Worldview Investing - Ruminations on the World Economy

Source:WWE.com       At this WWE event, the contestants (red and blue) act out their carefully orchestrated scripts. The fans stand and scream their support for one and their outrage at the other. The "official" in a stripped shirt pretends to ensure that the "rules" are being followed. At the end of the night, the performers  go home richer but bruised and the fans go home poorer but entertained. Most people, but not all, recognize that it was all performance art.     T he two US political parties try mightily to convince voters that they are very different. Both argue that they have the solutions necessary to solve the nation's vexing problems. At political fund raising events people stand and scream support for their candidate and their outrage at the other. At the end of the night, the politicians go home richer and their supporters go home poorer but entertained. Most people, but not all, fail to recognize that it was all performance art.  ...

Source: Shutterstock.com     So wrote Sun Tzu the famous Chinese General (born in 544 B.C.). T here is plenty of chaos around the world today including the continuing hostilities between Israel and Palestine and Russia's war in Ukraine. Trump has added to the chaos. He has grabbed the President of Venezuela (kidnapped), seized multiple foreign owned oil tankers (piracy on the high seas), dropped bombs on Iran's nuclear development site, Somalia, Nigeria, and Syria (acts of war), threatened Iran's and Columbia's political leaders with military attack for their drug dealing, corruption, and violent suppression of protests ("war mongering"), threatened the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank with criminal charges for his reluctance to lower interest rates as demanded (intimidation) and threatened to seize Greenland, the protectorate of a NATO ally. His belligerence toward and tariff attacks on Canada push his neighbor to the north into the welcoming arms of Chin...

Source: Shutterstock      One of Donald Trump's major goals is to return the many tens of thousands of US jobs lost to overseas manufacturers. He hopes to make those jobs available to American workers, revitalize the US economy and ensure the US is less dependent for essential goods on often-hostile foreign nations. It is possible that some of those jobs can be returned to the US, but it will be a fraction of the total that have been lost over the last thirty years.      There are two reasons for this. First, few Americans are willing to work in sweatshop-like conditions for 10-12 hours a day, as are third-world workers who happily left behind the hardships and penury of rural subsistence farming. US businesses can build multi-million dollar factories to sew leisure wear and Nike trainers or assemble cell phones and other consumer goods, but they will despair at finding people willing to work grueling shifts. Second, US wages (hourly rates plus cost of bene...

  Photo source: Wikipedia     In January, 1848, the California Gold Rush began. Thousands of people thronged to the "Golden State" seeking their fortunes. Only a tiny fraction of them got rich. The vast majority suffered severe hardship, lost their money and were forced to abandon their efforts. It is commonly noted that the few who made money during this period did so by selling provisions to the miners: pick axes, shovels and denim wear.     For the last several years the new gold rush has been Artificial  Intelligence. Companies have spent vast sums of money building out AI infrastructure. Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon have collectively spent hundreds of billions of dollars building new data centers hoping to cash in on the presumed AI fortunes to come. This gold rush took off in 2022 when Chat GPT 4 was released. It was swiftly downloaded by millions of people hoping to u...