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Have You Seen This?

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  • The Geopolitics Of China

    No matter where in the world I am, in South Africa, in Europe, in La Jolla, there's one question I get asked over and over, "What about China?" And small wonder. The increasing impact of China in the last generation is just staggering and seemingly accelerating every day. If you're in the market for oil, minerals, arable land, equities or debt, you're bidding against Chinese government-sponsored entities with a $1 trillion warchest. And the list of markets where China is a key player grows every day. Bottom line: whether you're filling up your gas tank or trading credit default swaps, China's decisions impact your pocket book....
    Posted to John Mauldin's Outside the Box by John Mauldin on 06-12-2008

  • The End Game Draws Nigh - The Future Evolution of the Debt-to-GDP Ratio

    Nearly everyone I talk with has the sense that we are at some critical point in our economic and national paths, not just in the US but in the world. One path will lead us back to relative growth and another set of choices leads us down a path which will put a very real drag on economic growth and recovery. For most of us, there is very little we can do (besides vote and lobby) about the actual choices. What we can do is adjust our personal portfolios to be synchronized with the direction of the economy. The question is 'What will that direction be?'

    Today we are going to look at what I think is a very clear roadmap given to us by Dr. Woody Brock, the head of Strategic Economic Decisions and one of the smartest analysts I have come in contact with over the years. This week's Outside the Box is his recent essay, 'The End Games Draws Nigh.' For those who have the contacts in government, I urge you to put this piece into the correct hands so that Woody's very distinct message gets out. I think this is one of the most important Outside the Box letters I have sent out....
    Posted to John Mauldin's Outside the Box by John Mauldin on 05-18-2009

  • Dead Men Walking

    Last Friday's letter was about the fact that it is not just Freddie and Fannie. There are other problems. The Weekend Edition and today's Wall Street Journal are filled with stories about the problems with Freddie and Fannie. The assumption in so many quarters is that they will soon need government assistance. The only questions seem to be when and in what form? Can this wait until a new president is in place? Congress is leaving town soon. Can it wait until the lame duck session? As I have been writing for well over a year, the cr4edit crisis is going to be deeper and take longer to correct than the main stream media and economists think. Losses at banks are going to be much larger, and they are going to bleed for a long time. That means we are going to see more banks failing. Bennet Sedacca, who I quoted in last week's letter, sent out a new letter this morning, providing a list of stocks he thinks may also be in trouble, his "Dead Men Walking" list. He also notes several banks that will be the beneficiaries of the crisis as they gobble up weak competitors....
    Posted to John Mauldin's Outside the Box by John Mauldin on 08-25-2008

  • Semi-Annual U.S. Economic Outlook: Collapsing On Schedule

    This week I am really delighted to be able to give you a condensed version of Gary Shilling's latest INSIGHT newsletter for your Outside the Box. Each month I really look forward to getting Gary's latest thoughts on the economy and investing. Last year in his forecast issue he suggested 13 investment ideas, all of which were profitable by the end of the year. It is not unusual for Gary to give us over 75 charts and tables in his monthly letters along with his commentary, which makes his thinking unusually clear and accessible. Gary was among the first to point out the problems with the subprime market and predict the housing and credit crises. You can learn more about his letter at http://www.agaryshilling.com. If you want to subscribe, you can call 888-346-7444. Tell them that you read about it in Outside the Box and you will get not only his 2009 forecast issue but an extra issue with his 2010 forecast (of course, that one will not come out for a year. Gary is good but not that good!) I trust you are enjoying the holidays. And enjoy this week's Outside the Box....
    Posted to John Mauldin's Outside the Box by John Mauldin on 12-15-2008

  • A 20-Year Bear Market?

    Long time readers know that I am a huge fan of the work of Neil Howe. His book, The Fourth Turning, was one of the seminal pieces of my reading over the last 30 years. And it has turned out to be stunningly prophetic. Uncomfortably so. A roughly 80 year cycle has been repeating itself for centuries in the Anglophile world, broken up into four generations or turnings. We have begun what Howe called many years ago The Fourth Turning.

