Saddam Hussein was supposed to destroy the world
with nuclear weapons. We were supposed
run out of oil six months ago (now we are drowning in it). London was supposed to become the
financial center of the universe while
China consumed every bit of every commodity that exists.In fact there have been dozens of predictions over the past 30 years of events that could only be expected to happen once in a millennium. Remember
Y2K? That was supposed to be the end of everything. The fact that folks are willing to make these outlandish predictions Is not surprising. If you’re not over the top, you can’t compete for media attention. But why is society willing to believe these things and worse, act upon them?
Part of the problem is the media itself. If you are over 50, you remember getting most of your news from newspapers (in effect, in arrears because newspaper write about yesterday). Now all news is “Breaking News,” delivered in real time. Thirty years ago, “Breaking News” was truly a major event (assassination, invasion or some type of disaster, natural or otherwise).
Now all news tries to be urgent and the language of urgency still rings bells in some of us. So we take seriously many of the dire prognostications we hear. They are presented logically and cogently and in the moment, cause alarm.
We are living though a developing recession in real time, watching indicators get worse on a daily basis. Inevitably, this stress must lead to panic (which also plays out on TV).
When I was a Wall Street analyst in the 60’s we got our economic data six months in arrears. It took three more months to analyze. There was never any panic when we discovered a recession in the rear view mirror; there was nothing we could do about it. We were much more interested in long term trends and cycles.
Now, the availability of data and the ever present media forces us to look at things only in the present without developing a perspective on long term trends. And when lives in the moment, it is constantly changing. The energy we expend makes believe something significant is happening. We have actually come to believe that we must be living during an extraordinary time in history when monumental events will occur.
In most 70 year periods (a generation) of human history, nothing of great significance happened. A few generations had one great event; a war, a
flood or
fire, a
Depression, a man on the moon, etc.
This generation is willing to believe that several such events can occur during their lifetimes. This is utter nonsense.
We must reorient our perspective to understand that, from the point of view of the 40th Century, we live in the deep dark distant past. From that point of view, by the 21st Century, very little has progress has been made and virtually all important innovations by mankind have yet to be developed. It is our role to push the rock forward as much as we can. The engine of change, for us, is capital formation. We need to get back to work.
The
cover story in the February 9 issue of Time Magazine is a must read. It foretells the coming revolution will be fueled by stem cell therapies and
regenerative medicine. The opportunities for investors in this space will unfold rapidly over the next few years. We will be writing regularly in this blog about these developments and the opportunity for wealth creation they represent
