This Thunder Road News was a bit more hurried than normal as I took a few days holiday at the Center Parcs resort in Sherwood Forest. In the neighbouring chalet was a lovely couple who had both trained as doctors and now work as psychiatrists in the north west of England. One evening we got chatting and they were telling us about their concerns for the future and how most of their savings are in UK government bonds and they weren\u2019t sure if this was the right place for them going forward. That was like a red rag to a bull and it was hard not to unleash a verbal tsunami about the need for everyone to protect themselves from reckless politicians and central bankers and to buy gold/silver, as well as energy, food/agriculture (they were already thinking about land) and internet infrastructure related investments \u2013 the \u201cglobal end of normal\u201d, etc, etc. I hope I didn\u2019t bore them too much.

a cubic metre of silver - the investment case is becoming better understood! I stick to my view that before this gold and silver bull market is over, people will be discussing ownership of gold

Many people are getting optimistic about maturing green shoots in the global economy, but I still have grave doubts regarding the UK and US. These quotes from the Cara Trading Advisory (Bahamas) team after the close on Friday summed up my feelings perfectly:

\u201cWhat is going on today is atrocious. Where is the SEC these days? Do you feel like a frog dropped in the lukewarm water as the heat is slowly turned up, oblivious to one\u2019s impending demise? We do. Seriously, could Friday get any duller? Are the masters lulling us to sleep, trotting out their minions on Tout TV,

Demographics, stock market
earnings and food/energy
investments (here)

A blog I\u2019ve started to follow is \u201cNathan\u2019s Economic Edge\u201d at economicedge.blogspot.com. Recently he wrote a piece (here) on demographics and the work of Harry S. Dent in particular. At the beginning he considers the extent that demographics impacts economics, highlighting the quote from David Foot in his book, \u201cBoom, Bust & Echo\u201d:

\u201cDemographics explain about two-thirds of everything: which products will be in demand, where job opportunities will occur, what school enrolments will be, when house values will rise or drop, what kinds of food people will buy and what kinds of cars they will drive.\u201d

Regarding countries without the rule of law, Nathan argues that they:
\u201care far more likely to be poor because their rule-shifting drives capital away.\u201d
I thought it was very interesting how Obama bulldozed through bankruptcy law in respect of the demotion

Back to demographics and the subject of world population, the growth of which is \ue000rmly in its exponential phase. The planet is currently adding one billion people every 13-14 years and the population could double again by 2040. On a daily basis, the world population is increasing by 211,000 people daily. This is shown

\u201cThe basis of Dent\u2019s research is the highly predictable nature of consumer spending based on a family formation pattern - minimal spending as young adults, spending more as raising children, peaking in that spending as children are leaving home, and then slowing spending during the last 15 years of working life

In the late 1980s, Dent forecast that the Japanese economy, then the darling of the world, would soon enter a slowdown that would last more than a decade. In the early 1990s, he predicted that the Dow would reach 10k. Both of these predictions were met with much skepticism, and yet both eventually came to pass. In