Russia and China got into a love fest this week. Led by two crooks – one who caused Covid, killed millions  around the world but denied it, and the other who invaded Ukraine, killed hundreds of thousands innocent civilians and continues to pursue an unwinnable war. While the latter has been deemed a criminal by the International Criminal Court, the former is laughing and plotting his next move while chewing on pork at the Forbidden City.

None of this mattered to the markets that saw the Federal Reserve raise rates by another 25 basis points. On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the U.S. government is prepared to take further action if needed to stabilize the banking sector. The major stock market indexes all tallied a winning week, with the Dow Jones average gaining 1.2%, the S&P 500 rising 1.4%, and the Nasdaq Composite closing up 1.7%.

Future Wealth’s View

Why does a change in world order matter? It does because the world we leave behind for our children is not the one we all worked our whole lives for. The fundamental tenets that we teach our children is to be kind, honest, gentle, charitable and be nice to everybody. But, the leaders of the most powerful nations are anything but honest, gentle or kind. In fact, Trump, Putin and Xi have shown to be dishonest, vindictive, rude, prevaricate, obfuscate and blame others for their mistakes – qualities that no one should emulate.

While most of us focus on the immediate problems in our lives and take little time to think about what lies ahead in the future, radical changes in the global political landscape should cause us all to pause for a moment to reevaluate our basic life objectives and assumptions. While we may be more inclined to ponder the future of our portfolios from the recent bank blowups, we also have to wonder what awaits us and our kids’ in the next 25-50 years with the kind of weak role models our leaders have become.

On the very first day at my first job, right out of grad school, my manager said to me words that still ring in my ears – “ Everything you do, at work and outside work, will impact your life and the lives of everyone around you. Always remember that every single thing you do will shape your life and lives of people you meet.”