Juggling Dynamite

Boots (tires) on the ground…

The freight industry has long been thought of the circulatory system of the economy. It’s how the things bought & sold through commerce get from point A to point B in the real world. Historically, when trucking freight loads diminish, it’s usually correlated with a weakening economy. And if it gets bad enough, a recession. Today’s guest is Craig Fuller of Freightwaves, price reporting agency (PRA) focused on the global freight market and the leading provider of high-frequency data for the global supply chain. He recently released a prediction that the US freight trucking industry is about to experience “the largest capacity purge in history.”  We’ll ask him what that means for the economy, as well as the hundreds of thousands of workers he expects to be impacted by it. Here is a direct video link.

Four decades of policies that boosted spending and steadily reduced tax rates by papering over deficits with asset bubbles are moving toward inevitable restructuring. Investment horizons and risk tolerance steadily shrink with age. But thanks to another spate of irrational exuberance, Boomers, now aged 61 to 79, face capital risk that has rarely been higher, while return prospects have rarely been lower. The retirement expectations of the masses are ripe for disappointment.

Around the world, market forces – low interest rates, longer lives, workers changing jobs – are testing underfunded pension plans. We explore how the world should rethink financial security for aging populations. The Netherlands offers one solution by taking on more risk for younger populations. Economist Teresa Ghilarducci explains why countries like the US have kicked the can down the road, while Dutch experts Adrian Rikjen and Stan Veuger highlight how a pivot toward defined contributions could make the system sustainable.  Here is a direct video link.

Solving plastic pollution is near the top of today’s to-do list.

Have We Finally Solved The Plastic Problem? What if every piece of plastic waste, like bottles, bags, even clothes, could be rebuilt from scratch, no sorting required? Not just melted and reshaped, but broken down to pure chemical building blocks and made new again. That’s what a new wave of recycling tech promises. Northwestern University has built a catalyst that can zero in on a single type of plastic in mixed waste and break it down. No sorting, no problem. In South Korea, a 2,000°C hydrogen plasma torch is cracking mixed plastics in milliseconds, turning them into valuable building blocks for brand-new plastics. And in France, an enzymatic recycling plant is transforming previously unrecyclable polyester textiles back into virgin-quality plastic feedstock. We’ve been sold the recycling dream for decades, but the reality? Most plastic still ends up in landfills or the ocean. Could these breakthroughs finally turn recycling from a marketing lie into a working reality? Here is a direct video link.