Thursday, November 27, 2008

Fw: The Financial Fire Trucks Are Gathering - John Mauldin's Weekly E-Letter

 

Sent: Thursday, November 27, 2008 1:13 AM
Subject: The Financial Fire Trucks Are Gathering - John Mauldin's Weekly E-Letter

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Thoughts from the Frontline Weekly Newsletter
The Financial Fire Trucks Are Gathering
by John Mauldin
November 26, 2008
Visit John's MySpace Page

In this issue:
A Thanksgiving Fire Drill
The Financial Fire Trucks Are Gathering
The Millennium Wave
Thanksgiving, Moving, and New York

"It will therefore be crucial that you see the world anew. That means looking from the outside in to reanalyze much that you have probably taken for granted. This will enable you to come to an understanding. If you fail to transcend conventional thinking at a time when conventional thinking is losing touch with reality, then you will be more likely to fall prey to an epidemic of disorientation that lies ahead. Disorientation breeds mistakes that could threaten your business, your investments and your way of life."

-- James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg, The Sovereign Individual, 1997

The economic news just continues to be bad. New unemployment claims were over 529,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis. The "real" number was 606,877 lost jobs. New home sales were off by another 5% and down 40% from a year ago, as builders slash inventories. The Chicago Purchasing Manager index came in at 33.8, the weakest number since the serious recession of 1982. The national number due next Monday will be just as ugly, as durable goods were down far more than expected, by a negative 6.2%. But it is Thanksgiving weekend, and not a time for gloom. In this week's letter I am going to talk about why we should be optimistic about the future. Things will turn around. I will also make a few comments about the latest stimulus package.

As I will be moving my home this weekend, I am writing this letter early. I am going to use material from two previous letters, which I think will help give us perspective. The first is a personal anecdote from last Thanksgiving (2007), as a lead-in to comments on whether the Fed's latest monetizing action will end up spurring inflation; and then the second is part of an essay I did for my last book, Just One Thing, edited and updated.

A Thanksgiving Fire Drill

Last Thursday (2007), we sat down for a massive Thanksgiving dinner at my 21st-floor apartment in Dallas. All seven kids, my 90-year-old mother, and an assortment of friends and relatives (about 15 of us) started to work on a 16-pound prime rib, 18-pound turkey, and massive amounts of potatoes, mushrooms, and lots more. Grace was said, the wine was poured, and we were feeling good about life.

And then about 15 minutes into the meal, the fire alarm went off, telling us to evacuate. This was annoying, as it seemed like we have had a false alarm at least once every few weeks in the past few months. So, we did what we have done in the past and ignored the alarm. After all, this is a modern structure (only 4 years old) with fire sprinklers everywhere. We assumed that someone had a grease fire in their kitchen that would quickly be put out.

But the alarm kept sounding quite loudly, which did tend to interrupt conversation. As my dining room table is near the floor-to-ceiling window, we tended to look out when we heard sirens. And sure enough, the fire truck pulled up alongside the building. "Good," we said, "they will get that grease fire under control." And we continued eating and drinking, although with a heightened sense of concern. Fires in apartment buildings are not to be taken too lightly. People do die from them.

And then a second and a third fire truck parked underneath the window. That was a tad disconcerting, but surely they were just making sure that there was adequate back-up. It was when the 8th truck pulled up within a few minutes that I began to get more than a tad concerned. They were pulling hoses and running around very quickly.

At that point, we started trying to figure out how to leave; but how do we get a 90-year-old fragile lady down 21 flights of stairs? We spent a moment pondering that, and then my youngest son came back into the apartment to report that he could smell smoke a few floors down in the stairwell. Well, that was not good. #2 son said to come to his window at the back of the apartment, where we looked out and could see a rather significant amount of smoke coming from the 2nd and 3rd floors. No, this was not good at all. No one was panicking, but we began to think about how to get us down the stairwell and soon.

And then I got a call from a friend who was late coming to dinner. "The fire marshal told me that you have to get out of there NOW!" All this in just a few short minutes, mind you.

So, we started to move to the stairs.  Fortunately, there were two rather big, strong young men at dinner (one was my oldest son and the other was a boyfriend who was just back from a tour in the army, but both chiseled out of granite). After several attempts, we decided that taking mother down piggyback would be the best. The young men took turns carrying her.

