- Written by Dr Robert McCaffrey, Managing Editor, Global Cement Magazine
I recently had the pleasure of being invited to the Bank of America - Merrill Lynch 'Global Research Macro Year Ahead Press Briefing' in the City of London. The heads of EMEA Research, of European Equities Strategy, International Credit Research and other high-powered banking types gave their prognoses on the prospects for the global economy in 2012. The gathering had all the joie de vivre of a wake.
Laurence Boone, the polished 'Head of Developed Europe Economics' was first to burst the bubble of positive expectations: She expects a drop in GDP for Europe as a whole of 2-3% in 2012, meaning a continuing European recession (which she said had already started in 4Q2011) that will continue through the whole of the first half of 2012. European banks will undertake 'deleveraging' (paying off debts) of around Euro1.5trillion in 2012.
- Written by Dr Robert McCaffrey Editor, Global Cement Magazine
After my apocalyptic forecasts for 2012 in last month's column, I thought that we should shun the real world a little and look at some theories - but theories that have definite application in everyday life.
It has struck me recently that we are all stuck in a variety of games: from the Euro debt crisis, to trying to maximise the selling price of cement, from being married to the same person for decades, to deciding to pay - or not pay - your taxes. Many of these situations can be described using 'game theory,' perhaps better termed 'interactive decision theory.' This branch of mathematics (and philosophy and biology) can suggest the optimum strategies to follow in order to maximise your outcome or the outcome of everyone in the game - the two situations not always being the same.
- Written by Dr Robert McCaffrey Editor, Global Cement Magazine
At the moment we are busy staring into our crystal ball, trying to work out if 2012 is going to be a good year, a mediocre year or a bad year. Let's hope that it's not another 2009 or 2010. However, I thought that it might be useful to have a look at a few possible flash points, since being forewarned is akin to being forearmed.
Iran: I've visited five times, and have lots of Iranian contacts and friends: it's a big, populous country with friendly, polite people, great food and awe-inspiring scenery, architecture, culture and history. However, the fly in the ointment is that Iran seems to be determined to build its own nuclear weapons, even though Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa forbidding the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons on August 9, 20051. Allied to its pre-stated aim to obliterate its near-neighbour Israel, this is a potentially tricky situation. (No-one seems to question the right of the US, the UK, France, China and Russia's rights - or not - to own and control nuclear weapons: India, Pakistan, North Korea and possibly Israel2 all took the decision to develop them anyway, on the basis that it is very difficult to stop a sovereign nation doing what it wants to within its own borders, without invading it).
- Written by Dr Robert McCaffrey Editor, Global Cement Magazine
One of my habits at work is to read a book during my lunch break. Earlier in the year I managed to finish Darwin's 'The origin of species,' which was a fascinating book, full of first hand experience of breeding pigeons and of the sex lives of the Cirripedia (barnacles to you and I). He was a great thinker, but all the way through the book, I kept saying to myself, 'Ah, if only you had known about plate tectonics,' and 'Ah, the wonders that would be revealed to you if you had known about DNA.' He was certainly ahead of his time, but Darwin was no writer: his circumlocutions and plumpness of prose make reading 'The Origins' a fairly arduous undertaking.
- Written by Dr Robert McCaffrey Editor, Global Cement Magazine
One of my favourite odd facts is that the can opener was invented 50 years after the invention of the can. The original heavy metal cans had to be opened with a hammer and chisel for half a century, before the first practical tin opener was patented. Development of the electric light bulb took a lifetime - more than 75 years from the first experiments to the time of Edison's first patents for a commercially practical bulb.
