Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Beware the King(s)

The “King of Bonds”, Pimco’s Bill Gross, has given the world a priceless gift. He’s accomplished something other mortals have aspired to, but forever at the expense of their credibility. Thanks to Mr. Gross we finally know precisely what to count on, financially speaking, for the remainder of life as we know it on planet Earth. The guessing’s over. I suppose I should re-think my career path.

Apparently the past century of stock market gains and wealth accumulation was a “freak” anomaly, one to never be repeated. His incomparable (out of 7 billion) brain, has put all the pieces together. He has solved the great riddle; he has determined what he’s dubbed the “new normal”: That is, sub historical-average economic and asset-value growth, in perpetuity.

In essence; he knows precisely how all the world’s individuals will transact their affairs for eons to come.



He foresees advances in consumer technology,



transportation,





and living standards in general.





He can predict the outcomes of political power grabs,



weather patterns,





and natural disasters.



And has gauged the precise impact of each on the global economy.

He has indeed solved nature’s great mysteries.



What forever baffles me is the correlation between the capacity for thinking and the lack thereof for reason. The sad thing (seemingly, but surely not in every case) being; the larger the capacity of the brain (or perhaps the academic achievement, or perhaps the professional accomplishment), the larger the ego – the larger the ego, the lesser the humility – the lesser the humility, the greater the God complex – the greater the God complex, the greater the following – the greater the following, the greater the damage when a black swan (a purely random event) falls from the sky.

 

 

3 comments:

  1. [...] Beware the King(s) I picked on Bill Gross for his long-term egobese prognostication, but the same goes for those of us [...]

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  2. [...] In Beware the King(s) (read it to get the full flavor of this message) I picked on Bill Gross for his long-term egobese prognostication, but the same goes for those of us (yes us) who would dare suggest that the reasons for Tuesday can be condensed onto a TV spot, a blog post, or a column in the Wall Street Journal. [...]

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  3. [...] So then—with the next year or so in view—are stocks presently cheap, reasonably priced, or expensive? I, alas, can’t say. All I can say is that stocks are priced precisely where the world’s shareholders determined they should be as of 4pm Eastern Time last Friday. The question going forward is can companies, in the aggregate, continue to grow their earnings? As of 4pm Eastern Time last Friday—as the Dow remained above 15,000—the world thought yes. The mere fact that bear markets happen means that earnings don’t always meet the world’s expectations, and anyone who believes he can line up all the variables that would impact the world economy and tell us what to expect profoundly (and dangerously) overestimates his own talent—as I illustrated in Beware the King(s).  [...]

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