Introducing Lizard King – Finance and Economics Correspondent

By way of introduction, my name is Lizard King. I am the new Finance and Economics correspondent for the collective blogging effort of the Living Universe Foundation. As a matter of my credentials to weigh in on these matters I hold an Associates of Applied Science in Accounting, a Bachelors of Business Administration in Economics, and a Masters of Business Administration with a concentration in Finance. I am a little peculiar among my peers in that I retired early on 5OCT2012 at the age of 40. I blog about my trading strategies and the early retirement lifestyle at Financial Velociraptor.

In my short career, I spent most of my time doing close, consolidation, and the preparation of financial statements as required for SEC reporting for huge faceless corporations. I’ve several times been on the corporate insider’s list and have had the displeasure of rubbing elbows with the sort of psychopaths who rise to the C-Suite titles of such companies. Likewise, I’m well versed in the silly little games corporations play and the rampant conflicts of interest that exist in the external auditing framework for public companies.

This misfortune did not however sour me on capitalism. I remain keen on leveraging the power of the markets to preserve the environment and conquer space as a frontier for commerce and habitation. I expect to be the primary cheerleader for promoting capitalism as a solution to humanity’s problems. This may make me unpopular sometimes here at the Living Universe Foundation as the group has become populated with quite a few people who are sour on capitalism. I will not silence their voices and ask only that they do not attempt to restrict my communication in return.

To that end, I’ll be examining individual companies in the green and space industries to evaluate them as potential investment opportunities. It is my sincere hope that more people can leverage capitalism in their personal lives the way I did to become independent of a wage. I believe the world would be a much better (and more profitable) place if there were more people who had the time and resources to explore passion projects. Mine has me blogging for the FIRE community, here at LUF, and busy with the National Space Society, and Moon Society.

When I set a goal to retire in 10 years in August 1998 (I like to say I “failed well”, it took me 14 years), I was heavily influenced by the Millennial Project. It was clear to me at that time that the goals of that ambitious project were unachievable by wage slaves. For that reason, I will also be writing about frugality and how it relates to personal independence with a side benefit of benefiting the ecology of the planet.

I do not though have a singular focus. I hope to also discuss topics of general economic interest here. That might include Universal Basic Income (UBI), Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), blockchain, central bank policy, activities of sovereign wealth funds, and discussions of how capitalism could (and should) work in space.

At any rate, I expect to contribute between 500 to 1,000 words here about once every two weeks. I hope you’ll read and I hope you’ll share vigorously on social media. Sharing and caring and we succeed better when we work as a team to get out the message about ecology and space.

-Lizard King-