At first, I still thought it was overkill, but as we got to the 16th floor the smoke in the staircase was very apparent. By the 12th floor it was hard to breathe, and at the 7th floor the smoke was too thick to go on. One of the kids opened the hall door and went and checked the next stairwell, which was freer of smoke. So we changed exits and got out to the street, smelling of smoke - but we were all safe.

It seems some idiot must have tossed a cigarette down the trash chute and started a fire in what is a rather large trash collection bin for hundreds of apartments on the bottom two floors. The fire should have been contained, but the concern was that if anyone had left a trash-chute door open, the fire could have easily spread to a higher-level floor.

And what about the modern fire sprinklers in the trash collection area – the ones I was relying on? They inexplicably did not go off in the trash bin, allowing the fire to blaze on garbage and grease; but the heat rising set off the sprinklers in the trash chutes on higher floors, causing a lot of smoke as the water fell onto the trash, with the smoke escaping into the stairwells.

But all was not lost. It seemed that three of us grabbed a bottle of wine and glasses as we left! ("Train up a child in the way he should go...") So, we sat outside and waited, sipping on a brilliant chardonnay and a full-bodied cabernet for an hour or so until the very professional firemen cleared the building of smoke and let us back up, where we finished dinner, with lots of stories to tell. And my middle daughter had her ten seconds of fame, as she made national news. It was more excitement than any previous Thanksgiving, and one we will talk about for years.

The Financial Fire Trucks Are Gathering

Last year I wrote, after the above story: "I rather think the stock market is acting like we did at dinner. When the alarms go off, we note that we have heard them several times over the past few months, and there has never been a real fire. Sure, we had a credit crisis in August, but the Fed came to the rescue. Yes, the subprime market is nonexistent. And the housing market is in free-fall. But the economy is weathering the various crises quite well. Wasn't GDP at an almost inexplicably high 4.9% last quarter, when we were in the middle of the credit crisis? And Abu Dhabi injects $7.5 billion in capital into Citigroup, setting the market's mind at ease. All is well. So party on like it's 1999.

"However, I think when we look out the window from the lofty market heights, we see a few fire trucks starting to gather, and those sirens are telling us that more are on the way. There is smoke coming from the building. Attention must be paid."

I had been pounding the table for over a year to get out of the stock market. All of the signs of upheaval were there. And now many portfolios are down by 50%. And the fire of a credit crisis is blazing all around us. The firemen in the form of the Fed, the US Treasury, and central banks all over the world are trying to put it out.

And while the stock market may enjoy a serious rally over the next few months, we are not out of the woods. The fire is still raging and we are witnessing ever-more aggressive attempts to get the fire of the credit and housing crisis under control.

Yesterday the Treasury announced yet another huge $800 billion bailout, but this one has a different flavor. Much of the previous bailout money has come from the Treasury either borrowing money and buying assets (which does not create new dollars) or simply taking assets onto the national balance sheet, guaranteeing the debt. With this latest move, the Fed is going to buy $600 billion in mortgage bonds by monetizing, or creating, new dollars.

Normally this would set off more alarm bells, over worries about inflation. But these are not normal times. With the twin bubbles of the credit and housing crises still imploding, we are seeing a massive deleveraging and the disappearance of multiple trillions of dollars from consumers and businesses. And the bond market clearly expects more softening and maybe even deflation. The 10-year bond is below 3%. I wrote 10 years ago that we could see the 30-year US bond below 3% by the end of this decades-long cycle, which we began in the early '80s with Paul Volker.

As I wrote last April, the velocity of money (how fast a dollar moves through the economy) is slowing rather dramatically. It could fall another 10% and just get back to the average for the last 107 years. Given the growth in population, inflation, productivity, and other factors, the money supply will need to grow by 7% annually for the next several years to keep the economy at equilibrium. Remember, GDP (gross domestic product) is essentially the velocity of money times the supply of money. If the velocity slows down, the money supply needs to rise just to stay even.

The Fed is going to have some room to pump up the money supply without seeing inflation rise precipitously. I think this is the first of what will be several large injections, as they will keep it up until the economy begins to recover. They will especially do more if it looks like we could roll over into a deflationary environment next year. I will be writing more about this in the coming months.

And now, the beginning of my essay in Just One Thing (written three years ago, but still quite timely!).

