THE UNCERTAIN FUTURE
H. Lawrence "Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns" Donald Rumsfeld, former US Sec. of Defense, used these phrases in a 2002 press conference. He was warning of the vastly under-appreciated dangers associated with the latter category. The above chart is a tongue-in-cheek effort to debunk the common belief that we possess sufficient information to know what is coming in our social, political and financial futures. The truth is we are all feeling our way forward in a dark room hoping to avoid falling into an open pit. Many think that because they read newspapers, watch the "news" on TV, subscribe to a financial publication or two, and have read an investment or political treatise they are well prepared for what is to come. However, we learn on a daily basis that much of that information is unreliable (e.g., employment and CPI data) and some is utterly false. There is no source of information that tells us with any level of ce...