The Man Card
“Excuse me Sir, can I see your Man Card?”
The stone-faced look of the security guard at Dallas Fort Worth Airport gave nothing away and, after two days of celebrating John Mauldin’s 60th, my brain was probably operating somewhat below full capacity.
“I need to see your Man Card Sir”.
Couldn’t he just go away, I thought to myself, not really sure how to deal with the situation. Suddenly his face cracked wide open and in the broadest possible Texas drawl he said:
“With those pink socks on Sir, I need to make sure you are a man”.
Welcome to Dallas!
The highlight of the weekend was a two hour roundtable discussion on Saturday afternoon where John had asked 15 of his friends and business associates to share with the group what their fears and hopes were for the next 15-20 years. I duly noted that the issues on the minds of our American friends are not at all dissimilar to what we worry about in Europe – our children’s welfare, unemployment, immigration, racism, the impact of technology and the aging of our society to mention but a few.
This month’s letter is about demographics and is the second in our series about major trends defining the future of the world we live in. Last month I wrote about the energy outlook, and I had an unusually high number of emails commenting on the letter. Many of them made the point that the world is in better shape than I seem to think, even if oil supplies are dwindling, as natural gas reserves are ample. We just need to switch source. Whilst I don’t disagree that natural gas seems the way forward, one should not underestimate the task ahead of us. About 2/3 of all oil is used for transportation purposes and it is an enormous task to reduce our oil dependency. It will take many, many years and cost gigantic sums of money.
It is the banks, Stupid!
Back to this month’s topic - in the financial press, there has been no shortage of attempts to apportion blame for the credit crisis. Disregarding the more obvious finger-pointing (it is the banks, stupid!), there seems to be a growing acknowledgement that large imbalances in the global economy are to blame for the current mess.
Put differently,…
