Life goes best in 20-minute mouthfuls. This is my very simple mantra for a joyous everyday life.
However, if you want a larger perspective - say, you have to write a column - you need to zoom out and look at a larger construct of time. And when I do this, I see that the world has just entered an era of greater responsibility, more empathy and a much more sensible focus on the longer term. And about time too!
The era of "I want it now" and the incessant focus on quarterly results (QSQT, to quote Shobhaa De quoting Arundhati Bhattacharya, the new CMD of State Bank of India, or SBI) had not only brought Lehman down but, far worse, seemed close to bringing life on earth to its knees. Over the past 20-some years, from about 1980 to 2008, finance had taken over the global economy and money had become the be-all and end-all. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with money; but, when all you think about - and talk about - is money, parties become extremely boring, unless, of course, you get drunk.
The good news (certainly for my liver) is that the cycle has inexorably turned. You see it everywhere, most loudly in the financial sector. Perhaps symbolically, the last alpha-male star of the previous couple of decades, Jamie Dimon, is stumbling and clearly on his way out. With regulators, despite being hamstrung by political interference, pushing steadily, banking is well on its way to once more becoming a boring, staid but solid profession. We see it in India, too. In addition to Ms Bhattacharya at SBI, Chanda Kochhar has changed the nature of ICICI Bank, which was the only real alpha-male bank in India, into a much more responsible, solid institution.
It is no coincidence that this change of life, to use a pointed phrase, is marked by the rise of women to more and greater positions of power. Women have a much deeper - indeed, physiologic - understanding of time and the importance of the long term, which, as I write this, suggests to me that this next cycle will be longer than the previous one.
Another major event in this evolution is the elevation of Janet Yellen as chairperson of the US Federal Reserve, joining Angela Merkel and Christine Lagarde as a superqueen global triumvirate. I believe that, as Ms Yellen gets into her stride, the fact - usually obvious to people with a longer-term horizon - that forever-loose money will one day trigger potentially destructive inflation will lead to earlier tapering than market currently expects; be prepared.
Of course, change - certainly one as fundamental as this - is not a step function. There have always been people focused on long-term values, whether in business or the environment or society - Buckminster Fuller and E F Schumacher were speaking of sustainability in the early 20th century; Lester Brown started the Worldwatch Institute in 1972; Greenpeace started the same year. It's just that their voices, despite being steadily strengthened by ongoing research and reams of physical evidence, were drowned out by the roar of the "greed is good" crowd for several years.
Today, their efforts, as those of millions of others, well known or not, are getting closer to centre stage. Many multinational companies already publish triple bottom-line results, incorporating the impact of their business activities on the environment and communities. Several of them are also happy to pay a premium for environmentally sound products. And, many, many companies measure and try to minimise their green footprint. Markets, of course, already know this - the price-to-earnings ratios for more responsible companies (in India, the Tatas, Mahindras and the Aditya Birla Group, for instance) are substantially and steadily higher than those for less future-conscious competitors.
The efforts of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and increasingly of numerous other philanthropists, including several in India, hardly need mentioning - except that, as part of this new global cycle, their effectiveness will increase multifold.
All that is left is for this new wave to infect political discourse, as always the trickiest of all. But the good news is that even if they can run, they can't hide. Remember, this new cycle is but a few years old. If, as I expect, it is of longer duration than the previous one - running, say, 50 or 60 years - it would take another 20 years or so to reach its peak.
Thus, 2030 or thereabouts will be the pinnacle of the new Golden Age, the new Enlightenment, call it what you will. I will be just 80 years old, Goldman Sachs will be run by a woman, the Indian economy will be the size of the US economy today, and the rupee - well, you tell me.
jamal@mecklai.com
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