Month

Hope all goes well… Stepped back this week, from keyboards, screens. Replaced by long quiet walks, shaking off a little case of Omicron. Always love a little distance from a subject, time to think, solitude, ideally at altitude. From each angle, every perspective, I found myself returning to something I wrote last September: The Case for Quantum Change. It provides a framework for making sense of the dramatic events

“Clausewitz taught that we must dismantle our enemy’s center of gravity to achieve victory,” said The Commander. “Each nation has strengths and weaknesses, and it’s natural to capitalize on weakness,” he added. “But it is critical to pick apart the strengths that make up the center of gravity,” explained The Commander. “In the case of the US, our core strengths are superior communications, logistics, and our carrier

Hope all goes well… “War is the continuation of politics by other means,” explained The Commander, quoting Carl von Clausewitz, the famous Prussian general and military theorist. “Von Clausewitz advocated that you continue to pound your enemy, you don’t stop a fight until you negotiate an end to it,” he added. “We tend to pause our military actions during negotiations, but Russia is doing as von Clausewitz advised. P

Anecdote: Everything is connected, one moment naturally following another. And so it is tempting to think that by retracing each step we can explain why we have arrived at a particular place. Perhaps this is sometimes true, over very short periods at least. But the world is infinitely complex, and the truth is that we often arrive at a destination for reasons we can’t possibly understand, let alone have predicted. Th

Hope all goes well… QE first started in Nov 2008 with CPI at 1.07% and ended in Mar 2010 with CPI at 2.31% (Fed bought $1.73trln of bonds in that time). We didn’t call it QE1 back then because no one thought we’d need to do it again. QE2 started in Nov 2010 with CPI at 1.14% and ended in Jun 2011 with CPI at 3.56% (Fed bought $600bln in bonds). QE3 started in Sept 2012 with CPI at 1.99% and ended in Oct 2014 with CPI

“Just a couple things today,” I said at One River’s internal risk meetings. “The first is an observation. Of the many Russia and Ukraine experts who dedicated decades to the study of the region, Putin, other key players, not even one expected this outcome,” I said. “Rarely when it comes to geopolitics does that happen. And when it does, it means we are entering a period of extraordinary uncertainty. So, while it is a

Hope all goes well… “Are you watching Ukraine’s President?” asked Jackson, in uniform, Facetime. We all are – the whole world. And I wonder how Zelensky’s remarkable behavior will inspire our children as they come into their own, forming ideas about how they’ll lead their lives, set the bar for themselves, and what they will demand of their leaders, as they build a better future for us all. “Zelensky is what re