Cody on RM: Economies on My Mind

Economies on My Mind
07/28/2006 4:46 PM EDT

Time has come today
Young hearts can go their way
Can't put it off another day
I don't care what others say
They say we don't listen anyway
Time has come today
-- The Chambers Brothers


The afternoon almost felt like it just disappeared. The day's not really over, is it?

Here's an economy-focused edition of "what's on the Cody mind" as we head into the weekend:

Is there any chance that UPS and many of the other companies that are warning of a slowdown are simply not executing?

Is the endless sapping of liquidity by the Fed banks really having this profound of an effect on the world's capital markets and perhaps the economy? (Did you see that stat from Frank Curzio Thursday about how 22 countries have raised rates more than 90 times in the last 12 months? It needs some context -- for example, what percentage of the world's GDP do those banks cover? -- but man, that is one mind-blowing number.)

Is our global economy really that fragile?

If the banks turn the spigots back on, will the markets and economies immediately follow and turn higher?

Assuming we will indeed have to pay the piper for endless liquidity pumping and government borrowing, how long can our global economy play this game of chicken?

Further, assuming that we're closer to the end of the game than the beginning, what's the likelihood that we really get a grande-sized blow-off top that makes the late 1990s look like warm-up?

Would that make the potentially coming "tech echo bubble" a misnomer?

Then again, maybe the general boom that we've been experiencing for the last 200 years in this country will last for 200 years more? (Yes, that's a question.)

If we could chart the global economies since the dawn of the wheel, wouldn't the charts indicate that we're decidedly still in the middle of an upward channel, a la Simons' comments earlier?

How about since the "markets" and economies crashed into the Dark Ages? (What a time to buy that must have been, eh?)

In that context, don't you see why I'm so excited about the future that the communications leg of mankind's endless tech revolution will drive?

It's great to be back, and I'll see you next week. Thanks for reading.