It feels like we are moving through a watershed moment in both the U.S. and global financial markets. When the mortgage securities market collapses as though it was the tulip bulb market centuries ago in Holland it is truly time to take pause and look at what has been allowed to occur.  Mortgages, secured by real estate, have long been considered as a secure type of investment, unlike say junk bonds.  Now the marketplace is saying that they cannot value them so no one is either buying them or allowing them to be used as loan collateral.  Wow!

In the new …

There are two future thinking filters through which I view the recent upheavals in the financial markets.  The first is that we are moving to a new and developing global society and that this can first be seen economically.  The second is that debt is something that must be looked with new perspective.  Today we look at the first filter.

Humanity has conclusively moved into the global stage of its evolution. There is no turning back.  There are more than six billion of us and that fact alone is enough to reorganize human endeavor to a global orientation. Human history shows …

I am back after taking the longest hiatus in the 16 month life of this blog.  I would like to think this futurist was missed, but this is August and I would imagine most readers would be either be languidly lying about on vacation or keeping a nervous eye on the stock markets, both activities with a decidedly short term focus.  The happy reason for my absence is that I was married to and then took a mini-honeymoon with my lovely new wife Victoria.  Married in a Rose Garden, we metaphorically promised that to each other for the rest of …

The New York Stock Exchange was founded in 1817.  This was some 50 years after the beginning of the Industrial Age.  The need for the NYSE was, in part, a result of the transition of the U.S. economy from one that was completely agricultural to one that was rapidly becoming industrial.  During the course of the 1800s the NYSE became increasingly important to the economy as a financial market that could provide both financial liquidity to listed companies and as a way to establish valuation and worth of all companies traded. 

In the 20th century the NYSE was joined by many …