Portico Wealth Advisors

Population growth, specifically in developing nations with burgeoning middle classes, portends significant economic growth. That leads to the now somewhat hackneyed conclusion that emerging markets will make for good long-term investments. Nevertheless, the US and the rest of the developed world will continue to shrink in relative size, and hence global significance, over the next several decades; Emerging markets, and the multi-national corporations that work with them e.g. MacDonalds, Tiffanys, and Daimler-Benz, are likely to remain very attractive investments.

S&Ps US downgrade was an unmistakable watershed event, causing everyone from the President to the proletariat to take a long, hard look at the lackluster numbers that have typified the US economy for months. Perhaps equally noteworthy during the tumult, however, was the sheer quantity of contradictions, ironies, and paradoxes that arose throughout the downgrade process. They sprung from all sides, ranging from the subtle to the downright staggering, and yielded a portrait of a country desperate for direction. What follows is a chronicle of these incongruities.