How millennials became the world’s most powerful consumers
They are the biggest global generation — and their choices are upending business from the US to China
© Ollanski
When Scott Norton and Mark Ramadan were undergraduates at Brown University in Rhode Island a decade ago, they were horrified not by the 2008 financial crisis but by Heinz tomato ketchup. The bright red sauce was so common in shops and kitchens round the world that it seemed it would be there forever. “At the centre of supermarkets were all these classic American brands that hadn’t evolved in 70 years,” recalls Mr Norton.
As they talked to their student friends, they realised that none of them wanted bland, mass market products shipped from factories by huge corporations. So they started to mix their own organic ketchup in an off-campus apartment. On graduation, they founded a company and, having no origin story with resonance, invented a joke one. They named it after a mythical Victorian called Sir Kensington, a monocled adventurer who had “advised the British East India company in the acquisition of spices”.
The pair are now 31, at the heart of a millennial generation that has come of age, transforming business not only in the US but round the world. In April, their company was acquired by Unilever, the British-Dutch group that had fended off a takeover by Kraft Heinz. Their ketchup, once a student jape, has just gone on shelves in Walmart and Target. “Sir Kensington’s is the playbook for reaching millennials,” says Richard Hartell, president of strategy and transformation at Publicis Media.
Millennials are ‘core’ business
This is the millennial moment, long expected and feared by companies that built their brands for baby boomers. They are ageing and their offspring, once called the “echo boom”, are no longer teenagers, or even students. Pew Research Center, the US research group, defines millennials as the 73m Americans aged between 22 and 37, who will next year overtake boomers in number. “We don’t think of them as special or different any more. They are the core of our business,” says Alan Jope, president of beauty and personal care at Unilever.
When Scott Norton (left) and Mark Ramadan realised that none of their friends wanted to buy bland, mass market products like Heinz Tomato Ketchup, they started to create their own organic ketchup, Sir Kensington
The coming of age of the world’s 2bn millennials is not only a generational shift: it is one of ethnicity and nationality. Forty three per cent of US millennials are non-white, and millennials in Asia vastly outnumber those in Europe and the US. Despite China’s former one-child policy, it has 400m millennials, more than five times the US figure (and more than the entire US population) while Morgan Stanley estimates that India’s 410m millennials will spend $330bn annually by 2020.
Millennials have reached what the bank calls “the most important age range for economic activity”, when households are formed, babies are born and money is spent not just on going out but on settling down. Simon Isaacs, co-founder of Fatherly, an information and ecommerce site for millennial parents, cites family camping as one of its most popular topics. “That does extremely well for us. They like to buy cool family tents and share videos of their trips.”
This reflects the depth to which technology is integrated into millennials’ lives and habits. The oldest were teenagers at the time of the Netscape initial public offering in 1995, as the internet became a mass medium, and the youngest were 11 when the Apple iPhone was launched in 2007. They are used not only to communicating online but buying most things there: $25bn was spent on Alibaba’s Singles Day online shopping festival in China on November 11.
Big companies have scrambled to adjust to millennial tastes. “Local, original, and what they can feel and trust are all good. Maybe there is a bit of a reaction to globalisation,” says Laurent Freixe, who heads Nestlé’s US and Americas business, “Organic, natural, and non-GMO are crystallising in the US very fast.” Nestlé last year bought the Blue Bottle chain of coffee shops and in May signed a $7.1bn licensing deal with Starbucks to refresh its Nescafé and Nespresso brands.
But it is placing immense strain on institutions that once thrived on mass marketing of products through television advertising. Growth has slowed and investors are unhappy. “They are only about global brands, one size fits all. That was great in the ’80s and ’90s but the world has changed. Millennials want these little brands, local brands,” Nelson Peltz, the 75-year-old activist investor, said last year as he attacked Procter & Gamble.
Some are being outflanked by young rivals with roots in internet and mobile. Google and Facebook have shaken marketing groups such as Publicis and WPP, and the streaming service Netflix last month overtook Walt Disney as the world’s most valuable entertainment company.
Often, revenues are simply nibbled away by upstarts: Boston Consulting Group estimates that between 2011 and 2016, large US consumer groups lost $22bn in sales to smaller brands.
‘We cannot change things’
Ella Kieran, head of WPP’s Stream conferences for its clients, is the epitome of the high-flying young global executive. At 31-years-old, she and her entrepreneur husband have a one-year-old daughter, and she divides her time between London and New York. But the couple are still renting and she worries about her generation’s future.
