After a year’s break because of COVID, we are reconvening the annual summer gathering at Leen’s Lodge in Grand Lake Stream, Maine. The Global Interdependence Center has been enormously helpful in organizing the gathering.
This year, special precautions are in place for all the obvious reasons. Full vaccine verification is required for everyone. That means all fishing guides, all lodge staff, and, of course, all attendees. No exceptions. In addition, precautions are in place that will have us operating at 50% capacity, so we have divided the gathering into two weekends. Mitigation will include social distancing, outdoor dining as much as possible, masking when we are not eating, sanitizing, gargling, using nasal sprays, and all other possible defenses that can be applied in a reasonable way.
The gathering will include a number of sessions conducted under the Chatham House Rule. The rule simply says that you can quote the takeaway views of the group, but you cannot identify the source of a quotation without permission. Many of the attendees are well-known publicly, make frequent media appearances, and often grant permission. I grant full permission on anything I say or do, but others share their views under certain restrictions, either because they represent a government or institution that wants the restriction or because they don’t want to conflict with some business or other public purpose. So the Chatham House Rule applies.
Some of the discussion panels and conversations will be made public. Some interviews will be recorded for Cumberland’s YouTube Channel. Other participants who are involved in financial, economic, or general media may report on those parts of the gathering that are convened when the Chatham House Rule is suspended.
This year’s program is diverse and compelling:
(1) We will have COVID updates with expertise that brings worldwide experience to the gathering.
(2) There will be a session on climate change, rising sea levels, a melting Arctic, and what our rapidly changing world climate portends for coastlines, for creditworthiness of institutions and governments, for public health, and for forecasts of what’s to come.
(3) The usual conversations will take place about interest rates, the Federal Reserve, other central banks, deficit financing, taxation, stock markets, bond markets, commodity markets, precious metal markets, real estate markets, etc. Representatives of these elements will be in attendance. The aggregate assets represented by the combined assemblage of the two weeks is measurable in large numbers. Many of those conversations will be private, but insofar as possible, information obtained from them will be shared within the confines of the Chatham House Rule.
(4) A special session will focus on our prison system — incarceration, recidivism, rehabilitation, and the overall condition of the corrections system in the United States. We have expertise that will discuss these issues and identify the many obstacles and challenges a million persons who have criminal records and who would like to be rehabilitated must overcome in order to be reintegrated into the mainstream labor force. That session promises to be enlightening, with both policy specifics and personal stories.
(5) Another session will focus specifically on the condition of the US dollar as the world reserve currency, the implications of China’s activities regarding financial market restrictions, its implementation of policy changes, and the geopolitical risks involved. Several China experts are attending, and their views will be articulated in the conversations. Whether they give permission for their discussions to be made public remains to be seen. The takeaways about China will certainly be part of summaries prepared by attendees.
(6) The last important bullet, in my mind, is a full discussion about long haul COVID. The other COVID update session will examine where the disease is spreading now, which variants are dangerous, who’s getting sick, levels of vaccination, and problems at hospitals — those types of issues. Long haul COVID merits its own session, and it will be discussed both weeks.
The idea here is to identify the implications when excess deaths in the United States now exceed a million and are growing every day, when long haul COVID clinics are expanding their operations throughout the country, and when partial and full disability surge above baseline disability. This is a huge issue; some people now call long COVID the polio of this generation. If you think about disabilities in the United States that were established pre-COVID, there’s a substantial array of statistics, and they are available at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and in states’ statistical bodies and other institutional forms. So we have a baseline for disability categories, the costs attributable to them, and the methods to assist disabled individuals in the United States pre-COVID.
But then along came COVID. We are now learning that the swath that long haul COVID continues to cut through populations is huge, and its impacts on lifelong health can be considerable. We see growing evidence of case after case after case of respiratory, neurological, cardiological, or other failures in the human body’s systems. We also see that the evidence of the damage COVID causes can emerge after people have been sick with COVID and think they are recovering. Weeks and even months later, they confront new symptoms and lasting difficulties. Long haul COVID constitutes a disruption measurable in the millions of people, many of them in the prime of their lives. We intend to talk about it and have introduced as much as we can of the current data.
The big caution is that we are on a learning curve with long haul COVID. There is much we do not yet know. We do know more than we did a year ago, but it may take another two or three or four years before we have pieced together a full array of information.
Some estimates now of long haul COVID costs are in the tens of trillions for the developing countries of the world, and the numbers are growing. The emerging countries of the world are still reeling from the shock of death and disease in the initial onslaught of COVID. They haven’t gotten to addressing the problem of what to do with the populations that survive the pandemic virus and its variants but are either partially or fully disabled. All that is coming, and there is no way to estimate today what the ultimate impact will be. In my opinion, the discussions we will have about what to look for, how to find the data, how to apply the information, and how to develop the estimates of outcomes from long haul COVID are a very important and very serious part of this gathering.
We wish our attendees and guests safe travels to Maine. Caution is the byword, as Delta is rampant in the United States. Conversations will be candid, civil, and varied in terms of both political perspectives and personal views. My guess is that we’ll all take away something new, and we’ll probably have more to worry about after we leave than we had when we got there, as if there isn’t enough to worry about already. So, to colleagues who are coming to the gathering in Maine over the next two weekends, travel safely. I look forward to greeting you personally at a social distance and with a mask.
It’s been two years since we have convened in Maine. Our gathering has been taking place for several decades, and it has become a place for discussion of critical issues in finance, economics, public health, government, and geopolitics. Ten years ago, when the US was downgraded by S&P on a Friday afternoon, Bloomberg TV broadcast live from Leen’s Lodge that evening, as they had immediate access to an array of financial and economic expertise among those who had assembled that year. Here’s that story.
“He Downgraded the U.S. a Decade Ago. He Stands By It.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-17/john-chambers-downgraded-the-u-s-in-2011-and-stands-by-it
I expect the conversation at this year’s gathering to be as challenging as one could ever anticipate. Social distancing and masks notwithstanding, some fine wines, fine fishing, and fine friendships ensure that the experience will be a profound pleasure.
David R. Kotok
Chairman of the Board & Chief Investment Officer
Email | Bio
Links to other websites or electronic media controlled or offered by Third-Parties (non-affiliates of Cumberland Advisors) are provided only as a reference and courtesy to our users. Cumberland Advisors has no control over such websites, does not recommend or endorse any opinions, ideas, products, information, or content of such sites, and makes no warranties as to the accuracy, completeness, reliability or suitability of their content. Cumberland Advisors hereby disclaims liability for any information, materials, products or services posted or offered at any of the Third-Party websites. The Third-Party may have a privacy and/or security policy different from that of Cumberland Advisors. Therefore, please refer to the specific privacy and security policies of the Third-Party when accessing their websites.
Sign up for our FREE Cumberland Market Commentaries
Cumberland Advisors Market Commentaries offer insights and analysis on upcoming, important economic issues that potentially impact global financial markets. Our team shares their thinking on global economic developments, market news and other factors that often influence investment opportunities and strategies.