    Neil Howe is the co-author, with the late William Strauss, of a number of seminal works on the impact of generations on cycles of history. Howe is a founding partner of LifeCourse Associates (lifecourse.com) which provides research to institutions looking to capitalize on generational research.

    The June 2009 edition of The Casey Report, the flagship publication of Casey Research, featured a comprehensive 23 page interview with Neil Howe as well as suggestions on how to position your portfolio to profit during a Fourth Turning crisis. I persuaded my friend David Galland to at least summarize it for my Outside the Box this week, and he graciously did so. David is the managing editor of The Casey Report and has had a long career in the financial services industry; as a founding partner of the successful Blanchard Group of Mutual Funds and, before joining Casey Research, as a founding partner of EverBank, one of the big success stories in independent online banking....
    Posted to John Mauldin's Outside the Box by John Mauldin on 06-29-2009

  • Long-Term Outlook: Slow Growth And Deflation

    This week I am really delighted to be able to give you a condensed version of Gary Shilling's latest INSIGHT newsletter for your Outside the Box. Each month I really look forward to getting Gary's latest thoughts on the economy and investing. Last year in his forecast issue he suggested 13 investment ideas, all of which were profitable by the end of the year. It is not unusual for Gary to give us over 75 charts and tables in his monthly letters along with his commentary, which makes his thinking unusually clear and accessible. Gary was among the first to point out the problems with the subprime market and predict the housing and credit crises. You can learn more about his letter at http://www.agaryshilling.com. If you want to subscribe (for $275), you can call 888-346-7444. Tell them that you read about it in Outside the Box and you will get not only his recent 2009 forecast issue with the year's investment themes, but an extra issue with his 2010 forecast (of course, that one will not come out for a year. Gary is good but not that good!) I trust you are enjoying your week. And enjoy this week's Outside the Box....

    And if you have cable and get Fox Business News, I will be on Happy Hour tomorrow Tuesday the 17th at 5 pm Eastern. Have a great week....
    Posted to John Mauldin's Outside the Box by John Mauldin on 03-16-2009

  • What the Export Land Model Means for Energy Prices

    Goldman Sachs recently forecasted that oil would be at $141 a barrel by the end of the year, and rising to $200 a barrel in the not too distant future. I have seen other forecasts calling for oil to slip significantly under $100 a barrel before starting...
    Posted to John Mauldin's Outside the Box by John Mauldin on 05-19-2008

  • Make Sure You Get This One Right

    There are those who sweat over every decision, worrying about how it will affect their lives and investments. Then there is the school of thought that we should focus on the big decisions. I am of the latter school.

    85% of investment returns are a result of asset class allocations and only 15% come from actually picking investment within the asset class. Getting the big picture right is critical. In this week's Outside the Box we look at a very well written essay about the biggest of all question in front of us today. Do we face deflation or inflation?

    This OTB is by my good friends and business partners in London, Niels Jensen and his team at Absolute Return Partners....
    Posted to John Mauldin's Outside the Box by John Mauldin on 07-06-2009

  • The Elusive Bottom

    In this weekend's Thoughts from the Frontlines, I quoted from part of a very thoughtful, right-on-target analysis by David A. Rosenberg entitled "The Elusive Bottom." Over the weekend, I decided that you should read the whole piece, as Rosenberg makes some very solid points about how the markets and the economy may play out over the next few years. He has a non-consensus viewpoint, but that is what I like for Outside the Box. In fact, I think this is one of the more thought-provoking pieces I have used in OTB for some time. Rosenberg is the North American Economist for Merrill Lynch. They were gracious to give me permission to send this letter out on such a short notice, and I believe you will well served to take the time to think through his analysis. And rather than try and give you a quick summary, let's just jump right in....
    Posted to John Mauldin's Outside the Box by John Mauldin on 08-18-2008

  • A Tale of Two Depressions

    This week's Outside the box looks at some very interesting research done by two economic historians, Barry Eichengreen of the University of California at Berkeley and Kevin O'Rourke of Trinity College, Dublin They give us comparisons between the Great Depression and today's downturn. They continue to update their data from time to time, the link to their work is at http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/3421. I have not previously heard of www.voxeu.org, but it is a collection of the work of well regarded international economists that seems quite interesting for those who enjoy readings in the dismal science.