The Millennium Wave

Over the next ten to twelve years, we will see three recessions that will slowly move the average price-to-earnings ratio of stocks to historic lows. Rising oil and energy prices will be a main culprit of both the slowdown in the economy and an increase in inflation. Ever-increasing monetary inflation will, in fact, trigger a huge increase in all commodity prices, as well as a decline in bonds. Asset inflation will show up in the housing markets as home values continue to skyrocket. The dollar will continue to weaken against major foreign currencies. The current war will become increasingly unpopular, and the next administration will be forced to withdraw troops, under the guise of declaring victory. The American voting public will be split as never before, with major patterns in voting habits making a generational change. The newspapers will continue to write about how an Asian country will dominate the world economically in less than a few decades.

Following this period of malaise, there will be an amazing cycle of new technical innovation that will spark yet another major bull market. The new technologies will change the world in ways that simply cannot now be imagined and will lead to whole new industries, putting amazing new power and abilities into the hands of individuals and governments.

The preceding scenario would, in fact, all come to pass. Except that the year that was written was 1970, and not 2005. The forces that have changed the world in the decades following 1970 were only foreseen in science fiction and a few obscure books and journals. Who dreamed of the Internet in 1970? Who could envision that the Berlin Wall would come down in 1989? That Japan would not, in fact, dominate the world of economics and overwhelm the United States? Or that the China of Mao would become a capitalistic growth machine, and that the USSR would break up? A personal computer on every desk and more computing power in an automobile than existed in the largest computers of the time? A globalized world economy? The prospect that a falling population (and not overcrowding) would be a problem, or that a Green Revolution would mean enough food for all (except where governments kept out a free market)?

In the 1970s, the mood of the country was decidedly negative. Japan was eroding our manufacturing base and unemployment was increasing. Reagan spoke of the Misery Index, which was a combination of inflation and unemployment, in his race against Jimmy Carter.

And yet it all changed. In fact, the one constant in the modern world is that the pace of change is accelerating.

In his groundbreaking book The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler depicted the First Wave as the agricultural revolution, the Second Wave as the industrial revolution, and the Third Wave as the electronic data and communication revolution. He depicted a society that would be working in "electronic hamlets," sending their daily work over "electronic highways" to "virtual places of business."

Written twenty-five years ago, The Third Wave was an amazingly prescient book. Toffler saw a world of mass customization, with government and business interwoven and a world filled with ambiguity and change. Although some suggest that we're still in the middle of Toffler's Third Wave, I would suggest that what we are facing is different in both substance and character.

The Third Wave was actually the result of an innovation cycle that we can call the Information Age. I believe we are only halfway through the Information Age, with more profound changes as to how we work and play just around the corner.

But this time something is different. Instead of one wave of innovation following another, I believe that we are going to see multiple waves of significant change and innovation surge all over the world at roughly the same time. The combined effects are going to produce a period of change unlike anything seen in the history of man.

I call the combination of these factors the Millennium Wave. It will change things in ways that almost defy the imagination and at a pace that will leave one breathless. On the one hand, the Millennium Wave will be seen as a source of good, as we will live healthier and longer and there will be more of the basic necessities of life and more life options. On the other hand, the very ground we walk on will seem like it is shifting. The roadmap we have in our minds for our future will require a constant fine tuning (if not major reprogramming) in order to determine our position.

The more precisely you plan your future, the harder that change will hit you. Flexibility will be the order of the day. To paraphrase the prayer from Alcoholics Anonymous, "Please grant me the knowledge of what will change, the understanding of what will not change, and the wisdom to understand the difference."

As I pondered the question I put to the other writers in this book, "What is the one thing you have learned that you want to pass on?" I came to realize that the key talent in the future would be the ability to deal with the tremendous technological and cultural changes that are coming at an ever-increasing pace, while developing an understanding of how those changes will evolve in the age-old patterns of life. There are patterns that change very slowly or cycle or trend. Learning how all these patterns fit together with the changes of the Millennium Wave is at the heart of not just the investment enterprise, but modern life in general.

But let's deal with the investment enterprise first. Anyone familiar with the research on the psychology of investing knows that it points to the overwhelming conclusion that the broad class of investors (which does not include you or me, of course) consistently assumes that the current trend will continue long into the future.

