85 Broads has many awesome friends but few are more awesome than our friends at Barclays. Tom Kalaris, who runs Barclays Wealth Management, introduced me to Craig Jones who heads up Diversity. In a word, Craig totally ROCKS. He rocks because he is willing to experiment and try new things -- he is one of the people I most respect and admire at Barclays.

I asked Craig if we could get Tim Bond, who is a truly brilliant global strategist, to do a live Jam Session with us. We wanted to hear Tim's prognostications on the global economy for 2010. For one hour today he totally wowed our members who had signed on to hear him speak.

Tim shared with our audience that he believes that payrolls in the US will modestly improve in Q1 to the 100k-150k level... that there have been significant outflows from money market funds which means people/institutions are starting to free up cash to invest in bonds/equities.. bank loans are still declining.. productivity is unsustainably high... companies will become increasingly convinced that they need to start hiring again.. M&A will pick up... the central banks will likely make policy errors but not sure in which direction -- will they keep rates too low too long? will they raise them too quickly? and most of all.. that future generations will be saddled with debt as the Boomers retire.. Tim is looking for 7% returns on equities over the next decade -- the days of double digit returns are most likely over for now... and lastly, that global growth only needs to rise by 2% to drive global commodity prices higher due to surging Chinese demand...

What's our forecast for the future? That smart firms like Barclays will seek to partner with global networks like 85 Broads to extend their brand in a way they have never done before. Bottom line, this is an investment bank that is going to "go where no bank has gone before" -- they are going to test out new technologies to reach new audiences who want to stay ahead of the economic and investment curve.

BIG, BOLD, BRILLIANT.... BARCLAYS. :)