110424 - Finance U

I am a systems thinker. It’s how I see the world and I want to help others see it this way too. Everything connects to everything else. It’s all interlinked. One cannot possibly hope to have an informed opinion about the economy without knowing how that complex system rests upon and interacts with energy, itself another complex system. Each of those is also a subset of the ecological or environmental systems, themselves composed of innumerable nested complex systems. Energy is THE master resource and oil is the king of the land of energy. As goes oil, so goes literally everything. This is a difficult concept for many people to accept because they have grown up in a world that teaches linear thinking and which has been so steeped in abundant energy for so long that, like a fish and water, it’s too pervasive to detect. So, let’s take a look at the actual situation at hand. Inventories are too low, investment in oil & gas has been too low, and the world is shunning Russian oil and gas at a very bad moment in time. Further, inflation is scorchingly hot and rising, while interest rates are spiking. Nobody seems to be in charge, and nobody in power is displaying any sort of appropriate context or leadership. Add it all up, and the threats to our current and future prosperity are overwhelming. We’re going to be taking hits. If we’re lucky the financial system won’t implode taking a big swath of the economy along with it. I talk about all that and end by encouraging everyone to get prepared and as resilient as possible.