“The pessimism of my generation is the sense that you cannot change things,” she says. “If you don’t have a lot of money, it does not feel as if you are going to get it. Now, as I have a family, I’m happy that baby food is better, thanks to five years of people before me saying: ‘This brand does not speak to me.’ But you guys got houses and we got slightly nicer shampoo.”
Ella Kieran, a 31-year-old global executive, divides her time between London and New York, but she and her entrepreneur husband cannot afford to buy a house in either city © Anna Gordon/FT
In the US and Europe, many millennials are disenchanted with their lot as they attain maturity. A UK Resolution Foundation study found that pessimists outweighed optimists by two to one when they were asked about their chances of improving on their parents’ fortunes. They are highly educated: 39 per cent of British 25 to 39-year-olds are graduates, compared with 23 per cent of those between 55 and 64. But their sophistication and ambition is not matched by security.
This is largely an accident of history. Older millennials entered the workforce in the mid-2000s, and many lost jobs after the 2008 crisis. They were also caught by rapid inflation in house prices as interest rates fell and remained low. The milestones of leaving home, getting a job, marrying and having children have been delayed — 45 per cent of 18 to 34-year-old Americans had done all four in 1975, but only 24 per cent had in 2015.
It has spawned widespread distrust, both in organisations and individuals. A Pew study in 2014 found that only 19 per cent of millennials believed that others could be trusted, compared with 40 per cent of boomers and 31 per cent of the generation Xers born between 1965 and 1980. Millennial faith in institutions is also low. “This generation is incredibly sceptical of governments and big corporations,” says Keith Niedermeier, professor at the Wharton business school.
Malcolm Harris, author of Kids These Days, a book about “why it sucks to have been born between 1980 and 2000”, says distrust is only natural among a generation that has to struggle for security. “If competition is the main feature of your world, you would be a fool to find people trustworthy,” he says. The preference for local, organic and craft products is also logical, in his view: “You want to be part of a circle of production and consumption that is not centred on enriching the 1 per cent.”
Breaking traditional habits
The pattern of preferring smaller, independent brands and outlets extends to media consumption.
Technology and social media have unleashed an extraordinary fragmentation in how they absorb information. In the US, they watch 19 hours a week of broadcast and cable television, compared with the average adult’s 34 hours, according to Nielsen. Radio stations have lower reach among millennials but 37 per cent of them listen to at least one podcast a week.
New companies can reach millennials via social media, which further encourages fragmentation. Beauty is a prime example. Revenues of smaller brands grew 16 per cent a year between 2008 and 2016, according to the consultancy McKinsey. Millennials will often experiment with edgier brands such as Urban Decay, which was acquired by L’Oréal in 2012. Make-up artists, including Charlotte Tilbury and Trish McEvoy, have attracted large followings.
Beauty’s expansion into a $250bn global industry has been fuelled by Instagram. Marla Beck, co-founder of Bluemercury, a US chain of cosmetics stores, cites the growth of face masks, including many Korean brands, as an example. Smaller companies are now selling black, silver and even rainbow masks. “Masks used to be a teeny category but they are very visual,” she says. “You can display your face [on Instagram] and show that you know about lifestyle, that you take care of yourself.”
Technology has not eliminated a millennial desire for community experience. Shared workspaces are expanding — the co-working company WeWork was valued at $20bn last year — members’ clubs such as Soho House are growing and festivals have proliferated. Live music alone had global revenues of $26bn in 2016, according to PwC. “I laugh about the terms community and experience, but they are exactly what we provide,” says Nick Jones, founder of Soho House.
Instagram has helped fuel beauty's expansion into global millennial market. Marla Beck (right), Bluemercury founder, says: 'You can display your face [on Instagram] and show that you know about lifestyle, that you take care of yourself' © AP
Big spenders in Asia
Asia’s millennials, the biggest generation of all, share many attributes with those in the west, but not their insecurity. They are confident of living better lives than their parents, particularly in China, where baby boomers lived through Maoism and the cultural revolution of the late 1960s and 1970s.
Even in south-east Asian “tiger” economies that achieved rapid growth, families often saved all that they could.
Millennials in China, many of whom are single children, behave quite differently. “They are very optimistic about the future and they are willing to spend money,” says Jessie Qian, KPMG’s head of consumer markets in China. McKinsey, the consultancy, describes young Chinese adults as “confident, independent minded, and determined to display it through consumption.”
