R.P. Eddy: Don't Ignore The Cassandras

Danny Moses (0:02)

Welcome to the On The Tape Podcast. I'm your host Danny Moses. And whenever I am joined by my fellow Big Short and Substack partners, Porter Collins and Vincent Daniel, we call it a What Are We Doing edition of the On The Tape Podcast. Well, we had that today, and we have a very special and timely guest joining us on the pod. We are thrilled to welcome RP. Eddy, the founder and CEO of Ergo, a global intelligence and advisory firm that provides geopolitical risk analysis, research services, and actionable foresight for investors and government. Ergo's clients include Sovereign Wealth Funds, Global Hedge Funds, Corporations, Governments, and their contacts run wide and deep. Having RP with us today is extremely timely, given the upcoming US midterm elections, the geopolitical tensions around the world, as well as the ever-evolving state of the AI market, and of course, the US fiscal situation and the challenges that lay ahead. R.P.'s book, Warnings, Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes, was published almost a decade ago, and it previewed many of the challenges we are dealing with today. But before we get to RP., Porter, Vinnie, and myself have an exciting announcement. We are partnering with our friends at Clear Street, as they will become our exclusive sponsor, not just for On The Tape, but for our What Are We Doing Contrarians at the Gate sub stack, including both our written product and our weekly podcast, We Call The Friday Night Dirty. We look forward to working with Clear Street on not just sponsored content, but with engagement across their client base through a series of calls and live events that will hopefully provide value to their already sophisticated client base. You will be hearing more about Clear Street in the coming days. But up next is this week's episode of On The Tape. Please enjoy our conversation with RP. Eddy. RP., welcome to On The Tape. But before we get into Ergo's latest research and the topics you are most focused on, maybe a bit more background on Ergo.

And don't tell us too much so that you have to kill us.

But then we can also get into your connection to Porter from your college days at Brown as well.

R.P. Eddy (1:50)

Porter, the super cool kid we all looked up to as the dumb football players as he's headed off to the two Olympics and running around with all the fancy women, that guy.

Danny Moses (2:00)

Yeah, something like that.

R.P. Eddy (2:04)

And by the way, I'm sure you're not going to love this, but we also have you commended Porter for the success of his son, Port, representing the United States at the World Championships in rowing.

Danny Moses (2:13)

Thank you. I appreciate that. Porter is always modest. We have to ask him all those questions all the time.

He will not tell us anything. So I'm glad I can learn that from you, RP.

Vincent Daniel (2:22)

Of quiet excellence, he likes to employ. So yeah, our sons are going to compete against each other.

R.P. Eddy (2:27)

I think it's such a cool story. Yeah. So Ergo was founded 20 years ago to help the, really help the US government try to find a new way to collect intelligence, analyze intelligence and try to see around corners. And so we try to think of ourselves as, as good at intelligence analysts as we can be. And we really like to think about forecasting. And we say that price is the last to know, right? So we want to figure out what's going to happen well before the price.

And that's where we live. So we're 20 years old. We have some fantastic clients. And it's been an absolute joy. I have unbelievable colleagues and partners. And it's been a lot of fun.

Porter Collins (3:05)

You know, before we get into the geopolitics and the elections, and of course, I think one of your best calls is the end of the Pax Americana during Trump 1 That was just an amazing call. You know, first I want to get in to the book, which is right here. You have it in the background there.

There's not many books that can weave in history and current events and be a decade old and still be extremely relevant. I mean, it's just honestly, it's amazing. When I reread it this weekend, it's just amazing. So first, I think let's go in to talk about what a Cassandra is. And I think the, and we'll roll that Cassandra into current events. And let's talk about Fukushima.

And in your book, you have, I think, six or seven Cassandras, one of them, of course, being Meredith Whitney and talking about the Big Short and missing on regulation and warnings, all kinds of stuff. Let's talk about Fukushima. I think that that rolls a little bit into AI and current day politics.