Thoughts from the Frontline

The annual whirlwind is over. SIC was once again a mental overload. This year our virtual schedule spread it over almost two weeks, which was actually nice. The in-between days let the ideas settle a bit before the firehose opened again. Fifty powerful, thoughtful speakers are a lot to absorb.

The SIC was in full swing this week. I am finishing this on Friday morning, a few hours before the start of the last official day and then a “Plus Day” on Tuesday. My mind is swimming with new connections and revelations.

We’re midway through the SIC 2021, and as I expected, it’s shaping up to be the biggest and best Strategic Investment Conference I’ve ever hosted. So far, all of our presenters and panelists have given stellar performances... and attendees seem to agree with that assessment.

We did the first Strategic Investment Conference 18 years ago. I remember one of the partners in the firm that cohosted the event telling me as I walked up to the stage, “John, it doesn’t get any better than this. Don’t screw it up.”

In economic forecasting, reality is usually somewhere between the extremes. The best-case and worst-case rarely happen. That’s why, when they do happen, markets react so quickly to the “missed expectations.”

A tsunami is a wall of water that wipes out everything in its path, typically caused by earthquakes. But first, the water actually disappears from the usual shoreline, leaving land where there should be sea.

Recently I searched the Thoughts from the Frontline archives to see how often I used the word “bubble.” It was more than I thought, and I wasn’t quoting Don Ho. The bubbles I talked about were anything but tiny. Most of them subsequently popped, too.

Big economic storms are rare and usually end quickly, but they tend to have long-lasting effects. Today I want to talk about a storm 50 years ago that still affects us now. Important things happened in the 1970s.

Modern technology is amazing but our ancient forebears built some wondrous things, too. Long-ago historians organized them into “Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.” (Of course, their “world” was the Mediterranean and Middle East. Other wonders existed elsewhere.)

I have been writing for many years that the US in particular and the Western “developed” world in general were approaching a time where none of our choices would be good.

Broken lines, broken strings, Broken threads, broken springs, Broken idols, broken heads, People sleeping in broken beds —Bob Dylan, “Everything is Broken” from the album Oh Mercy, 1989