They may give lip service to believing things will change, they may constantly worry about changing trends, but they do not invest that way. The late and deservedly famous economist Herbert Stein taught us the simple concept, "An unsustainable trend will not be sustained." And yet investors (and indeed all humans on almost every level) allow the current trend to be the primary force in their vision of the future. As Mark Finn noted in Chapter 5, we use past performance, even when we know we shouldn't, to be the guide in picking our future investments.

Investors all too often rationalize their actions with the mantra of "this time it's different" or assume they will be able to nimbly react to or avoid the affects of the change when it happens. It never is and they hardly ever do.

My personal career path has been one of almost constant change. Yet it is but an echo of a million other entrepreneurs and businessmen and women. We all deal with change. In fact, the amount of change that I have had to deal with is rather unremarkable, in the grand scheme of things. There are millions - perhaps billions - of people who go through far more abrupt changes almost daily.

How well we deal with life (not just our investments!) in the next 20-30 years is going to be directly related to how well we deal with what will be an accelerating rate of change.

My personal experience of continuing change will be echoed throughout the world. Some of the changes were forced upon me. Some of them I willingly embraced. I told friends on the occasion of several of these changes that I hoped this was the last time I would have to "reinvent" myself. I succumb to the fantasy that most investors share: that the trend of today will continue. And yet, I know that this is not likely. The field in which I plow and reap is changing under my feet, and it is unlikely that in ten years it will even look the same.

When I began my career thirty years ago, there was no fax, no overnight delivery, and phone service was expensive. Computers? Not until twenty years ago, and they were toys compared to today's machines. It cost a lot of money to deliver a newsletter up until just a few years ago. Now the marginal cost is almost nothing. One or one million is pretty much the same to me.

Research was a visit to the library, in addition to a personal collection of books and a few magazines and newsletters. Now I get scores of letters and articles every day delivered to my "mailbox," plus an almost infinite amount of data at my fingertips using something called Google. I have almost five gigabytes of research and articles stored from just the past few years on my computer, which I can search with a few strokes. To write an eight- to ten-page weekly letter as I do would have taken a week, plus a month of research, just a decade ago. Now I can access huge amounts of data each week, and I write my weekly letter on a computer in about five hours on a Friday afternoon. (I read where they will soon have pills that will help our memories. I am going to need them.)

International readers? Very few ever graced my musings in the last decade. Now, I have tens of thousands of international readers, often in some amazingly remote locations.

In short, the changes have been dramatic. At times, I complain, it has been hard to adjust. A lot of times those changes were just plain not fun. Some of them were very expensive lessons. Yet, I continue on down my current business path. But I know that change is coming. Change is like a train. It can either run over you, or you can catch it to the future.

But I can hear that peasant from China, as he follows an ox on the way to the city, telling me I can't even begin to imagine the speed of change. Think about the changes in China and Russia or other parts of the developing world in the last ten years. My less-than-sainted Dad last hitched a wagon to drive to town in the 1920s. He saw a man put on the moon with a slide rule, a yellow pad, and pencils forty years later. That pace of change has only increased.

In 1967, the movie The Graduate was the hit of the season. We remember that famous scene where a young Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) was told to seek a career in plastics. That was the rage at the time. But it turns out that was bad advice. Over 40 percent of jobs in plastics have disappeared since 1967.

And yet, there has been plenty of job growth. There were clearly better opportunities than plastics. Princeton Professor Alan Krueger tells us a quarter of all workers are now in occupations that were not listed in the Census Bureau's occupation codes in 1967. In 1967, if asked where the jobs and opportunities were going to come from, the proper and correct answer would have been, "I don't know, but they will." That was the correct answer in the malaise years of 1976-80. It is still the correct answer today.

Personal computers were yet a dream. AT&T was still a monopoly. Fiber optics? The Internet? Cell phones? Robotics? Biotech? Global positioning? Faxes? Video? MP3? Computer–aided design? They didn't exist.

In less than 30 years, we will look back at the changes that are still in our future and realize they were far, even vastly, more revolutionary than what we have seen in the last 30. But just as in 1975, when it would be hard to imagine the coming changes, in 2005 it is even harder to imagine what 2035 will be. We delude ourselves into thinking we know, but we really don't. Many of the truly amazing inventions we will enjoy in the future are still not even on a drawing board or in a garage.

There is plenty of entrepreneurial activity in the world, and the foundation for future large companies that will reward their investors is even now being laid. The driver for the next Microsoft, eBay, or Amgen will be the new opportunities brought about by the pace of change.