It is having a profound effect on global patterns of consumption, with more to come. Emerging and developing economies are home to 86 per cent of millennials, and the World Bank estimates that Chinese millennials’ income will overtake that in the US by 2035. The luxury industry has tilted towards Asia, where prestige brands are seen as guarantees of quality. A third of Chinese millennials said in one survey that they were very likely to buy a Swiss watch.
Like others, the luxury industry is having to adjust to what these consumers want. It was once tightly controlled, with seasonal fashion shows to unveil designs that were then pushed through stores. Now, social media influencers such as Chiara Ferragni, an Italian fashion maven with 13m Instagram followers, set the trends and the pace has quickened. “They need more regular product, more drops, something new on Instagram,” says Helen Brand, UBS European luxury analyst.
The surprise is the degree to which Asia’s luxury consumers have been joined by a segment of millennials in the west. “A few years ago, millennials were seen as young people who could not afford luxury,” says Ms Brand. The bank estimates that they account for 50 per cent of Gucci’s sales and 65 per cent of Yves Saint Laurent’s. It is a taste of millennials’ buying power — their collective annual income will exceed $4tn by 2030, according to the World Bank.
This also reflects the divide in fortunes among millennials in the US and Europe, not just between high and low earners but between those born to asset-rich baby boomers and those lacking familial wealth. Accenture estimates there will be a transfer of at least $30tn in wealth from US baby boomers to millennials during the next three decades. The move has started with parental loans to young adults to buy homes, and will continue through death and inheritance.
Social media influencers such as Chiara Ferragni, who has 13m Instagram followers, set fashion trends and the pace has quickened
Other millennials are out of luck, along with the institutions that flourished in the baby boom era and are being disrupted. Ms Kieran of WPP has little sympathy for the consumer giants. “We can’t win on anything else, so if we rattle the cage of corporations on sustainability, that’s good.”
Here is the voice of a generation that now wields greater power than even some of its members realise. The companies that cannot meet their demands are in trouble.
HOW MILLENNIALS BECAME THE WORLD´S MOST POWERFUL CONSUMERS / THE FINANCIAL TIMES
Hallmark Of An Economic Ponzi Scheme
by: John Hussman
Financial disaster is quickly forgotten. There can be few fields of human endeavor in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The hallmark of an economic Ponzi scheme is that the operation of the economy relies on the constant creation of low-grade debt in order to finance consumption and income shortfalls among some members of the economy, using the massive surpluses earned by other members of the economy.
This half-cycle was different in that there was no definable limit to the speculation of investors. One had to wait until market internals deteriorated explicitly, indicating a shift in investor psychology from speculation to risk-aversion, before adopting a negative market outlook.
"The information contained in earnings, balance sheets and economic releases is only a fraction of what is known by others. The action of prices and trading volume reveals other important information that traders are willing to back with real money. This is why trend uniformity is so crucial to our Market Climate approach. Historically, when trend uniformity has been positive, stocks have generally ignored overvaluation, no matter how extreme. When the market loses that uniformity, valuations often matter suddenly and with a vengeance. This is a lesson best learned before a crash than after one. Valuations, trend uniformity, and yield pressures are now uniformly unfavorable, and the market faces extreme risk in this environment."
"Remember, valuation often has little impact on short-term returns (though the impact can be quite violent once internal market action deteriorates, indicating that investors are becoming averse to risk). Still, valuations have an enormous impact on long-term returns, particularly at the horizon of 7 years and beyond. The recent market advance should do nothing to undermine the confidence that investors have in historically reliable, theoretically sound, carefully constructed measures of market valuation.
Indeed, there is no evidence that historically reliable valuation measures have lost their validity. Though the stock market has maintained relatively high multiples since the late-1990's, those multiples have thus far been associated with poor extended returns. Specifically, based on the most recent, reasonably long-term period available, the S&P 500 has (predictably) lagged Treasury bills for not just seven years, but now more than eight-and-a-half years. Investors will place themselves in quite a bit of danger if they believe that the 'echo bubble' from the 2002 lows is some sort of new era for valuations."
The lesson to be learned from quantitative easing, zero-interest rate policy, and the bubble advance of recent years is simple: one must accept that there is no limit at all to the myopic speculation and self-interested amnesia of Wall Street. Bubbles and crashes will repeat again and again, and nothing will be learned from them.
