The Last Word

The fact is, you have to take the rough with the smooth. When it comes to reviews, accept a pat on the back when it is offered to you, but you also have to receive the brickbat ('A remark or comment that is highly critical and typically insulting') if it comes your way as well. As I've discovered over the years of organising running races (see www.Trionium.com), you can't please all of the people all of the time, and some people are not happy unless they have something to complain about: you have to take some criticism with a pinch of salt. The same applies to some of the compliments too: as Rudyard Kipling wrote in his celebrated poem 'If,' 'If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same... yours is the earth and everything that's in it.'

In the popular 'opera' Carmina Burana, there is a recurring motif of the wheel of fortune, often depicted in the Middle Ages with four people secured to it as if to a primitive Ferris wheel: One at the height of fame and fortune at the top, and one in the depths of despair at the bottom (and two others, in the process of ascent or descent as well). In the same way, appearing on the front cover of Sports Illustrated magazine is supposed to curse that particular sportsman to a swift decline (although it is more often the case that they are pictured at the zenith of their powers and prowess - and the only way is down).

Those helpful people at Bank of America Merrill Lynch have sent me a research note from their Global Research report services. The note examines the likely future trend in oil pricing, a trend which has consequences for the cement industry. This is what they say:

"What is in store for global oil demand in the medium term? We [BoAML] project global oil demand to grow at a cumulative 6.15 million b/d over the next five years. Global oil demand in 2016 will likely stand at 95 million b/d, relative to 85 million b/d in 2005. The developing world, which already accounts for half of the world's output, will in 2013 overtake the developed world in terms of oil consumption. By 2016 we estimate that emerging markets will comprise 53% of global oil consumption, with China alone making up 12.8% or 12 million b/d of global consumption."

Global Cement will soon open its public poll for the Top 5 Global Cement influencers in 2012, where cement industry participants will be able to vote for individuals for the awards. In the meantime, to get the ball rolling, we divulge our own suggested list of the Top 5 Global Cement influencers in 2012:

1: Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank.

Mario Draghi has the difficult job of trying to steer the ECB through the Euro crisis, Europe-wide recession, the Greek default scenario and having to deal with intransigent and politicised national leaders. Will he start to print Euros to prop up the Eurozone? Will the ECB become the lender of last resort? Will the Euro survive? The answers to these questions determine not only the economic fate of Europe and many other countries around the world, but also their cement demand. He has power, but the markets also have a say in how this story pans out...

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.

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.