[Update in late 2008: within the last six months I have talked with two different researchers who believe they are on track for an altogether new form of power production, which would be cleaner and far cheaper than anything we have today. I have also interviewed another inventor who has patented a process which reduces by as much as 20% the electrical energy used in many of our electrical devices. And there are tens of thousands of inventors who are working on such breathtaking ideas. If only a few succeed....?]

What kind of pace of change are we talking about? Ray Kurzweil, the inventor of speech recognition, scanners, music synthesizers, and many other technical marvels, has a team of ten who track the progress of technology and predict where it will be in ten or twenty or one hundred years. He is an unabashed enthusiast when it comes to thinking about the future. It helps that he has been right so far, so it behooves us to pay attention when he notes (this was written in 2001):

"The first technological steps - sharp edges, fire, the wheel - took tens of thousands of years. For people living in this era, there was little noticeable technological change in even a thousand years. By 1000 A.D., progress was much faster and a paradigm shift required only a century or two. In the nineteenth century, we saw more technological change than in the nine centuries preceding it. Then in the first twenty years of the twentieth century, we saw more advancement than in all of the nineteenth century. Now, paradigm shifts occur in only a few years time. The World Wide Web did not exist in anything like its current form just a few years ago; it didn't exist at all a decade ago.

"The paradigm shift rate (i.e., the overall rate of technical progress) is currently doubling (approximately) every decade; that is, paradigm shift times are halving every decade (and the rate of acceleration is itself growing exponentially). So, the technological progress in the twenty-first century will be equivalent to what would require (in the linear view) on the order of two hundred centuries. In contrast, the twentieth century saw only about twenty-five years of progress (again at today's rate of progress) since we have been speeding up to current rates. So the twenty-first century will see almost a thousand times greater technological change than its predecessor." 

What Ray is saying is that most people project future growth in technology at today's rate of change. But the rate of change is accelerating, so that more and more change is packed into smaller and smaller amounts of time. Although the vast majority of the thousand times greater technological change Ray is talking about happens in the last part of this century, some of it happens in the next twenty years. How much change are we talking about? Well, from when he first penned those words, the pace of change has picked up. At current levels, that means the twentieth century was equivalent to about twenty years of progress at today's rate of change. That pace will continue to increase the amount of innovation we pack into just a few years. From his book Fantastic Voyage:

"...And we'll make another twenty years of progress at today's rate [of growth], equivalent to that of the entire twentieth century, in the next fourteen years. And then we'll do it again in just seven years."

That means in the next twenty-one years we will see double the technological change that we saw in the entire twentieth century. At that pace, we will see almost four times the rate of change within twenty-five years.

More and more money is being invested in a wider array of research and development all over the world.  There are millions of projects by inventors looking to improve a product or service. Some changes will be small and some will have enormous implications. When the steam engine was being invented, there were just a handful of inventors who understood the steam engine and could work on one. Today, we have the luxury of having thousands of scientists, engineers, programmers, and inventors working on all manner of projects large and small. And as cheap and fast broadband becomes ubiquitous in the developing world, we will be adding tens of millions more to the process. A few of these multiplied millions will invent radical new products, adding to the pace of change.

As our knowledge expands, as our tools grow in number and decrease in cost, our ability to find useful products increases at an ever-growing rate. The tools that our current and future horde of inventors will create will allow for all sorts of new products and discoveries.

There are thousands of such tools, big and small, being created by scientists and inventors in research labs all over the world every month in scores of different industries. Each one allows the next group of inventors to create even more and better tools and ultimately products. Globalization is not just a manufacturing and sales process. It is also an intellectual process, as scientist from many parts of the globe can collaborate on a project, each bringing their specialized knowledge to the project. That allows scientists in smaller countries or in countries without significant resources to add to the sum total of brainpower being thrown at a project.

All this means change is going to come faster than ever before. And with these new changes will come renewed economic growth, and millions of new jobs in the US and all over the world.

Today's current crisis will pass, just as past crises have. And this will not be the last crisis or recession of our lives. We will sadly create whole new ways to foment a crisis. But in 20 years, no one is going to look back and say I wish I could go back to the good old days of 2007. We will then be living in the most exciting age in the history of man.