However, that does not mean abandoning the information from valuations or market internals. It means refraining from a negative market outlook, even amid extreme valuations and reckless speculation, until dispersion and divergences emerge in market internals. A neutral outlook is fine if conditions are sufficiently overextended, but defer a negative market outlook until market internals deteriorate.
The Ponzi Economy
When U.S. corporate profits are unusually high, it's typically an indication that households and the government are cutting their savings and going into debt.
Without the cyclical contribution of a falling unemployment rate, real U.S. economic growth is likely to slow to well-below 2% annually, and even that assumes the economy will avoid a recession in the years ahead.

h/t Jesse Felder
THE ROOTS OF ARGENTINA´S SURPRISE CRISIS / PROJECT SYNDICATE
The Roots of Argentina’s Surprise Crisis
Martin Guzman , Joseph E. Stiglitz
NEW YORK – The currency scare that Argentina suffered last month caught many by surprise. In fact, a set of risky bets that Argentina’s government undertook starting in December 2015 increased the country’s vulnerability. What was not clear was when Argentina’s economy would be put to the test. When the test came, Argentina failed.
Argentina had to address a number of macroeconomic imbalances when President Mauricio Macri took office at the end of 2015. Early measures included the removal of exchange-rate and capital controls and the reduction of taxes on commodity exports. Argentina also recovered access to international credit markets following a settlement with so-called vulture funds over a debt dispute that had lasted more than a decade.
The government undertook a new macroeconomic approach based on two pillars: gradual reduction of the primary fiscal deficit, and an ambitious inflation-targeting regime that was supposed to bring annual price growth down to a single-digit rate in just three years.
Markets cheered. The prevailing view, eagerly promoted by Argentina’s government, was that the country had done what was necessary to achieve sustainably faster economic growth. Presumably, foreign direct investment would flow in. But it did not.
Instead, Argentina suffered stagflation in 2016, followed by a debt-based recovery in 2017. That led to a surge in imports that was not accompanied by a proportional increase in exports, widening the current-account deficit to 4.6% of GDP and sowing doubt about the virtues of the new approach.
Then, a few weeks ago, markets stopped cheering, expectations soured, and capital fled. The peso depreciated 19% against the US dollar in just the first three weeks of May.
Contrary to Macri’s hopes, his reforms attracted mainly short-term portfolio capital and financing in the form of bonds, both in foreign and domestic currency, rather than foreign direct investment. Argentina’s central bank bears a significant share of the responsibility; while its approach proved largely ineffective in reducing inflation to the target level (the annual rate is still at about 25%), high interest rates encouraged inflows of speculative capital, which worsened the external imbalances and heightened Argentina’s vulnerability to external shocks.
As part of their inflation-targeting approach, the central bank has been sterilizing a large share of the increases in the monetary base through the sale of central banks bonds (LEBACS). This means that the public sector has been effectively financing through short-run central bank debt issuance the largest part of the sizable primary fiscal deficit (4.2% and 3.83% of GDP in 2016 and 2017, respectively). The issuance of LEBCAS has been massive, soaring by 345% since December 2015. This might have been sustainable had early expectations of Argentina’s prospects been validated.
There were obviously trade-offs. Less aggressive sterilization would have contained the growth in central bank debt that has now proven to be so risky, and it would have prevented upward pressure on the exchange rate; but it would have led to higher inflation. Nonetheless, attempting to reduce inflation and the fiscal deficit at similar speeds would have been a more prudent approach. After all, macroeconomic policy decisions should not be made on the basis of the most optimistic scenario when the cost of missed expectations is large.
The currency crisis finally revealed Argentina’s vulnerabilities. Looking ahead, the country will be exposed to several different sources of risk. First, there is still a large stock of LEBACS. And every time a significant portion of that debt falls due, Argentina will be a hostage of financial markets’ mood. This will increase the expected exchange-rate volatility, which may create opportunities for speculative financial investments, but will discourage investments in the real economy. Second, because the public sector’s foreign-currency-denominated debt is much higher than it was two years ago, the increase in exchange-rate risk will also call into question the sustainability of public-sector debt.
