Do you remember being flabbergasted as an economic graduate student when studying business cycles and learning that recessions and booms
were once linked to sunspots and solar flares? In case you haven’t heard, the sun emitted a massive solar flare yesterday and the blast is about to hit mother earth with a strong geomagnetic storm sometime in the next few days.
How’s this going to affect markets and the economy? Given we’re
really no longer an agrarian economy we have know idea and our
suspicions are probably nothing unless it somehow whips up the animal
spirits. We did find this video piece linking geomagnetic storms to earthquake
activity very interesting, however. We take this stuff a little bit
more serious as we move closer to the anniversary of Japan’s tragic
earthquake on March 11th.
Not many people could have taken such a severe blow as the Japanese
and the country’s heroic response and perseverance is a testament to
their national character. Godspeed, Japan.