Economics

Globally, we have neglected this topic [agriculture] for decades. We have, worldwide, over a billion undernourished people. Food prices have risen over the past few years, with our own research showing these should accelerate up from 2010. The world's demographics are also alarming: The world's population has quadrupled in the twentieth century, doubling between 1960 and 2007. For the first time in history, we have seen the global urban population exceed the rural one, and, over the past forty years, agricultural-land has increased by only 10%. Two words, food security, are central to our model.

Unknown.

Africa is an enormous continent, larger than the US, China and Europe combined. It represents 20% of the global land mass, and only 10% of the world's population. It offers an un-crowded space of opportunities including minerals, natural resources, water and agriculture.

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Seventeen of the top twenty universities in the world are in the USA, one third of all students who leave their countries to study in another come to the USA. There are only a handful of countries who spend relatively more on R&D than the USA.

Chief Strategist & Senior Currency Strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex

It turns out that for every ipod sold by Apple, it makes the US trade deficit go up by USD 150. Is the US poorer because the world loves ipods? No, we accrue the high-value elements like intellectual property, profit, and so forth, and outsource the lower-value parts of the chain.

Chief Strategist & Senior Currency Strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex

To use an analogy, when you squeeze toothpaste out of a tube, it's quite hard to get it back in. By the same token, by the time you see inflation, it's too late. The key is inflation expectations.

Chief Strategist & Senior Currency Strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex

The daily turnover of the foreign exchange market is around USD 3.2 Trillion, meaning that in a few weeks of trade, enough capital is circulated to pay for all of global trade in a year. Capital is the driver, NOT trade.

Chief Strategist & Senior Currency Strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex

I can illustrate the current situation in the form of a story. Two boys were being chased by a Tiger. One boy stops to put on running shoes, and the other boy says, 'What are you doing?' The first boy responds, 'I don't have to outrun the Tiger, I just have to outrun you'.

Chief Strategist & Senior Currency Strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex

Abraham Maslow (a famous psychologist) once commented, 'if all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail'. Investors currently have a hammer, and that hammer is economics.

Chief Strategist & Senior Currency Strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex

The scenario I am describing would involve a relatively sharp collapse of the dollar, which I would qualify by stating that if the same policies are undertaken in U.K., Japan and continental Europe, the collapse of the dollar may not be reflected in exchange rates between these currencies, as all would collapse at same time.

Unknown.

Chairman Bernanke, as good as he is academically, and as much integrity as he has (which I believe is unlimited), has an analytical framework that suggests a lot more inflation is allowable. Part of this is because he looks at core rather than headline, which is a flawed calculus.

Unknown.

Remember that back in 1950, they invented something called the computer that allows you to do more complex calculations than you could with a paper and pencil. Computers allow us to use much more sophisticated statistical techniques to calculate seasonal adjustments, which mean that we do not need to use year-over-year calculations.

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The policies they prescribe are a continuation or exaggeration of the previous policies that created the structural problems in the first place. I am therefore relatively pessimistic on the intermediate and longer term outlook for the U.K., the U.S., Spain and other countries where credit was readily available.

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Rather than the emerging markets, or weaker economies, this problem originated in the most sophisticated and advanced financial markets because those are the markets where leverage was the greatest and people took the most advantage of it.

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Toyota's reputation for long-term quality is finished. People aren't going to buy Toyotas, period. It doesn't matter which model. What's happened is sufficient to keep people out of the stores.

Automotive industry analyst and consultant, known for expertise in car manufacturing.

We are in the midst of a pandemic of eating too much (the overweight and obesity pandemic) and a pandemic of not having enough to eat (the under nutrition and hunger pandemic). Roughly 1.6 billion people in the world are affected by the first pandemic and roughly 1 billion people in the world today are affected by the second pandemic.

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Roughly speaking, a child born today in a very poor country can expect to live about 40 years, while a child born today in a wealthy country could expect to live about 80 years.

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