Jim Puplava has made a decades-long career of interviewing hundreds of notable experts on the economy, energy, precious metals, geopolitics, agriculture and other sectors that impact our future.

The outlook he has developed as a result of all this input is less than sanguine. Jim concludes that economic growth will be constrained both by world governments' chronic addiction to spending more revenue than they take in, and by the systemically-rising costs of fossil fuel-driven energy.

In terms growth, he sees political leadership becoming less and less relevant in its ability to effect outcomes. In fact, he declares the price of oil as now being more influential in stimulating or depressing sovereign economies than central bank interest rates. In his words, ""oil is the new Federal Funds rate"".

Those managing capital -- whether at the individual or institutional level -- have a very difficult time of it today because asset prices are being buffeted by powerful, but countervailing crosswinds. The deflationary forces of credit contraction put downward pressure on asset prices, but central bank money printing and other liquidity measures push up from below. Rock-bottom interest rates are forcing investors out the risk curve, but few are comfortable with the alternative choices they have. Many investors instead are looking to minimize risk now, but they're not sure what is safe anymore. Raise cash that's being eroding in purchasing power by inflation? Or hunker down in bonds that yield next to nothing and will have their value clobbered when interest rates eventually rise?