ReSolve Riffs with Laurence Siegel on “Fewer, Richer, Greener” and the Age of Abundance

ReSolve Riffs with Laurence Siegel on “Fewer, Richer, Greener” and the Age of Abundance

“The unfortunate truth is, very few want to hear an optimistic take on the world during a pandemic.”

Human beings evolved to pay closer attention to negative vs positive information. For our ancestors, the cost of seeing danger where there was none was a cortisol spike and an unnecessary sprint, but dismissing a real threat might have led them to be a predator’s next meal.

Our guest this week was Laurence Siegel, Gary P. Brinson Director of Research at CFA Institute Research Foundation and author of “Fewer, Richer, Greener: Prospects for Humanity in an Age of Abundance”. We discussed the main themes from his book, including:

  • The case for techno-optimism
  • Demographics, healthcare and lifespan
  • Inflation, deflation and hedonic adjustments
  • Pollution, climate modelling and the wide range of possible outcomes
  • Why nuclear power is a crucial component of a greener energy matrix
  • Differences across geographies
  • Economics, capital markets and realistic expectations

We also debated the future of cities, real-estate costs and possible changes to the jobs market if we extrapolate current trends.

Thank you for watching and listening. See you next week.

This is “ReSolve’s Riffs” – live on YouTube every Friday afternoon to debate the most relevant investment topics of the day, hosted by Adam Butler, Mike Philbrick and Rodrigo Gordillo of ReSolve Global* and Richard Laterman of ReSolve Asset Management.

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Adam Butler, CFA, CAIA
Adam Butler, CFA, CAIA
Adam Butler is Chief Investment Officer of ReSolve Asset Management, sub-advisor to an alternative allocation strategy at Rational Funds. He manages ETF and futures based strategies including a global risk parity ETF, two Adaptive Asset Allocation funds, and a multi-strategy hedge fund. Adam is also author of the book Adaptive Asset Allocation: Dynamic Global Portfolios to Profit in Good Times and is ranked in the top 1% of authors by paper downloads on SSRN. He has authored over a dozen papers and dozens of articles on asset allocation; factor investing; quantitative methods; and portfolio optimization. Adam holds both CFA and CAIA charters and appears on BNN Bloomberg and CNBC.

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