To assess where Argentina is heading after the crisis requires highlighting several salient elements of how the episode was managed. First, the central bank lost 10% of its total stock of foreign-exchange reserves in just a month. Second, the annual nominal interest rate on the LEBACS was raised to 40% – the highest in the world, and a move that risks creating a snowball of central-bank debt. Third, and most shocking for Argentines, Macri announced that the country would seek a stand-by agreement with the International Monetary Fund.
Thus, if Argentina’s public sector falls into a state of debt distress in the coming years, it will have to submit to the tutelage of the IMF – a creditor in itself, but also an institution that is dominated by international creditors. At that point, the conditionality that the IMF typically imposes in exchange for financing could cause severe damage.
Most worrisome is that the inflation-targeting approach that has exacerbated Argentina’s external imbalances has been reaffirmed. It would thus not be surprising if a new cycle of real exchange-rate appreciation starts in 2019. With a presidential election next year, that would be good news for Macri; but it would not bode well for Argentina’s future.
Ultimately, because Macri’s approach to putting Argentina’s economy on a sustained growth path has so far failed, and has increased the country’s dependence on international creditors, his administration still faces the challenge of avoiding a debt crisis. To protect economic activity and redress vulnerabilities, the strategy of gradually reducing the primary fiscal deficit should be maintained. But, to save Argentina from an increase in external imbalances affecting the sustainability of external public debt, monetary policy must change. That means finally recognizing that attempting to reduce inflation at a much faster rate than the fiscal deficit entails costly risks. The prudent path also requires a gradual reduction in the stock of LEBACS, recognizing that greater inflationary pressure in the short term is the price of minimizing the risk of higher external imbalances and larger exchange-rate depreciations down the road.
And it would certainly be a mistake to continue reducing the tax on soybean exports, as Macri’s administration has announced it will do. Further tax cuts would increase the deficit, while benefiting a sector that already enjoys rents.
A change in macroeconomic policies is not sufficient to set Argentina on a path of inclusive and sustained economic development; but it is necessary. At the outset of Macri’s administration, there were warnings that he had chosen a high-risk approach. Unfortunately, those warnings were ignored. The strategy we are recommending is not without its own risks. But we are convinced that it offers a viable and sounder path forward.
Martin Guzman, a research associate at Columbia University Business School and an associate professor at the University of Buenos Aires, is a co-chair of the Columbia Initiative for Policy Dialogue Taskforce on Debt Restructuring and Sovereign Bankruptcy and a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is University Professor at Columbia University and Chief Economist at the Roosevelt Institute. His most recent book is Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited: Anti-Globalization in the Era of Trump.
THE NEXT OFFSHORE DRILLING BOOM IS COMING / CASEY RESEARCH
The Next Offshore Drilling Boom Is Coming
by Nick Giambruno
On April 20, 2010, 40 miles southeast of the Louisiana coast, an offshore oil rig named Deepwater Horizon exploded into a giant fireball.
It was the worst environmental disaster in US history.
The blast killed 11 workers and crippled the drilling platform. The entire rig eventually sank.
The explosion also caused four million barrels of oil to spill into the Gulf of Mexico. It was the world’s biggest marine oil spill—ever.
Some of the mess washed ashore in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, destroying thousands of coastal businesses. The rest poisoned once-rich Gulf fisheries.
It took almost two months to cap the oil well and stop the flow. By that point, the tab for the damage was over $50 billion.
The negative media coverage was nonstop. It was the worst-case scenario for offshore drillers.
Everyone hated them, including investors.
The US offshore rig count (a convenient marker of the oil industry’s health) collapsed following the disaster. It fell 80% from April 2010 to July 2010.
Today—after some additional setbacks—the industry is finally poised for its big comeback.
This is partly because the Trump administration is moving to peel back offshore drilling regulations.
I’ll get to those details in a moment.
But first, you need to know a bit about the oil market as a whole.
“Volatility Can Be Your Best Friend”
The oil market is highly cyclical. It goes through regular booms and busts, just like other commodity markets.
For investors, this can be a good thing. As Doug Casey says:
Volatility can be your best friend, as long as your timing is reasonable. I don’t mean timing exact tops and bottoms—no one can do that. I mean spotting the trend and betting on it when others are not, so you can buy low to later sell high.
Oil experienced a major boom cycle from 2002–2008. The price of oil skyrocketed 705% during this period. It went from $18 per barrel in 2002 to $145 in 2008.
Then, oil plunged 80% as the 2008 financial crisis unfolded, down to a low of $30 per barrel.
