Investment Outlook from Bill Gross
September 2015

Sizing Up the Global Economy
Size does matter you know. There are basketball players, NFL linemen, and the more popular but unmentionable allusion to the bedroom that makes my point, although the older one gets, the more irrelevant playing basketball and football become, if you get my drift.
More interesting to me than any of the above, however, is the application of size and its relevance to the animal kingdom.
Randy Newman raised eyebrows and a goodly number of hackles three decades ago with his “Short People” ditty – “Short people got no reason, short people got no reason to live” he crooned, and the vertically disadvantaged got mad and the tall people laughed and the world went about its business of favoring size – in this case
– when measured from head to toe. Mr. Newman’s parody was so radical that I suspect he was asking us to think, as opposed to expressing an opinion, and if so, he was and may still be more of a Buddhist than a bigot. But I speak not about the size of people here – but to animals of the more ordinary kind.
I am not what you might think of as an animal lover. I’ve had some great dogs and a rather well publicized cat by the name of “Bob”, but on the whole I’ve become more of a life respecter than an inveterate petter of felines or canines. But there’s something about the size of a living thing that increases or diminishes my sense of caring and I’m not sure why that should be. Let’s start at the top of the size chart and see if you share this same bias:
Elephants, giraffes, whales. Good vibes? Of course. Who couldn’t love them? They’re either smart, elegant with those long necks, or symbolic of benign power and strength. Would you ever want to kill one? Almost unanimously you’d answer in the negative assuming your name isn’t Captain Ahab or you don’t run a