To quote from “The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy“:

The concept of sustainability goes far beyond environmental concerns, including aspects such as social justice; intergenerational justice, mental and physical well-being; social, economic, and cultural transformation; and the flourishing of the diversity of life.

About Karl Strobl:

In my working life, I am now COO and co-founder of Praedium Consulting Malta (PCM for short), an Explosive-Remnants-of-War Risk-Management company, which also owns MAT Kosovo, a globally renowned humanitarian mine action and humanitarian EOD school. On the side, I am a board member at several financial and non-financial businesses in Malta,  and I teach, both at University and at private institutions. I used to be in charge of global investment businesses for many years, including global equity trading at Deutsche Bank’s Asset Management Division, structured products globally both at Deutsche Bank and ABN AMRO Bank, and retirement solutions globally. Before then, I was a theoretical particle physicist and applied mathematician, teaching at Sussex University.

I love books (history, philosophy, science, novels, economics), music across the board (world, metal, blues, choral, etc etc), maths, games and game theory, puzzles, and physics.

I studied applied maths in Cambridge (PhD), and theoretical physics at Vanderbilt Univ. (M.S.), and Vienna Technical University.

I still love maths, and actively try to convey insights from complex systems studies, evolutionary game theory, self-organised criticality, extreme value theory, statistical modelling and significance tests, genetic algorithms. and emergence. I spy out everyday mis-uses of statistical results for fun.

For a full profile, visit www.linkedin.com/in/karlstrobl

to get in touch, e-mail me karl.strobl@gmail.com

About the Blog:

I guess like most blogs, this one initially started as an experiment, but the audience quickly grew to a level where I felt I needed it to be more than that. I had started by writing on anything about the dangers I see in the financial and financial-political system, which includes sustainability of government finances under demographic pressures, the environment, inter-generational equity, fiscal stability, longevity, energy, and resources, and the sustainability of the monetary system. Basically, big issues I encountered in my international financial career, which I felt we ignore at our peril.

Still, the most frequent theme is probably sustainability within the financial system, and the approach I like to take is colored by my professional backgrounds as a theoretical physicist and then as a trader: it is often akin to doing a little game theory: trying to understand what everyone’s best strategy is, and how that can have quite interesting and often unintended consequences.

The audience morphed over time: from mostly people who know me from my years in global investment banking and asset management, then more to people who I engaged with in my other profession as financial adviser of individuals and board members of companies. In the last three years, as PCM kept me busy, I have blogged considerably less, and perhaps it’s also fair to say I am no longer as deeply in touch with the issues which motivated me to blog at the beginning as I once was.

It is now just a medium to publish just those thoughts that emerge from the most interesting conversations I have in my daily life.

My main thoughts revolve around the Black Swans, that is the events which happen but nobody expects. What matters is to not get wiped out when the unexpected happens, instead of just trying to get it ‘right’ on most normal days. More important than being ‘right’ in forecasting what’s going to happen, is to be prepared for whatever might happen. Because life is certain to throw things at you which you can’t plan for. You want specific examples? There are plenty, at least one in each blog post 🙂