Oil went through a new boom cycle from 2009–2014. The price of oil topped out at $114 during this cycle.
Then, in late 2014, the US and Saudi Arabia colluded to keep the oil market saturated. Low oil prices hurt the Russian and Iranian economies, which both depend heavily on oil sales.
This created a new bust cycle. Oil plummeted 76%. Then the cycle turned again.
The price of oil has been going up since it bottomed in 2016. But it still hasn’t reached its previous highs. That’s because it hasn’t had the right catalyst yet.
A regional war in the Middle East—which looks increasingly likely as Iran and Israel pick away at each other—would certainly do the trick.
But I think the offshore drilling industry is set to soar regardless. If nothing else, it’s long overdue for a “catch up” rally…
Regulation Stalls Recovery
Offshore oil production matters. It accounts for about 30% of the world’s oil supply.
The US offshore drilling industry eventually stabilized as cleanup from the Deepwater Horizon accident progressed. The offshore rig count grew steadily from the end of 2010 through 2014 as the oil price rose.
Then the price of oil plunged 76% during the 2014¬¬–2016 bust cycle. And the offshore rig count plunged right back down with it.
The rig count started to increase again after oil bottomed in February 2016. For a moment, it looked like the offshore oil industry would recover with the price of oil.
Then the rig count suddenly reversed course. It plummeted to its lowest level in over 10 years.
The reason? Regulation.
It took six years for the federal government to react to the Deepwater Horizon crisis. Then in 2016, it significantly increased offshore drilling regulations.
The Obama administration banned all new offshore oil and gas development within more than 100 million acres of the Atlantic coast. It also blocked nearly 94% of drilling on the outer continental shelf, which is the area between coastal waters and the deep ocean.
This was a major problem for offshore oil drillers.
You see, the offshore oil business goes through its own booms and busts, just like the oil market as a whole. In the last cycle, oil drillers brought too many rigs into the market at the wrong time.
Just as the industry was finally putting the Deepwater Horizon accident behind it, the price of oil tumbled. Offshore drillers got crushed.
While the price of oil and most oil stocks has been rising since 2016, the offshore oil industry has floundered.
I think that’s about to change.
A Long Overdue Recovery
Earlier this year, the Trump administration moved to lift Obama’s offshore drilling ban. This would allow new offshore oil and gas drilling in nearly all US coastal waters.
Trump’s proposal would also free up 90% of the outer continental shelf for offshore drilling.
This bodes very well for the US offshore oil industry.
Offshore drilling activity, as measured by the rig count, has increased significantly over the past few months.
Right now, utilization for all offshore rigs is at 74.2%. Optimal utilization is 80%. The industry isn’t there yet. But there’s been a notable improvement since 2017, when it hovered in the 70% range.
This is a good sign that the offshore oil industry is starting to recover from its worst ever downturn.
The sentiment about offshore drilling is increasingly positive. Investment dollars are flowing back into production capacity. It looks like 2017 marked the bottom for the offshore oil industry.
Offshore oil stocks have lagged behind other oil stocks. So even a “catch-up” rally would send stock prices higher.
In short, these companies are very cheap right now, and are poised for an uptrend. Couple that with the positive outlook on the price of oil, and you’re looking at an excellent crisis investing opportunity.
Bienvenida
Les doy cordialmente la bienvenida a este Blog informativo con artículos, análisis y comentarios de publicaciones especializadas y especialmente seleccionadas, principalmente sobre temas económicos, financieros y políticos de actualidad, que esperamos y deseamos, sean de su máximo interés, utilidad y conveniencia.
Pensamos que solo comprendiendo cabalmente el presente, es que podemos proyectarnos acertadamente hacia el futuro.
Gonzalo Raffo de Lavalle
Las convicciones son mas peligrosos enemigos de la verdad que las mentiras.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Quien conoce su ignorancia revela la mas profunda sabiduría. Quien ignora su ignorancia vive en la mas profunda ilusión.
Lao Tse
“There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen.”
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.
Warren Buffett
No soy alguien que sabe, sino alguien que busca.
FOZ
Only Gold is money. Everything else is debt.
J.P. Morgan
Las grandes almas tienen voluntades; las débiles tan solo deseos.
Proverbio Chino
Quien no lo ha dado todo no ha dado nada.
Helenio Herrera
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
Karl Marx
If you know the other and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
Sun Tzu
We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.
Paulo Coelho

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