Benoit Mandelbrot

The father of fractals has died age 85. An astonishingly intelligent man.

Something he said, which has somehow got under my skin is reported in a BBC article "Mandelbrot was also highly critical of the world banking system, arguing the economic model it used was unable to cope with its own complexity."

It makes me feel very uneasy and I have an intuitive sense that he predicted something significant. It somehow reinforces my belief that cash should be stored in gold under the bed and ploughed into property ownership and not invested into pensions and stocks. Anything that is essentially not 'real' worries me. Somewhat hypocritical of me, given I don't own many things and all my money is in banks - intending to all be spent this year however, I might add.

For further information read Mandelbrot's book 'The Fractal Geometry of Nature' published in 1982. I haven't yet read it in its entirety and plan to purchase it.

Something that also pops to mind, relating to the ridiculousness of money and finances, is the book 'Fooled by Randomness - the hidden role of chance and life in the markets.' Now forgive me if I am wrong, but what I took from this book is that the whole world seems to revolve around a financial illusion that is unsustainable.

Now I shall go away and ponder these two seemingly unrelated things and work out what I really think.