Thanksgiving, Moving, and New York

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. In the US, families and friends get together and feast and enjoy one another. And while we do that at Christmas as well, on Thanksgiving we do it "just because," with no need to buy last-minute presents, just last-minute food! It is a time to remember and be grateful for the grace of God in our lives.

Tomorrow morning will find me in the kitchen very early, cooking a 16-pound prime, five pounds of mushrooms, and lots of veggies. There are now about 25 family and friends coming for dinner, and most people are bringing something, so there will be lots of food, wine, and good times. Then the Dallas Cowboys game in the afternoon, while eating my mother's banana nut cake. It just doesn't get much better than this.

Then on Friday and Saturday we pack up and move a few miles up the road. I am actually looking forward to the move. I have enjoyed my urban apartment life, with the incredible view of downtown Dallas, and may move back to the Uptown area in a few years; but right now I want to cut my commute time and move my office into my home and into a good school district for Trey. He has been "going" to school online, but it is time for him to get into a more social setting. And the house we are moving into is very family-friendly, so I expect the kids who are "out" will be back even more.

Next Thursday I am off to New York. I will be on Happy Hour on Fox Business News at 5 pm Eastern with Cody Willard, and then at the Minyanville Festivus party that evening. The next night we go to see the hit musical Rock of Ages on Broadway as the guest of Barry Habib, one of the producers. My good friend and venture capitalist extraordinaire Bart Stuck will be there as well. And then Saturday is some sightseeing and dinner with friends and my South African partner Prieur du Plessis, who is in town for Festivus as well. It looks to be a great week!

Let me wish those of you in the US a very warm and sincere Happy Thanksgiving. We have a lot to be grateful for.

Your more hopeful for the future than ever analyst,

John Mauldin
John@FrontLineThoughts.com

Copyright 2008 John Mauldin. All Rights Reserved

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Monday, November 24, 2008

Fw: The Paradox of Deleveraging Will Be Broken - John Mauldin's Outside the Box E-Letter

 

Sent: Monday, November 24, 2008 6:57 PM
Subject: The Paradox of Deleveraging Will Be Broken - John Mauldin's Outside the Box E-Letter

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Volume 5 - Issue 4
November 24, 2008



The Paradox of Deleveraging
Will Be Broken
by Paul McCulley

We are clearly not having as much fun taking off leverage as we had putting it on, or at least the vast majority are not. This week in Outside the Box we look at some very thought-provoking insights from my good friend Paul McCulley, who helps us think about how we got here and what will be the end point. From the letter:

"But what ailed Lehman was but a manifestation of what ailed, and ails the global financial intermediary system: the presumption that grossly levered positions in illiquid assets can always be funded, because those doing the funding will always assume the borrower is a going concern."

You need to read this when you have the time to think. The quotes from Keynes are important.

Paul is a managing director, generalist portfolio manager, and member of the investment committee in the Newport Beach office of PIMCO. In addition, he heads PIMCO's short-term bond desk. And is an avid fisherman

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box


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The Paradox of Deleveraging Will Be Broken
By Paul McCulley

I've only written this essay once since the Kansas City Fed's annual symposium in late August. But it hasn't been because I've been lazy. Rather, I've been working virtually around the clock ever since, in my day job as head of PIMCO's Money Market and Funding Desk. On Wall Street, this desk is frequently viewed as a backwater, a temporary home for new MBAs getting their feet wet before moving on to higher-value-added desks, or a retirement home for those with more senior moments than fresh ideas.

That's never the case here at PIMCO, even though a number of now PIMCO partners spent their first days trafficking in the money markets and I, of ever-graying hair, still make my home here in the early hours of the day. Money markets frequently are a backwater, except when they are not, in which case they are cascading rapids. Liquidity pressures inevitably are the precursor of solvency and/or going-concern problems. Just ask Wall Street's independent investment banks.

We here at PIMCO have always known this. Accordingly, we've always been conservative beyond conservative in our money market operations, on both sides of the balance sheet – no asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) for us, and no tri-party repo without regard to collateral types or haircuts either. Meat and potatoes only, no fancy garnishes necessary. But the meat and potatoes must be cooked properly.

Hence, the work load of PIMCO's money market and funding desk. My new deputy, Jerome Schneider, hit the ground running in early August, a most propitious time, just before the global money markets became not just cascading rapids, but roaring waterfalls. The financial world will never be the same after the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve's fateful decision of the weekend of September 13-14 to stand aside as Lehman Brothers plummeted to death on the rocks below.

