For the global investor and lender, it will always be a case of caveat-emptor, or knowing what you’re paying for. If you to pay too much, or allocate too much capital toward something or someone, you’re committing a risk-taking mistake a priori. Your envisioned “margin” or the return is much more at risk than you […]
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What Seems to Work
The geopolitical and the merely political, the credit-worthy and the less so, all reflect human behavior. Human nature often trumps planning, but sound institutions (when they’re present) facilitate positive sum outcomes and the behaviors that engender those outcomes. And that’s important: positive outcomes are mutually beneficial – no one is left holding the short end […]
Bonds Undone, Maybe
Recent rating agency analysis cites negative secular trends in place. Whether fiscal ends can meet will become more an open-ended question as the next decades unfold. Global risk takers should take heed as fiscal circumstances become straitened, presenting greater levels of event and duration risk for fixed income portfolios. At least that’s what’s implied. Developing […]
Global Work Around
It’s a very globalized world, but it’s good to acknowledge differences. Obdurate human nature being what it is – along with enduring and distinctive institutional, cultural and sovereign expression – means differences will endure. The world is not uniform and working realities contrast, which implies differing levels of risk. This makes due-diligence that much more […]
Elevator Music
It is funny but apt, chaos theory holds that the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings can culminate in a massive storm somewhere else. It is all non-linear and weirdly contingent. Just so, ill-considered policy choices, along with venal decision-making, can unleash the weather-controlling geopolitical whirlwind. Global risk-takers are now contending with the knock-on effects from […]
Mexico at War
The state of Mexico – “so close to the United States, so far from God”, as one old expression has it – presents a due diligence dilemma for risk takers. Belying the nihilism of that old saying, macro numbers generally are quite good. Mexico is also an integral part of the USMCA trade agreement, and […]
The Tumbler Effect
In the US – and elsewhere, too – Covid distemper brought fiscal largesse, a lot of it. Fiat money creation, resulting inflation, and reactive monetary tightening all make for baleful growth and asset price prospects. The “financial surface” – where an asset’s bid and offer meet – has been volatile and may remain so for […]
Lula-Redux
The world continues to turn on its fixed axis, and another populist political leader assumes the executive for a large, dynamic and somewhat unsettled country. At the end of October, Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva was elected President of Brazil, defeating the incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. For Lula – the former metal worker, union organizer and […]
Souffle-State
Dramatic times, it’s said, call for dramatic measures. And so, we’ve seen that happen. The halcyon forty years of the Volcker FED-induced moderating inflation have been supplanted – perhaps due to energy market dislocations, perhaps from fiscal excess and monetary neglect, perhaps from official obtuseness. US inflation now exceeds 8% on a year-over-year basis, and […]