Our Suicide is Painless

Yesterday was an unusual day filled with seemingly inane chores that had to be done.  I was arriving back home in the afternoon with groceries for guests and planned to turn the hay.   I drove past a field adjacent to our where a tractor was spraying and turned in to the drive to be greeted …
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Asset prices down, money chasing security. What’s the problem?

While there has been enthusiasm for a recovering global economy, optimism is being dampened by market movements. There are some fundamental concerns about projected consumption levels and production costs. There are a number of geopolitical risks festering around the world: The strife in Hong Kong is being calmed by force.  That will be re-assuring now, …
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Most big companies don’t care about sustainability.

Only 3% of the world’s largest companies report on  the first generation of sustainability indicators according to Corporate Knights report on Trends in Sustainability Disclosure. The seven indicators are: employee turnover, energy, greenhouse gases (GHGs), lost-time injury rate, payroll, waste and water.  Sadly, but unsurprisingly, Corporate Knights recommends mandatory disclosure because voluntary disclosure is plainly …
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US downgrade – the world is beginning to wake up

So S&P, one of the rating agencies that fuelled the bubble and bust, has downgraded US credit rating.  Its about time.  Not that the US isn’t wonderful, but its economic profligacy expanded to new levels in the last decade and the culture is becoming one of gratuitous consumption at the cost of future earnings. The …
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Bankers crashed the economy.

It wasn’t just bankers, we all played a part.  But top of the list of immoral players are fiduciaries.  The US Senate Subcommittee investigating the financial crash of 2007/8 highlighted emails by top investment bankers who were short selling the mortgage security market as it declined, while publicly obfuscating the hole in the financial system.  …
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‘The bellboys are handing out stock tips in the lifts’

Are markets reaching bubble proportions? Regular readers of our world of money blog know how I feel. That’s not to say you can’t make money in a bubble. Or that valuations won’t be maintained. But I just can’t get comfortable with the massive hole in the financial system on one hand and the buoyancy of …
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Energy shown to be the most important issue in world’s biggest company ranking.

The latest annual survey of the largest companies by Fortune magazine confirms the dominance of oil companies, with 7 in the top 10, despite the steep drop in crude prices in the past year. This isn’t surprising because we realise the unnatural dependence on oil that humanity has nurtured over the past century.  It would …
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12 year lows are rare

I don’t think that the economic contraction has ended yet, but there are signs of a bottoming out of some markets. The US market has been cleaning itself out for six months, though moral hazard remains as do some big skeletons (like the Madoff, Stanford …). The Fed Chairman is concerned about stagflation too. But …
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