Hormegeddon by Bill Bonner

Hormegeddon by Bill Bonner

Hormegeddon is the term coined by entrepreneur and New York Times Bestselling Author Bill Bonner to describe what happens when you get too much of a good thing in the sphere of public policy, economics and business. Simply put, it ends in disaster.

Drawing on stories and examples from throughout modern political history-from Napoleon's invasion of Russia to the impending collapse of the American healthcare system, from the outbreak of WWII and the fall of the Third Reich to the 21st century War on Terror, from the Great Recession to the sovereign debt crisis-Bonner pursues a modest ambition: to understand what goes wrong.

History is not a clean yarn spun by its victors. It is a long tale of things that went FUBAR-debacles, disasters, and catastrophes. That each disaster carries with it a warning is what makes it useful to study. For instance, if the architect of a great ship tells you that 'not even God himself could sink this ship, ' you should take the next boat. If the stock market is selling at 20 times earnings and all the expert analysts urge you to 'get in' because you 'can't lose'-it's time to get out

Similarly, public policy disasters are what you get when well meaning people with this same Titanic degree of certitude apply rational, small-scale problem-solving logic to inappropriately large scale planning. First, you get a declining rate of return on your investment (of time or resources) until you hit zero. Then, if you keep going through the zero floor-and you always keep going-you get a disaster.

The problem is, these disasters cannot be stopped by well-informed smart people with good intentions, because they are the people who cause them in the first place.

From the mind of Bill Bonner comes Hormegeddon, a phenomenon that occurs when a small dose of something produces a favorable result, but if you increase the dosage, the results end in disaster. The same applies when the world gets too much of a good thing in public policy, economics, and business. Drawing on examples throughout modern political history, Bonner brings context and understanding to this largely ignored and anonymous phenomenon.

BILL BONNER is President and CEO of Agora Publishing, one of the world's largest financial newsletter companies. He is the creator of the Daily Reckoning, a financial newsletter with more than 540,000 readers of six different global daily editions, including French and German. Bonner is coauthor of the international bestsellers Financial Reckoning Day and Empire of Debt with Addison Wiggin, as well as Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets (coauthored with Lila Rajiva), the New York Times bestseller. In 2011, he wrote Dice Have No Memory: Big Bets and Bad Economics from Paris to the Pampas. He files his Daily Reckoning dispatches from a ranch in Argentina, the home office in Maryland, various joint ventures, and other hot spots around the globe.

WILL BONNER is Executive Director of the Bonner & Partners Family Office, an independent estate planning and investment research group. Will got his start working in the mailroom of the family business, Agora, at age eleven. Later, he helped launch, and served as CEO of Early to Rise, a leading self-improvement publishing business. In 2007, he opened Agora's South American office in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and set up a successful business partnership that is one of the largest investment research and education companies publishing in Spanish. He is a graduate of St. John's College's Great Books program, earning a double major in philosophy and mathematics. Bonner lives with his wife and two children in Delray Beach, Florida. He's the eldest of Bill's six children.