Conversation

Preliminary thinking, speculation, and hypotheses. Earnestly intended and honestly attempted, but almost always needing further consideration, clarification, correction, or not-yet-found confirmation. These are research notes and homework still underway. Conversation is derived from the Latin meaning to turn together.

  • Vulnerability can multiply or divide
    The 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season opened with a big bang named Beryl, the earliest-forming Category 5 storm on record. Outcomes in the Caribbean, Gulf, and east Texas punctuated the forecast for more high-energy storms. But Chris and Debby were mostly rain events. Ernesto saved his worst for the open ocean. Since mid-August, not much. Axios […]
  • July PCE for Food
    In July 2019 residents of the United States, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, expended 1, 081 billion “real” inflation-adjusted dollars on Food-At-Home. This July we spent 1, 173 billion real dollars on groceries and related, about eight percent more. With inflation included, in July 2024 we spent almost 26 percent more on groceries […]
  • Demand as Strength and Vulnerability
    Supply is generated, delivered, and sold to fulfill demand. Supply Chain fitness reflects the capacity of upstream and midstream supply to fulfill downstream demand in a timely and affordable way. Contemporary high volume, high velocity supply chains depend on persistent (preferably increasing) demand. During the month of July real — inflation-adjusted — personal consumption expenditures […]
  • Current Condition of Adaptive Flows
    Most freight movements are local. But local deliveries often depend on significant upstream flows. Below is a map that the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics developed showing upstream flows by proportional ton for the United States. Some crucial domestic flows depend on global flows (mostly maritime flows) suggested by the screen capture farther below of […]
  • Price Gouging or Reality Signaling?
    On Tuesday, August 13, I was watching and working as soon-to-become Hurricane Ernesto approached Puerto Rico.  Early that morning I wrote to some colleagues, “DACO has announced a price freeze starting tonight (both my Adam Smith and Network Science predilections are always offended at this).” Puerto Rico’s Office of Consumer Affairs is not alone in such […]
  • Second-Half Flow Fitness
    The second half of 2024 has opened with moderating pull and sustainable push for food, energy, and most aspects of crucial freight. The Red Sea (Suez Canal) pinch point continues to prompt higher prices and some Asia-Europe port congestion. But current — and prospective — flows are mostly well-calibrated with fundamental demand. Food Flows Once […]
  • Healthy demand in June
    Sustained, strong demand is, I perceive, the best guarantor of resilient supply chains. High volume, high velocity contemporary supply chains demonstrate rather amazing creativity and adaptability when pull signals keep singing. (The reverse can also be true, when pull is muted, push is demoralized and distracted.) As such the monthly retail sales and personal consumption […]
  • Carrots, sticks, or conversation?
    What are the structural — systemic — vulnerabilities of contemporary supply chains? There are many. Which deserve the most attention? Odd Lots, the Bloomberg podcast, recently interviewed Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize winning economist, on this theme. Following are some excerpts: …firms don’t think about the consequences of underinvesting in capacity for others. They may […]
  • Accelerating Freight Flows
    Contemporary supply chain management works to minimize costs of excess capacity and inventory. The goal is to accurately anticipate demand so that supply is pushed Just-In-Time to precisely where consumer pull is present. Because it is less costly to make and buy in bulk and precise prediction is not always possible, there is usually some […]
  • Houston’s very hot wash
    Hurricane Beryl reached Category 5 much earlier in the Atlantic hurricane season than any other system on record. On July 1, as a CAT4, it devastated Carriacou. Jamaica’s south shore received a harsh passing swipe. On July 5 Beryl made landfall at Tulum as a high-end CAT2, continued across the Yucatan, then entered the Gulf […]
  • TARA is tougher now
    Supply Chain Resilience actions can often be characterized by one of four risk-oriented choices: Transfer, Avoid, Reduce, and/or Accept (TARA). Risk abundantly unfolds. We will experience bruising or worse. But with forethought and action, most risks can be mitigated. For example, potential loss-of-life from storm surge can be avoided by evacuating surge-prone places. Potential property […]
  • Shock then stress, now synchronicity
