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In 1993, thousands of investors around the world opened letters from Lloyd’s of London demanding sums that didn’t seem real. £300,000. £1 million. £3 million. Not money they invested — money they owed.

Doctors, farmers, aristocrats, retirees… entire families financially erased overnight.

In this episode of The Timeless Investor Show, I break down one of the greatest financial catastrophes in modern history — the Lloyd’s Disaster — where 34,000 individuals were ruined by a perfect storm of hidden liabilities, insider knowledge, and a 300-year-old system that finally buckled under its own complexity.

You’ll learn:

• How the Lloyd’s underwriting system really worked
• Why insiders saw the asbestos time bomb coming decades in advance
• The LMX Spiral: the financial snake eating its own tail
• How social proof and exclusivity trapped thousands of wealthy investors
• Why this same pattern is unfolding again today in real estate, private credit, and alternative investments
• How to protect yourself from hidden tail risk and complexity traps

This isn’t just a historical breakdown.
It’s a blueprint for avoiding the next great financial wipeout.

If you invest in real estate, private credit, insurance, syndications, funds, or any alternative assets — this story is essential.

Think well. Act wisely. Build something timeless.

- Arie van Gemeren, CFA

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In 2005, Sean Dempsey tried to buy a tiny video startup on behalf of Google.
The founders laughed him off.

Eighteen months later, Google paid $1.65 billion for that same company… and the entire industry mocked the decision. Analysts called it reckless. Wall Street rolled its eyes.

Today, that acquisition is worth over $300 billion.

In this episode, Sean — now co-founder of Merus Capital and an investor in multiple unicorns — breaks down the real story behind the YouTube deal and the deeper lessons it reveals for founders and investors:

We get into:

• Why the best investors change their minds faster than everyone else
• How to update your beliefs when the data shifts
• Pattern recognition vs. prediction
• Why humility compounds longer than “genius”
• The mental models that separate long-term winners from one-cycle blowups
• Lessons Sean carried into building Merus Capital and delivering 4.2x+ fund multiples

If you care about decision-making, inflection points, and developing an investor’s mindset, this conversation is a masterclass.

👉 Watch the full interview on YouTube here
👉 Follow for more conversations on real estate, investing, and building enduring wealth

Subscribe to the Timeless Investor Newsletter for our long-form content.

Follow the Timeless Investor Show if you want to hear more of our podcast content.

Get your own copy of Timeless Wealth: Real Estate Through the Ages.

If you want to learn about new investment opportunities through Lombard Equities Group (accredited investors only), please reach out here.

Think Well. Act Wisely. Build Something Timeless.

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In 1790, revolutionary France thought it had solved its financial crisis by printing a new kind of paper money — the Assignat — backed by confiscated church land.

Within five years, it destroyed the French economy, vaporized the middle class, and set the stage for dictatorship.

In this episode, Arie Van Gemeren breaks down the world’s first great fiat collapse — how the Assignat began as “secured money” and ended as worthless paper — and what it teaches investors about modern inflation, asset bubbles, and political denial.

You’ll learn:
• How the Assignat was backed by land — and why that didn’t save it
• The psychology of inflation and why every regime thinks “this time is different”
• Why all fiat systems eventually converge toward debasement
• How to position yourself in real assets before the next currency reset

History doesn’t repeat — it just changes costume. The Assignat collapse is the blueprint for every modern inflation crisis.

🔔 Subscribe to The Timeless Investor Show for weekly deep dives into history, money, and the timeless principles of wealth.

#TheTimelessInvestor #Assignat #FrenchRevolution #Inflation #FiatMoney #HistoryOfMoney #ArieVanGemeren #RealAssets #WealthPreservation #Investing

Subscribe to the Timeless Investor Newsletter for our long-form content.

Follow the Timeless Investor Show if you want to hear more of our podcast content.

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In October 1907, the U.S. banking system imploded overnight.
Knickerbocker Trust collapsed, panic spread through New York, and the entire American economy teetered on the edge of destruction.

Only one man could stop it—J.P. Morgan, a private citizen wealthier than the U.S. Treasury.
For three weeks, Morgan personally decided which banks lived and which died, locking financiers in his library until they agreed to save the system.

From the ashes of that crisis came something even more powerful: the Federal Reserve. Conceived in secret on Jekyll Island by seven men representing one quarter of the world’s wealth, the Fed was designed to stabilize the system—but it also concentrated control over money like never before.

