when it's too late?" and looks at how scope gradually extends (chip chip) to the point of failure.  Any project in business has this problem as well as finance and, of course, in military operations.  Scope also occurs in public discourse where definitions change without the bulk of the population getting the memo.

Those in senior positions in the medical profession have been a pains to describe growth in virus infections as exponential.  The big E has been with us since the time of legends and is the bedrock of the finance industry that treats compounding interest rates with chemical gloves.  For once, the medical profession should leave it to the pros and stop scaring the population.

Traders make money by selling bespoke solutions and hedging the risk with listed securities.  The resultant risk is called basis and running this risk is the strategy for such groups.  One basis is the maturity mismatch between what the trader sells to what they use as a hedge.  The strategy is to roll the hedge several times.  The podcast describes the most famous failing of a stack and roll strategy, namely Metallgesellschaft and their oil trading.