It has been an eventful couple of weeks.
Time is short at the moment, so todays’ post will make comments without directing you to a lot of the underlying data. In other words, we are going to mainly consider my thoughts and judgements as opposed to facts and analysis.
There is an enormous level of speculation occurring at all levels, in all markets currently. Speculation is supposed to add liquidity to markets (by having more participants offering to buy and sell securities at different levels at any one time) and increase price discovery (the process whereby the ‘true’ price is associated with a particular asset). However, this speculation is being undertaken in an arena where fear and greed have become polar teams into which most market participants are evolving. There does not seem to be a middle ground any more.
And so it is reasonable at this point in time to simply pause, and ponder for a while on just what is going on that the global economy and political system can be so screwed up?
I have my own opinions, and as you know i am not usually shy in sharing them. However, today we are going to have a listen to the opinion of folks with far greater research reach and depth than is available to solitary moi. Here is a link to a video interview from the Stratfor website. The analysts at this website take a truly global view of political, economic and military issues. I have been hugely impressed at the ability of its correspondents to distill highly complex issues into concise yet accurate dissertations.
I’d be interested in any comments on how accurate or not you think this analysis of the current geopolitical world is.
George Friedman on a Crisis of Political Economy
The video covers key points that agree with my own perceptions of what is happening on the global scale at the moment, and discusses it in a very no-nonsense way. I hope it brings a different perspective to the complete fear and greed dominating discussions at the moment.