Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent is one of these people.
During Coke's first quarter earnings call, one analyst asked Kent how he's dealing with forces the company cannot control.
And its latest earnings "Beige Book," an overview of what companies are talking about during earnings season, Goldman Sachs highlighted the following quote from Kent, giving an overview of just about everything going on in the world.
Here's Kent:
"I'll start with North America. I would say that the outlook appears to be trending a little positive, raising hopes that potential wage growth and lower fuel prices could translate into consumer spending. In Latin America, Mexico's the best way I would say is relatively stable and continues to track closer to the Unites States because they are so closely linked.
Brazil continues to deteriorate faster than we expected, I would say that. Venezuela continues to increase as a concern given the growing difficulty on maintaining supply in the marketplace. And Argentina just continues to be challenging and Colombia is, again, kind of a star in Latin America in terms of performance and macro conditions.
So in Europe, I think there are also some green shoots on the back of monetary easing, but its early days, that just started. But deflation still remains a concern this year. And overall consumer spending in Europe, I would say, is still sluggish, as it will take time for I think monetary easing to flow to the consumer pockets and translate into increased consumer spending. And then risks to recover remains a still volatile environment. And then off course, you've got the possible Greece exit issue still lingering on.
In Eurasia and Africa, Russia continues to see significant challenges, the Russian consumer. And we expected it to continue to remain challenging throughout the year this year. Sub-Saharan Africa is a strong bright spot and we're seeing that in our results. And then Middle East, we've got some pockets where it's defying the geopolitical environment, but overall obviously increased geopolitical risk there.
And then in Asia and Pacific, China, the disposal incomes, consumer spending, CSD in China continues to decelerate. We saw that happening in Q1 versus the stated GDP of 7%. Japan remains sluggish I'd say similar to Europe although we are starting to see some green shoots in the economy.
And finally in Asia-Pacific India continues to be a bright spot I'd say inside the BRIC markets, the four-BRIC market."