    What were you doing thirty to sixty days ago? Well, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis during the month of May the increasingly mythical “average American” was making just little bit more and so consuming a bit more goods and services that in aggregate cost a tiny bit less and even saving itty-bitty more […]
  • Hurricane Season: Concentrating on Concentrations
    [July 1 Update below] Some readers found my June 10 post on hurricane season, “a bit too thin” or “… “too fast”… or “too big-picture” (among other comments, including some positive). So, here’s a try at something meatier, slower, and more tightly focused. The original post was organized around threats, vulnerabilities, and consequences. Looking at […]
  • Strong Pull Persists
    Yesterday the Census Bureau reported, “Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for May 2024, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $703.1 billion, up 0.1 percent (±0.4 percent)* from the previous month, and up 2.3 percent (±0.5 percent) above May 2023. Total sales for […]
  • Summer Solstice Flow Forecasts
    According to the USDA, during 2024 the world is leaning toward a bit less wheat, corn, and soybeans. But existing stocks will mostly fill the gap. There will likely be a bit more rice. But whether up or down the shifts are under one percent on huge volumes. Large-scale, short-term weather and crop conditions look […]
  • Listening to the Cascadia Quartet
    Last Friday the journal ScienceAdvances published the outcomes of recent research on the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Here is a summary paragraph from the report: An important finding of our study is that a horizon interpreted as the plate interface transects the deep sediments of the inner wedge offshore of the Olympic peninsula… This décollement beneath […]
  • Gaza’s non-flow
    Today Jordan will host an intergovernmental consultation on “urgent humanitarian response for Gaza“.  According to Jordan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs the Dead Sea conference will “identify ways to strengthen the international community’s response to the humanitarian catastrophe, outline effective standardized measures and procedures, identify the operational and logistical needs and the types of support necessary in […]
  • Hurricanes: Threats, Vulnerabilities, Consequences
    THREATS The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasts, “a range of 17 to 25 total named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher). Of those, 8 to 13 are forecast to become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher), including 4 to 7 major hurricanes (category 3, 4 or 5; with winds of 111 mph […]
  • Resilience depends on effectual demand
    It has been my experience that where and when there is effectual demand — in other words, needs or desires with resources to cover the costs of supply plus a reasonable margin — there is a substantive basis for Supply Chain Resilience. There can still be plenty of troubles, but where there is meaningful pull […]
  • May Big flows
    Food Flows As the planting season is underway across the Northern Hemisphere, the US Department of Agriculture reports: The global wheat outlook for 2024/25 is for slightly lower supplies, increased consumption, modestly higher trade, and reduced stocks. Supplies are projected to decrease 2.2 million tons to 1,056.0 million with production projected at a record 798.2 […]
  • Demand decides
    In January 2016 real — inflation adjusted — Personal Consumption Expenditure in the United States was $12,799 billion. Four years later in January 2020 real PCE was $14,185 billion, very close to a ten percent increase. Early in the Pandemic PCE cratered (see first chart below). But by March 2021 PCE had recovered to $14,269 […]
  • Amalthea again
    On Saturday shipments from Cyprus to Gaza resumed. According to CNN, “The ship, called “Jennifer,” departed Larnaca Port in Cyprus at 9 a.m. local (2 a.m. ET) and will take around 25 to 30 hours to arrive at Israel’s Ashdod port, according to ANERA’s (American Near East Refugee Aid) emergency response team lead in the West […]
  • Demand marches ahead
    Personal Consumption Expenditures for March were a bit higher than expected. It is just a blip, but a boisterous blip. This PCE print signals a continued pattern of rather robust demand, including a significant monthly increase in demand for goods (compared to services). The March economy absolutely had spring in its step. See the first […]
  • Upstream flows for the Grid
    Below is yesterday’s (April 22, 2024) full-day fuel mix for the Texas grid. Proportions change seasonally and (obviously) by the time of day. But the major contributors remain the same: solar, wind, natural gas, coal/lignite, and nuclear. Other sources are very marginal, but can be vital when the grid is teetering on the edge. The […]

Join the conversation