Whether that decision was the right one or not, we will never know. Yes, I know that many are quick to take the Treasury and the Federal Reserve to task, maintaining that the on-going global financial crisis – and, thus, growth crisis – would not be nearly so severe if Lehman had been tossed a life line. I simply don't know. What I do know is that the global financial system was fundamentally broken long before Lehman's watery death.

Thus, I believe the powerful, systemic policy responses that have unfolded in the post-Lehman world were destined to come about. Lehman was but the unfortunate tipping point. My heart still aches for the pain suffered by my many friends there. Fate is not always fair and at times, is arbitrary and capricious.

But what ailed Lehman was but a manifestation of what ailed, and ails the global financial intermediary system: the presumption that grossly levered positions in illiquid assets can always be funded, because those doing the funding will always assume the borrower is a going concern.

To understand the nature of this systemic malady, we need to return to first principles. Bear with me, please; this is going to be a bit academic. But, I submit, it was the loss of understanding of first principles that lies at the heart of the on-going paradox of deleveraging, which is the proximate cause of the on-going downward spiral of asset and debt deflation.

The Nature of Banking

When I studied the origins of banking in college, we started with the Medici Family of 15th century Italy. I'm quite sure banking existed long before then, just that I haven't studied it. But regardless of the origins of banking, its founding premise has always been the same: In normal times, the public's collective, ex ante demand for access to at-par, immediately-available bank money is always greater than the sum of the public's individual, ex post demand for access to such liquidity.

Thus, the genius of banking, if you want to call it that, is simple: a bank can take more risk on the asset side of its balance sheet than the liability side can notionally support, because a goodly portion of the liability side, notably deposits, is de facto of perpetual maturity, although it is notionally of finite maturity, as short as one day in the case of demand deposits.

It's the same alchemy that permits mutual funds to commit to next-day redemption at tonight's NAV, even though all reasonable people know that a mutual fund – with the possible exception of a money market fund – could not possibly liquidate all assets on the wire tomorrow at tonight's NAV marks. Systemically, it's the illusion of liquidity, as so elegantly described by John Maynard Keynes:

"The spectacle of modern investment markets has sometimes moved me towards the conclusion that to make the purchase of an investment permanent and indissoluble, like marriage, except by reason of death or other grave cause, might be a useful remedy for our contemporary evils. For this would force the investor to direct his mind to the long-term prospects and to those only. But a little consideration of this expedient brings us up against a dilemma, and shows us how the liquidity of investment markets often facilitates, though it sometimes impedes, the course of new investment.

"For the fact that each individual investor flatters himself that his commitment is 'liquid' (though this cannot be true for all investors collectively) calms his nerves and makes him much more willing to run a risk. If individual purchases of investments were rendered illiquid, this might seriously impede new investment, so long as alternative ways in which to hold his savings are available to the individual. This is the dilemma.

"So long as it is open to the individual to employ his wealth in hoarding or lending money, the alternative of purchasing actual capital assets cannot be rendered sufficiently attractive (especially to the man who does not manage the capital assets and knows very little about them), except by organizing markets wherein these assets can be easily realized for money."

Yes, liquidity for all at last night's marks is an illusion. But for banks, unlike mutual funds, it's not so much an illusion after all, for two simple reasons: banks have access to deposit insurance underwritten by fiscal authorities and to a discount window underwritten by the monetary authority (and one step removed, the fiscal authority). Thus, banks are unique institutions, providing a "public good:"

  • Liquidity on demand at par for their depositors, because of the safety net underwritten by the sovereign, yet
  • The ability to invest in longer-dated, more risky, not-always-at-par loans and securities, because the existence and credibility of the public safety net systemically renders the public's ex post demand for liquidity at par below the public's ex ante demand.

Yes, banking with a sovereign safety net against deposit runs is a really cool business. Indeed, the difference between the public's ex post and ex ante demand for at-par liquidity could be called the banking system's "float," similar to that of a Buffet-style insurance company.

But since it's a really cool business and since the sovereign providing the liquidity safety net is a de facto equity partner in the business, the sovereign quite rationally wants a say in how the business is run – the degree of leverage, corporate governance, risk management controls, etc. Kinda like I do when I pay the insurance premium on my 19-year old son's car. Jonnie doesn't like it, and neither do bankers. Or would-be bankers.

