Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when Im sixty-four.
– The Beatles
Well who would have thunk it? Not Paul McCartney forty years ago and certainly not yours truly, but yes he has, and I am, about to turn 64. Unlike Pauls doleful dowager however, who pines for a companion to help him digging the weeds in a vegetable garden, life has offered up a more tossed and complicated salad for me to munch on. An authentic global financial crisis has led to sixteen-hour days and little time for gardening or the golf course for that matter. Still Im not complaining – just explaining. As my wife Sue tells me every once in awhile, "You dont have to go to work, you know." Nor, I suppose, do I have to spend a Sunday afternoon writing Investment Outlooks, but here I am. Because, it only takes a second to realize how exciting this all is. The current crisis is like putting together the worlds largest jigsaw puzzle and recognizing youve completed the borders and a lot of the interior patterns. Cant stop now. Besides, 64 isnt old. The definition of old is "someone who is 15 years older than you are" and so I guess time must be on my side. Anyway, I hope I have a happy 64th and Im glad that many of you still need me. The feeding, thank goodness, I can still do for myself.
There are so many important think pieces that have come up in recent PIMCO Investment Committee meetings that I thought Id do a smorgasbord summary of four of them in order to let you know what we are keeping an eye on as we move ahead through 2008. They are as follows: