Dave Collum's 2022 Year In Review, Part 1: All Roads Lead To Ukraine

This Year in Review is brought to you by Pfizer, FTX, and Raytheon...

Every year, David Collum writes a detailed “Year in Review” synopsis full of keen perspective and plenty of wit. This year’s is no exception, with Dave striking again in his usually poignant and delightfully acerbic way.

To download Part 1 as a pdf, click here: 2022 Year in Review: All Roads Lead to Ukraine.

Introduction

Every year, I write an annual survey of what happened in the world. After posting at Peak Prosperity, it gets a bump from the putative commies at Zerohedge1,2,3,4 who I read religiously. (I have topped over 60 cameo appearances at Zerohedge, consistent with getting booted off Twitter four times.) Why do I write it? My best answer is that you do not understand something until you have written your ideas down coherently. I am also trying to figure out who keeps yelling “Beetlejuice!”

Write as often as possible, not with the idea at once of getting into print, but as if you were learning an instrument.

~ J. B. Priestley, English novelist

 

I break every rule of blog marketing. Nobody writes one gigantic blog a year, but it makes the rounds. It is onerous and exhausting, especially since I must necessarily procrastinate up to the deadline.

2022: The Year I spent reading Dave Collum’s 2021 Year In Review.

~ Commenter

 

Most years, I write what I can and then wrap it. In 2021, however, I had a primal drive to cover the usual stuff plus two topics that do not lend themselves to abbreviation: the Covid pandemic and rising global authoritarianism. Many are now realizing that the former is a manifestation of the latter. While I may not have been correct I had to get it right…if that makes any sense. Like so many young athletes in 2021, I left it all on the field. I uploaded it too demoralized and depressed to even send it to friends, confidants, and family.

The peeing was special.

~ David Einhorn

 

Diehards found it anyway and reached out with comments. Two I call good friends had diametric views that I will take the liberty of paraphrasing. Sitting on one shoulder was Tony Deden, founder of Edelweiss Holdings based in Switzerland and a saint, who sensed my pain and urged me to stop writing. He went beyond the pale by inviting me to detox in his chalet in the Swiss Alps or on his 25-acre strawberry farm on Crete. I had to pass because traveling is hard on the family.

OK, Dave, but what is that peeing thing about? Well, I was scheduled to host David and his lovely girlfriend, Natalie, for a late dinner on a Thursday night at my house. I answered the door in my bathrobe, they had horrified looks, and I exclaimed, “Fuck. It’s Thursday?” We got takeout, and all was fine, even after my sweet little Boston Terrier puppy, Fiona, pissed on Natalie. That, dear friends, is how you treat financial royalty!