06.05.08
Global Inflation and Opporunity
Fed Chief Ben Bernanke talks about his worry on inflation in the last 2 days. The problem is that Fed can no longer control the pricing alone in this globally integrated market. Since 70% of US GDP comes from service sector, it is almost impossible to see how heavy inflationary environment in China and India is not going to have a significant impact on US. We have seen heavy demand on not only industrial commodities such as oil and gas, but also agricultural commodities like rice and pork. As a matter of fact, Costco is limiting number of bag of rice a person can purchase at one visit. As more of more citizens in the developing countries become richer, they will also seek better life that most Americans get used to: better and more food, a car, a house etc. Imagine several billion of people flood to this new demand curve and its impact on the overall resources? We as a human race will come up solutions to deal with this resource demand/supply gap overtime, but the shock is unavoidable. It is actually good for the digital economy because digital economy is based on bountifulness of unlimited supply (ie. 1M download of a software is not going to be add noticeable cost than a single copy of download). While physical economy gets more constrained, the digital economy would be in favor. For example, as airline ticket goes up, people would use virtual meeting more than flying to meet in person. I see a lot of opportunities for us in the valley to benefit from this trend.