Research Zeitgeist: Goldman Sachs, Merchant of Gloom?
A lot of people must be sticking pins in their Goldman Sachs voodoo dolls these days.
First, Goldman was responsible for the $200 Oil Price Spike forecast that helped fuel the oil price runup. Then Goldman analysts put the boot in on General Motors and Citigroup with “sell” recommendations, helping send the market into a tailspin late this week.
The fact that Goldman has so far survived the financial turmoil far better than the (below) average Bear, just rubs salt into the wounds of its Wall Street competitiors.
Speaking of oil, it’s hard to know exactly what to make of the Energy Information Agency’s annual Energy Outlook in the context of current oil prices. The EIA projects an increase of over 50% in world energy consumption by 2030, but this scenario was based on last summer’s energy prices. The EIA also projects that “in nominal terms, world oil prices in the IEO2008 reference case decline from current high levels to around $70 per barrel in 2015, then rise steadily to $113 per barrel in 2030.” That looks like a pretty attractive scenario these days.
If we can afford the utilities bills, by that time we’ll be spending much of our waking hours watching video, judging from Research Recap’s most popular post this week. Forrester Research outlines a world in which every surface -including the bottom of our cereal bowls- becomes a video outlet for beaming video signals into our receptive brains.
Back to the present, Standard & Poor’s analysis that the CMBX Index has contributed to capital drying up in the commercial real estate market was popular, as was the older multi-source post arguing that credit default swaps may be contributing to financial risk, rather than mitigating it as it is supposed to do.
Research Recap Quote of the Week:
Marketers no longer dismiss blogs as irrelevant ramblings of pajama-clad geeks. -Forrester Research analyst Peter Kim.
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