The One Eyed Guide is Bob Small who: solo traveled to 25 countries by age 21, has a degree in Economics, an MBA from Columbia University in Marketing and Finance, has been a brand manager, was a licensed stock and options broker during the 87 crash, ran a $450 million dollar business and raised $8 million for charity. 

The original inspiration for the One Eyed Guide blog was the 2008 election.   Bob lives in Ohio where the ideological election advertising was mind numbing.  Advertising focused on economic solutions for growth and health care but the solutions-from both sides-clearly would not work.   To make it worse, each side’s ads claimed horrible consequences from the other’s recommendations that could not possibly have occurred.  Does anybody really think that any new health care plan will try to make poor people (like students) pay? Hint:  It’s not going to happen because they have no money!  That’s why they are poor.

Fact check sites didn’t really help as they only check what is stated and usually can’t beat the old he said/she said trick of having experts make outrageous but unverifiable lies to fog issues.   

The One Eyed Guide Blog tries to clarify issues by making forecasts of what will actually happen for the average interested  person.   These forecasts and the simple explanations with them are designed to be of the “you’ll be OK if you follow this advice” type that you might get from a good native guide.  Just remember that every once in a while even the best native guide and his clients are killed and eaten by “friendly” natives. 

Events like the oil price spike and crash caused by speculators pushing oil (and therefore gas) prices to absurd levels are really difficult to predict before the fact even when there are clear trends like “peak oil” that can be forecast.  The purpose of the One Eyed Guide is not to identify trends that you can speculate on but to help navigate a volatile economy by:

1.       Projecting and explaining long-term economic trends.  Examples:  the housing bubble (where you were usually better off renting) and stock market P/E  deflation (which made a bear market inevitable.)

2.       Explaining the cause of short-term negative events and discussing the plus and minuses of various solutions.  Example:  the credit crisis and how Paulson is channeling Hoover.

Links will usually be incluced so the curious can read more about reasons behind the forecast.  Wikipedia is frequently used – if you think something is wrong in it fix it and please let us know.

Click here to see some of the things that Bob has gotten right and wrong.

We are not perfect with our forecasting and advice.  Read the One Eyed Disclaimer to find out how bad we expect to be.