Welcome to the Mclowd Community Newsletter
Free money is now the drug of choice and the central banks have basically declared it legal and readily available. The problem with this strategy is that investors are now becoming detached from the reality of their surroundings, which could easily prove fatal.
Markets Stoned on Free Money, AFR Feb 25th
Introduction
The global economy over the last 20 years has been characterised by expansionary monetary and fiscal policy settings, which have been used to both:
- Artificially inflate asset prices
- Pump up P&L outcomes (specifically income and employment)
Balance sheet funding has been a key element, and has spanned three broad categories:
- More than A$250 trillion in public and private sector debt
- Trillions more in central bank balance sheet expansion (in effect the printing of money)
- Asset sales (in the case of Australia, tens of billions of dollars from selling the ports, poles and wires in order to fund capex or opex)
However the reason that this avalanche of money has failed to ignite even a flicker of inflationary pressure is very simple:
throughout this period the P&L was being progressively hollowed out by powerful deflationary forces.
Accounting Software Update
Version 8.0.1 is now in production.
This release is a watershed for the Mclowd Community, incorporating as it does the new suspense allocations screen.
As this short video illustrates, this interface will provide users – particularly Practitioners – with a much faster workflow.
In the coming weeks we will be adding the following incremental features:
- Bulk coding
- Allocation rules
- Transaction splitting
In the June quarter we will transpose this functionality across to the Transactions screen proper, at which point we will be much closer to our ultimate goals of:
- Editability that is equivalent to that offered by incumbent vendors
- Leveraging artificial intelligence to provide the ‘code-free accounting’ paradigm that high-volume Practitioner users have rightly come to expect
2019 WIP Priorities
As the Summary from our 2019 Kick Off highlights, WIP targets for the coming months are focused on:
- Year end simplification
- Improved support for custom assets (particularly crypto currencies)
- Residual pension targets (specifically contribution reserves strategy and splitting)
- Property upgrade (additional GL accounts and upgraded Property Expenses Report)
As always your feedback on the content of the document is welcome.
Conclusion
Whether viewed through the lens of economics or ecology, our days of living from the balance sheet are drawing to a close.
Whether it is energy, software or any other metric by which we gauge economic activity (and the sustainability thereof) this process will drive a relentless pursuit of Zero Marginal Cost solutions. In the case of SMSF administration, that solution will be Mclowd.
Postscript
I would caution anyone who has been involved in the deployment (or ongoing management) of capital over the last twenty years from extrapolating their experience into any form of future scenario planning.
After more than a decade of near–zero (if not negative) interest rates, one quarter of a quadrillion dollars in debt and with virtually all of the other policy levers having been exhausted, it is the forces of deflation that will now prevail.
As was always going to be the case.
Regards
Ashley Porter
Managing Director
Mclowd Pty Ltd