Through the week I listen to at least 90 minutes of Bloomberg radio every day. I became a regular listener when I noticed that they reported the 7/7 bombings in London 30 - 40 minutes before CNN and other outlets had anything helpful to say. I stay because the morning interview show (Bloomberg Surveillance) is often genuinely helpful and smart, even when I disagree with the guest.

This morning, however, I had blood coming out of my ears. It is not what they were saying as they, like every other news outlet talked of BP's "giant" oil strike in the Gulf of Mexico, it what was being left unsaid.

The story as told in the Financial Times

BP, the UK energy group, has discovered a “giant” oilfield in the Gulf of Mexico that shows a new frontier opening up for US oil production.

The Tiber field, in more than 1,200m of water about 250...

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Globalizations come and go just like other economic bubbles. They just inflate at a much slower rate, often over decades or centuries, so they become an even greater ingrained expectation than other bubbles. The deflation can be as quick as the outbreak of the First World War or as drawn out as the death of the Roman Empire. Like any bubble, however, the way down is as dislocating as the way up is infatuating.

In today's Telegraph Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports on a story that may well answer the abiding question of when we shall fall from the plateau of our current globalization and begin the roll down the backside into the toilet bowel beyond. China, it seems, is considering the very rationale move of banning the export of many rare earth metals, and restricting the export of still more,...

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If learning about peak oil has taught me anything it is that we must all learn to expect the unexpected. A problem arises, however, as our expectations change; we think we have our bases covered and no longer need to expect to be surprised.

Making plans for the future need to be versatile. I have read some people who use this as an excuse to not prepare, they plan to remain mobile. How, I would like to ask, will you adapt if the future presents a surprise where one needs to stay rooted where they are in order to thrive? Just because we have been disabused of some false expectations does not mean that the future is obliged to meet our new one's.

The future is open. Even if certain constraints make a certain outcome necessary does not mean we know exactly how the path from here to there will progress. Even if we can know the megatrends for the next one hundred years, this is not the same thing as knowing how those larger trends will impact our micro-existence or that of our neighbors...

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True Story:

A friend of mine once went to a "company meeting" where many many cuts were announced. The presenter from the front office brought charts and graphs. My friend brought a legal pad, a pencil and a basic understanding of math.

After the presentation, when all of the cuts were announced, my friend preceded to ask questions. The questions were good. The questions illustrated that neither the truth of the cost to the employees was made clear nor were the reasons given forth-coming. Through the use of percentages (instead of whole numbers) and vast oversimplfications ("this part of the budget includes things like the Christmas party" when it is 10% of the budget being cut and no one would say what else was in that part of the budget and being cut). The fact that the employees were not being told about many cuts to their insurance and salary and that there were to be salary increases for top management was met by crickets.

After my friend's presentation...

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Occasionally you read something that permanently changes your outlook. Maybe you forget the exact argument that made an impression on you. Maybe you forget the book or the author but the change remains and it is forever. This happens to me, on average, about once a year; usually from books but, on occasion, on the internet. One such example is from just a little over a year ago and it can be found here.

I see them every day. One is reading the paper on the same desk that my feet are propped up on as I type this sentence. He just got done taking his multitude of pain and diabetic medications, washing them down with a gas station burrito. I see dead people.

Another co-worker this evening was telling me about how her family (husband and adult children) would not eat meat loaf if she put black beans in it (which I had brought to work), how they never eat...

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