Investopedia characterizes stagflation as a period of slow economic growth (declining GDP) and relatively high unemployment — economic stagnation — accompanied by rising prices – inflation.

There are many third-world examples that lay bare the economic death spiral associated with stagflation. Lebanon and Venezuela come to mind, and heavily-sanctioned Russia will not be far behind.

On February 24th, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. It was an unprovoked invasion orchestrated by a bellicose dictator who wanted to decapitate an emerging democracy. It is the standard playbook for frightened Dictators ruling a disenfranchised population. You cannot have ordinary Russians questioning whether the Ukrainian experiment with capitalism is a better model than a Soviet style autocracy?

The “picture-is-worth-1,000-words” metaphor is well-suited to illustrate the performance of financial markets during January 2022. Early declines, most notably within the tech heavy Nasdaq 100 index, were followed by sharp rallies, described by pundits as take your pick: a reversion to the mean or a bull fake out. The late-stage rally in the Nasdaq prevented it from recording the worst January in its history.

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect refers to how minor changes in an initial assumption can alter the future in unimaginable ways. It was based on the work of mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz who used the example of a tornado being influenced by minor perturbations such as a distant butterfly flapping its wings weeks earlier.

OMICRON: VARIANT OF CONCERN?

Is it an ominous sign that social media posts focused more on the process for naming the latest iteration of COVID, than it did debating the risks associated with the transformative mutations unique to Omicron?

The World Health Organization (WHO) classifies COVID variants with letters from the Greek alphabet in much the same way as we categorize hurricanes alphabetically. The idea is to provide the general population with a down-to-earth classification that simplifies the scientific designation and removes any stigma caused by referencing variants using the location where they were detected.

Are we to assume from Facebook’s name change that Mark Zuckerberg is embracing a corporate transformation? Or could it be an attempt to shift attention away from mounting regulatory headwinds? Perhaps, it is a bit of both.

Whatever the reason, Meta Platforms Inc. (Facebook’s new name) reflects the company’s growing ambitions beyond social media. To that end, the company is setting in motion a ten-year US $10 billion spending initiative to ensure that its platform and more than two billion daily active users will be the central player in the next iteration of the Internet… the “Metaverse.”