ECOMENTARY™ developed from comments and advisory opinions of Munk Advisory Services, LLC (MAS) to its private clients who are professional investors, hedge funds and family offices. Private clients receive priority distribution of ECOMENTARY™ directly by email in addition to specialized services customized to their specific inquiries and needs. MAS provides consulting services on an individually negotiated basis. Readers are invited to inquire directly about their particular needs.

Dr. Bernard E. Munk, principal of Munk Advisory Services, LLC, holds three degrees from the University of Chicago. Prior to entering the business world in 1969, he was a Fellow at the Brookings Institution; served on the economics faculties of the University of Illinois and the University of Michigan; was a consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development, and was a visiting Professor at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C.

From 1969-1991, he helped found and operate six separate companies engaged in international commerce in Europe, Africa, Central America and Asia, including the construction of two overseas production facilities. In 1981, he entered the petroleum business, trading crude oil and petroleum products on the U.S. West Coast and later relocated to the U.S. East Coast, founding Penndel Energy Corporation, (parent of the Penndel Group) in 1987. The Penndel Group owned and operated a large, marine petroleum terminal (Delaware Marine Terminal); two facilities management companies (Gulf Interstate Energy and Gulf Interstate Services) that managed terminals and pipelines for major East Coast Public Utilities; and, Penndel Petroleum Corporation, a marketing and distribution arm that supplied fuel oil, to major Public Utilities along the East Coast. After selling the Penndel Group to a NYSE company, he retired in 1991 to do private consulting and to resume his academic activities.

In 1992, Dr. Munk, became Adjunct Professor of Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania where he developed the Geopolitics course for Wharton’s MBA and Executive MBA programs. From 1992 through 1997. He also served as an Adjunct Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. Dr. Munk is a Senior Fellow at Wharton’s SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, where he co-chairs FPRI’s International Political Economy program. See Wharton and www.fpri.org for further information.