In this episode, Arie Van Gemeren explores:

• How the Panic of 1907 exposed the fragility of the U.S. financial system
• The secret Jekyll Island meeting that created the Federal Reserve
• How crises always consolidate power—and how investors can use that pattern to their advantage
• Timeless lessons on liquidity, leverage, and positioning for the next downturn

This is The Timeless Investor Show—where history, finance, and timeless wisdom converge.

Subscribe to the Timeless Investor Newsletter for our long-form content.

Follow the Timeless Investor Show if you want to hear more of our podcast content.

Get your own copy of Timeless Wealth: Real Estate Through the Ages.

If you want to learn about new investment opportunities through Lombard Equities Group (accredited investors only), please reach out here.

Think Well. Act Wisely. Build Something Timeless.

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In 1932, the world’s richest man pulled the trigger that ended an empire.
Ivar Kruger, known as The Match King, controlled ¾ of the world’s match production, financed governments across Europe, and was hailed as the “savior of Europe.” But behind the empire was one of the greatest financial frauds in history—$6 billion (2024 value) in forged bonds, fake subsidiaries, and Ponzi-style leverage.

In this episode of The Timeless Investor Show, host Arie Van Gemeren, real-estate fund manager and financial historian, unpacks how Kruger’s empire rose and collapsed—and why his methods still echo today in FTX, Theranos, WeWork, and Madoff.

You’ll learn:

• How complexity hides deception and why simplicity is a safeguard.
• Why charisma and opacity are a deadly mix for investors.
• How leverage magnifies fraud and turns lies into catastrophe.
• The timeless red flags that can protect your portfolio.

📚 Inspired by true history, this is part of the Timeless Greed series—stories of financial fraud, manipulation, and the recurring patterns that shape markets and human behavior.

🔗 Subscribe to the newsletter → https://thetimelessinvestor.substack.com

🎧 More episodes → The Timeless Investor Show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts & YouTube
💬 Follow Arie on LinkedIn → https://linkedin.com/in/arievangemeren

#IvarKruger #FinancialHistory #Fraud #PonziScheme #TimelessInvestor #InvestingLessons #FinancePodcast #EconomicHistory #WeWork #FTX #Theranos #Madoff #GreatDepression

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April 12th, 1204 AD. A 97-year-old blind man led the assault on Constantinople—the richest city on earth—and walked away with three-eighths of an empire. His name was Enrico Dandolo, Doge of Venice. And what happened next changed the course of Western history.

This is the story of how Venice—built on mud, wooden stakes, and 118 swampy islands—became the wealthiest trading empire in medieval history. How they lasted over 1,000 years as an independent republic. How they controlled Mediterranean trade for 600+ years. And how they invented mass production six centuries before Henry Ford.

Venice didn't conquer territory. They conquered trade routes. They didn't build armies. They built the Venetian Arsenal—the world's first factory—which could produce a fully equipped warship in a single day. When King Henry III of France visited in 1574, Arsenal workers built an entire combat-ready warship during his lunch just to flex.

But Venice's real genius was understanding that wealth isn't built on land—it's built on controlling what flows across it. Infrastructure. Capital. Network effects. Financial innovation. Information advantage.

In this episode, we explore:

• How Venice's geographic weakness became their strategic strength
• The Venetian Arsenal's assembly line production (1104 AD)
• Why vertical integration created an unbeatable cost advantage
• The 1204 Sack of Constantinople and strategic infrastructure acquisition
• How Vasco da Gama's 1498 voyage destroyed Venice's monopoly overnight
• 8 investing lessons for building wealth that lasts

If you're a real estate investor, business builder, or anyone thinking long-term about wealth creation, Venice offers a masterclass in competitive advantage, infrastructure control, and what happens when your moat disappears.

Subscribe to The Timeless Investor for weekly deep dives into the builders, empires, and timeless principles that create lasting wealth.

Subscribe to the Timeless Investor Newsletter for our long-form content.

Follow the Timeless Investor Show if you want to hear more of our podcast content.

Get your own copy of Timeless Wealth: Real Estate Through the Ages.

If you want to learn about new investment opportunities through Lombard Equities Group (accredited investors only), please reach out here.

Think Well. Act Wisely. Build Something Timeless.

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What if China had a 100-year head start on European colonial dominance—and threw it away?

