Did you forget your TPS reports

Remember sitting in math class in high school and college and wondering when you would ever use this stuff? Well, some of us may still be wondering. By now, you are all likely being inundated with emails about flights restarting, hotels reopening and foreign borders opening. In a series of what seems to be false starts, who knew math would come in so handy. When I left the finance world I often wondered if leading indicators, industrial supply management charts and rate of change graphs would telegraph into the travel industry.

It turns out they do. Now the challenge is talking economics without having the class fall asleep in the first five minutes at the mention of M1 and M2 lines. I had that pleasure doing presentations for ACTA in Canada as part of their Ready to Travel series.

Since early April, I have been honored to deliver a series of economic recovery webinars to our agency partners in the US and Canada, helping block out all the noise and look at a few indicators that tell us where the market and the economy are heading, what awaits us on the horizon, and what opportunities exist to strengthen the foundation of their businesses. This also includes comparing certain movements in 2008 versus today and seeing key differences that are encouraging about the eventual recovery. These conversations are also a reminder that the recovery is a matter of when, not if, regardless of what any talking heads on television say.

I worked in finance as the dot com bubble burst and during the 9/11 terror attacks. Even if this period has no previous playbook, the economic movements and day trading behavior still follows a pattern that is proven over decades, even with the recently announced 39% contraction in the US GDP in the second quarter.

Click this link to watch these presentations, however to help you understand why economics are important to me, you should watch this video scene from “Office Space”.  This was my previous work experience including the dreaded TPS reports.