Juggling Dynamite

As old economy proponents ramble on about when they hope oil will rebound and save corporate profits–others are looking at the future not the past. Want to tap mammoth demand: focus on investments to increase efficiency in order to use less of everything. Focus on renewable energy sources pumped into continental smart grids and electric vehicles. Want scale? Want good jobs? The growth opportunities in these areas are massive and global.

Beth Comstock, vice chair at General Electric, explains the company’s clean energy project “Current” that helps partner companies better manage energy consumption and the use of the internet of things to spread energy efficiency. Here is a direct video link.

The maker of electric cars and energy-storage devices had 1,656 job openings posted as of Monday afternoon. Among them: a radar engineer with one to three years of experience with automotive radar systems; a manager to establish a service operation in Mexico City; product specialists in cities from Amsterdam and Milan to Shanghai and Chengdu. Here is a direct video link.

Lakshman Achuthan, co-founder at ECRI, Berkeley Professor Barry Eichengreen, and Brian Angerame, portfolio manager at Clearbridge Investments, discuss how the U.S. dollar and global politics play into the downward slide of commodities prices. Here is a direct video link.

The demand bust playing out today was purchased by the credit driven boom which spurred over-capacity and oversupply while destroying purchasing power under the weight of record debt.  This global slump has been well earned through reckless policies.  Here is a direct video link.

As the commodity drubbing continues today, the Canadian dollar index has made a fresh 52 week low and is now at levels not seen since 2003-05.

The chart here since 1981 offers a helpful long-term view.  Closing below .75 last Friday, and below .74 today, the new test band is the .70-.75 range where the loonie bottomed in prior cycles (see yellow box below).

However, now at the end of the late great commodity super cycle of 2001-11, and with the price of crude still falling and Canada’s housing and household credit bubble yet to deflate, a return into the red zone where the loonie submerged 1998-2003 cannot be ruled out.