In 1405, nearly a century before Columbus, Chinese Admiral Zheng He commanded 317 ships and 27,800 men. His fleet was the largest in human history. His flagship was five times bigger than the Santa Maria. He reached East Africa, mapped the Indian Ocean, and built trade networks across three continents.

Then, within years of his death, bureaucrats burned the maps, dismantled the ships, and made it illegal to build ocean-going vessels. Europeans who came later weren't discovering new routes—they were following maps China had abandoned.

This is the story of Zheng He: a slave who rose to command the greatest fleet in history, built infrastructure that should have lasted centuries, and watched it all get destroyed by the very people he served.

In this episode, we explore six timeless investing lessons from Zheng He's treasure fleet:

• First-mover advantage compounds (but only if you maintain it)
• Scale changes the nature of negotiations
• Trade beats conquest—better economics, sustainable relationships
• Information asymmetry is alpha
• Systems outlast individuals (if you let them)
• Political risk can destroy everything you build

Whether you're a real estate investor, private equity professional, or building generational wealth, Zheng He's story reveals what separates wealth that compounds from wealth that dissipates.

This is part of our Builders Series—exploring great builders of past and present to make ourselves better investors and more understanding of timeless principles.

Subscribe to the Timeless Investor Newsletter for our long-form content.

Follow the Timeless Investor Show if you want to hear more of our podcast content.

Get your own copy of Timeless Wealth: Real Estate Through the Ages.

If you want to learn about new investment opportunities through Lombard Equities Group (accredited investors only), please reach out here.

Think Well. Act Wisely. Build Something Timeless.

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December 27, 1772. Clifford & Co.—one of Europe's most prestigious banking houses—shuts its doors with nearly $1 billion in liabilities (in today's money). Within weeks, the contagion spreads: 20 banks collapse across Amsterdam, London, Hamburg, and beyond. The world's first global financial crisis.

The culprit? Mortgage-backed securities on Caribbean plantations, marketed as "safe and stable" to Dutch middle-class investors who trusted the reputation of shadow banks operating outside any regulation.

In 2025, history is rhyming.

BlackRock, Apollo, State Street, and KKR are packaging private credit for Main Street investors using identical structures, promises, and marketing language. The SEC just loosened restrictions. Your 401(k) provider will likely offer it soon. And credit rating agencies are already sounding alarms.

This episode breaks down:

• How Amsterdam's shadow banks created negotiaties—pooled plantation loans with zero transparency
• Why maturity mismatches (short-term liquidity promises on long-term illiquid assets) always end the same way
• The information asymmetry that benefits insiders and destroys retail investors
• What Alexander Fordyce's £300,000 loss triggered across three continents
• The 6 structural flaws of 1772 that exist in modern private credit
• What Moody's warned about in June 2025 (spoiler: systemic consequences)

Critical Modern Parallels: The same reputation-based investing. The same opacity. The same carry trade dynamics. The same maturity mismatches. The same "this time is different" mentality.

Except now it's being sold to your retirement account.

Key Takeaways:

• If something promises high returns + low risk + low volatility, at least one of those is false
• Ask these questions before investing: What are the actual companies? How leveraged? What happens in a redemption freeze? How are assets valued?
• The investors who survive crises aren't the ones maximizing returns during booms—they're the ones who survive busts
• When Wall Street packages something for retail, it's often because institutional money is getting cautious

Episode Resources:

• Full show notes with sources at thetimelessinvestor.com
• Subscribe to The Timeless Investor newsletter for deep dives into financial history
• Previous episode: Overend, Gurney & The Panic of 1866

About The Timeless Investor Show: Real estate fund manager and financial historian Arie van Gemeren explores the wreckage of financial catastrophes past and present, extracting timeless lessons for modern builders and investors. Because the best way to navigate the future is to understand the patterns of the past.

Think well. Act wisely. Build something timeless.

Episode Length: ~34 minutes

Topics: Financial History, Private Credit, Shadow Banking, Investment Strategy, Retirement Planning, Financial Crisis, Wealth Preservation, Amsterdam 1772, M

Subscribe to the Timeless Investor Newsletter for our long-form content.

Follow the Timeless Investor Show if you want to hear more of our podcast content.

Get your own copy of Timeless Wealth: Real Estate Through the Ages.

If you want to learn about new investment opportunities through Lombard Equities Group (accredited investors only), please reach out here.

Think Well. Act Wisely. Build Something Timeless.