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Yearly Archives: 2015

The Expectations Game

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Investment is a tricky thing. You put up a lot of money in the expectation that you’ll have a small return year over year. Currently, the expected rate of return is historically small in the developed world, on the order of a few percent. It has to be weighed against the risk that the initial investment will never be paid back, winding up in default.

The slowdown in the global economy is not actually a decline in output all over the world, but a pause in the rate of growth. It wasn’t expected, either, which is the real problem. The developed world is largely stagnant, save some hope in the US for better times ahead. The developing world need to catch up, but appears to be taking a breather after a tremendous run.

As we consider the next few years and the potential for a genuine boom ahead, it is becoming clearer that we aren’t ready for anything more than muddling through until there is a reckoning and a realization of how the next economy will work – for everyone. That will take some patience and public investment all over the world.

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A Slippery Commodity

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Oil is the most traded and shipped commodity in the world, amounting to a total of 90M bbl per day total production – 33B bbl per year or nearly $1.5T even at today’s low price. There is nothing more critical to a developed or developing economy than to keep things moving, which is to say this vast ocean of oil is critical to the economy as we know it today.

You’d think with such a steady supply and critical demand that the price would naturally stabilize according to the natural laws of supply and demand. Apparently, oil greased its way through that semester of economics.

Where will the price of oil go from the decades-long low of $45 per bbl that it is today? The short answer is that no one knows. The long answer is that anyone who hasn’t been cashed out of the game is betting that it has to go higher, but no one know when or how high.

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Lift Every Voice & Sing

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A celebration to start Black History Month

Our third grade class filed under the concrete breezeways that loosely connected the classrooms of Coral Reef Elementary, past the Seagrape tree at the end of the open courtyard, and into the big cafeteria.  It was the only space large enough to hold all the energy of so many kids, cooled only by tall jalousie windows that caught the breezes off Biscayne Bay.  The air inside was heavy and anxious, and just like nearly everything in Florida it could be oppressive if you let it get to you.  But we kids just took it in and made it exciting.  This was our music class, the time when we could bubble our energy in a new song taught to us on the tired piano by Mr. Michaels.

Lift every voice and sing, till earth and Heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;

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Hot Center to a Cold Storm

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If you can think of two things no one would like to do in Russia at the end of January, standing around in a line and fighting a war come to mind pretty easily. But that’s exactly what seems to be in the cards for far too many Russians as the Ukraine and economic crises continue howling like a bitter wind that never ceases.

The acceleration of both appears to be assured right now, especially if the West continues to link aggression in Ukraine with more economic sanctions – which at this point will have to be severe to be considered “new”. The new Cold War is definitely on, but there are no assurances that it will continue to be cold much after the freeze of midwinter.

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A Tale of Two Classes

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The stock market is tanking. It has to bode poorly for the economy, yes?

If we’ve learned one thing over the past six years, it’s that what is good for investors is not necessarily good for workers – and vice versa. As Herman Miller, an accountant friend of the family told me as a child, “Never forget that the stock market is only a market for stocks.”

So what is the future for stocks? In the short term, not good. For workers? That may be a better story. And if the fortunes of these two classes cross each other it’ll be the story of this year as the ups and downs and devilish details read something like a novel.

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