David Stockman offers a good risk overview and summary in this clip. When will reality reprice financial markets? That is the multi-trillion dollar question. All policy efforts have been focused to date on temporary extend and pretend ideas, none so far, on the cures.
The global economy is in a downward spiral. Former OMB director David Stockman on the economy, stocks & the Fed. Here is a direct video link.
As renewable energy technologies accelerate and the world shifts towards them, status quo energy producers have increasingly been taken by surprise. A couple of years back, Saudi ministers were publicly asking at climate change summits: “what about us? how will we make money?” It seems they are finally wising up. Evolve or die. Places like Canada need to do likewise. See Saudi Arabia sees day when nation exports gigawatts:
Saudi Arabia’s oil minister predicted an eventual end to the nation’s fossil fuel exports, anticipating instead the day the world’s largest crude exporter will sell solar power.
“In Saudi Arabia we recognize that eventually, one of these days, we’re not going to need fossil fuels,” Ali Al-Naimi said at a climate conference in Paris on Thursday. “I don’t know when — 2040, 2050 or thereafter. So we have embarked on a program to develop solar energy.
Given the accelerating speed of change in this area today, I think most are dramatically underestimating how quickly the world is evolving away from fossil fuels. Not for the environmental and health benefits so much (although those are huge) but for the enormous economic savings involved. The need to waste less and save more demands greater efficiencies.
Ever noticed how many people are walking around with sugary drinks in their hands?
The picture below gives a sense of the sugar drug being consumed in each. Then there are all the sugar-heavy coffee concoctions people are hooked on as well.
The health costs are astronomical, especially for our next generations. See: CDC, health, youth obesity facts:
- Childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years. In 2012, more than one third of children and adolescents were overweight or obese.
- Children and adolescents who are obese are at greater risk for diabetes, bone and joint problems, sleep apnea, and social and psychological problems such as stigmatization and poor self-esteem.
- Children and adolescents who are obese are likely to be obese as adults and are therefore more at risk for adult health problems such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, several types of cancer, and osteoarthritis.
Cory’s Chart Corner
Wildly asymmetric and unsustainable.
BREAKING: The wealthiest 1% of US earners now own 50.1% of US equity and mutual fund holdings.
To put this into perspective, their ownership stood at 40.1% in 1990 and 39.6% in 2001.
At the same time, the next 9% wealthiest households own 37.3%, and the middle 40% own just
