Anticipating global trends.

The best we can do is to simultaneously make the most of the extraordinary opportunity presented by AI, while taking prudent precautions against worst case scenarios. We have walked this tightrope before – with nuclear energy – balanced precariously between oblivion and hope. It’s what we humans have always done.

We are heading toward the merger of energy and finance instead of the substitution of one energy for another.

Now, at the dawn of the 21st century, we are in danger of repeating this tragic history by ignoring what the Covid19 pandemic has to teach us. The consequences of this willful blindness may be even worse that the early 20th century experience, because our technical progress has ensured that events can unfold much faster, especially negative ones.

Many corporations have widened their commitment to the social good. This is to be welcomed, but expectations require tempering with an awareness of what the corporate capacity for change actually is.

We became interested in exploring a proposed 2020 tax policy change in Mexico that could negatively affect investor sentiment—in spite of improvements in Mexico’s overall attractiveness as a destination for FDI.

The 20th century was in fact an aberration and the global economy is now reverting toward the earlier pattern of slow growth and disinflation. The profound political, geopolitical, and social implications entailed by this are not yet fully recognized.

When John McCain definitely withdrew support from the Graham-Cassidy health care bill on Friday, he most likely also extinguished any hope of Congressional tax reform before 2018. Or did he?

The United Kingdom has opted out of the European Union and will find it difficult to reconsider that decision. The focus in London will accordingly now shift to reorganizing discredited political parties, forming a new government, managing the Scottish problem, and then, probably, beginning the two-year process of leaving the EU.