    This week's OTB will print long, but it is primarily charts. Please note that I have re-arranged some of the new charts to cut down on space because of some duplications. Word count is not all that much and it reads well. I will be referring to their work in future letters as well. Have a great week!...
    Posted to John Mauldin's Outside the Box by John Mauldin on 06-22-2009

  • Foundations of Crisis

    This week I have a special Outside the Box for you. My long-time friend Doug Casey wrote a very prescient piece back in 1997. He has updated it somewhat for today's times. The critical part is a summary of the work of Richard Strauss and (friend) John Howe and their book The Fourth Turning, which I consider one of the more important and prescient (that word again) books of the last 25 years. It should still be read today. It is seminal to understanding the times we live in. Doug summarized the book and makes some observations based on that understanding, many of which turned out to be true and some of which may well be in out future. I think you will find this to be very useful and enlightening if you are not familiar with their work, and a great review if you are....
    Posted to John Mauldin's Outside the Box by John Mauldin on 12-29-2008

  • The Road To Revulsion

    What does a bubble look like and how do they end? In this week's Outside the Box, James Montier of Societe Generale in London looks at not only the psychological analysis, but also at the propensity for commentators to continually proclaim the end of the problem and a resumption of business as usual. He includes a fascinating piece from Marc Faber documenting the various quotes about how well the economy was doing from 1928-32. This makes for fun, if a little sobering, reading. I think you will find this letter very interesting....
    Posted to John Mauldin's Outside the Box by John Mauldin on 06-16-2008

  • Europe On the Ropes

    This week we look at the European bank markets through the eyes of my London partner Niels Jensen, head of Absolute Return Partners. I continue to believe that this is a brewing crisis which could have far more significant implications for the global economy than the Asian Crisis of 1998. In this week's Outside the Box, Niels has compiled a sobering set of data that suggests that only massive government involvement in Europe on a scale that is unprecedented will keep the wheels from coming off in Europe and the global economy. I have worked closely with Niels for years and have found him to be one of the more savvy observers of the markets I know....
    Posted to John Mauldin's Outside the Box by John Mauldin on 03-02-2009

  • The $33,000,000,000,000 Question

    It has long been my contention that we are entering an extraordinary period of time in which using historical analogies to plot market behavior is going to become increasingly problematical. In short, the analogies, the past performance if you will, all break down because the underlying economic backdrop is unlike anything we have ever seen. It makes managing money and portfolio planning particularly challenging. Traditional asset management techniques just simply may not work. Buy and hope strategies may be particularly difficult to navigate.

    Part of the reason we are co challenged in our outlook is that we are experiencing a deleveraging on a scale in the world that is absolutely breath-taking in its scope. And to balance that, governments are going to have to issue massive amounts of sovereign debt to deal with their deficits. But who will buy it, and at what price? And in which currency? This week's Outside the Box gives us some very basic data points that illustrate the challenge very well. But the problem is that even though we can see the challenge, it is not clear what the final outcome will be, other than stressful volatility as the market reacts....
    Posted to John Mauldin's Outside the Box by John Mauldin on 05-11-2009

  • Quarterly Review and Outlook - First Quarter 2009

    There is a reason I call this column Outside the Box. I try to get material that forces us to think outside our normal comfort zones and challenges our common assumptions. And this week's letter does just that. I have made the comment more than once that is it unusual for two major bubbles to burst and for the conversation and our experience to be rising inflation and not a serious problem with deflation.

    Van Hoisington and Dr. Lacy Hunt give us a seminar on why they think it is deflation that will ultimately be the problem and not inflation we are dealing with today. This week's letter requires you to think, but it will be worth the effort.

    Now, if you put all of the various inputs together, Hoisington and Hunt show that theory suggests we will soon be dealing with deflation. It's counter- intuitive to what we hear today, which is why the Bank for International Settlements used the stagflation word in a recent report. The transition that is coming will not be comfortable....
    Posted to John Mauldin's Outside the Box by John Mauldin on 04-20-2009
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