Thus, both bankers and would-be bankers have, from time immemorial, sought to get the benefits of the sovereign's liquidity safety net without shouldering the associated regulator nuisance. And I'm sure that 19-year old sons and daughters, too, have been doing the same for just as long.

Over the last three decades or so, the growth of "banking" outside formal, sovereign-regulated banking, has exploded, in something that I dubbed the Shadow Banking System. Loosely defined, a Shadow Bank is a levered-up financial intermediary whose liabilities are broadly perceived as of similar money-goodness and liquidity as conventional bank deposits. These liabilities could be shares of money market mutual funds; or the commercial paper of Finance Companies, Conduits and Structured Investment Vehicles; or the repo borrowings of stand-alone Investment Banks and Hedge Funds; or the senior tranches of Collateralized Debt Obligations; or a host of other similar funding instruments.

The bottom line is simple: Shadow Banks use funding instruments that are not just as good as old-fashioned sovereign-protected deposits. But it was a great gig so long as the public bought the notion that such funding instruments were "just as good" as bank deposits – more leverage, less regulation and more asset freedom were a path to (much) higher returns on equity in Shadow Banks than conventional banks.

And why did the public buy such instruments as though they were "just as good" as bank deposits? There are a host of reasons, not the least of which was lust for yield. But most fundamentally, Keynes again gives us the systemic answer (his italics, not mine):

"In practice we have tacitly agreed, as a rule, to fall back on what is, in truth, a convention. The essence of this convention – though it does not, of course, work out quite so simply – lies in assuming that the existing state of affairs will continue indefinitely, except in so far as we have specific reasons to expect a change. This does not mean that we really believe that the existing state of affairs will continue indefinitely. We know from extensive experience that this is most unlikely.

"The actual results of an investment over a long term of years very seldom agree with the initial expectation. Nor can we rationalize our behavior by arguing that to a man in a state of ignorance errors in either direction are equally probable, so that there remains a mean actuarial expectation based on equi-probabilities. For it can easily be shown that the assumption of arithmetically equal probabilities based on a state of ignorance leads to absurdities.

"We are assuming, in effect, that the existing market valuation, however arrived at, is uniquely correct in relation to our existing knowledge of the facts which will influence the yield of the investment, and that it will only change in proportion to changes in this knowledge; though, philosophically speaking, it cannot be uniquely correct, since our existing knowledge does not provide a sufficient basis for a calculated mathematical expectation. In point of fact, all sorts of considerations enter into the market valuations which are in no way relevant to the prospective yield. Nevertheless the above conventional method of calculation will be compatible with a considerable measure of continuity and stability in our affairs, so long as we can rely on the maintenance of the convention.

"For if there exist organized investment markets and if we can rely on the maintenance of the convention, an investor can legitimately encourage himself with the idea that the only risk he runs is that of a genuine change in the news over the near future, as to the likelihood of which he can attempt to form his own judgment, and which is unlikely to be very large. For, assuming that the convention holds good, it is only these changes which can affect the value of his investment, and he need not lose his sleep merely because he has not any notion what his investment will be worth ten years hence.

"Thus investment becomes reasonably "safe" for the individual investor over short periods, and hence over a succession of short periods however many, if he can fairly rely on there being no breakdown in the convention and on his therefore having an opportunity to revise his judgment and change his investment, before there has been time for much to happen. Investments which are "fixed" for the community are thus made "liquid" for the individual.

"It has been, I am sure, on the basis of some such procedure as this that our leading investment markets have been developed. But it is not surprising that a convention, in an absolute view of things so arbitrary, should have its weak points. It is its precariousness which creates no small part of our contemporary problem of securing sufficient investment."

And so, Keynes provides the essential – and existential – answer as to why the Shadow Banking System became so large, the unraveling of which lies at the root of the current global financial system crisis. It was a belief in a convention, undergirded by the length of time it held: Shadow Bank liabilities were viewed as "just as good" as conventional bank deposits not because they are, but because they had been. And the power of this conventional thinking was aided and abetted by both the sovereign and the sovereign-blessed rating agencies.

Until, of course, convention was turned on its head, starting with a run on the ABCP market in August 2007, the near death of Bear Stearns in March 2008, the de facto nationalization of Fannie and Freddie in July, and the actual death of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. Maybe, just maybe, there was and is something special about a real bank, as opposed to a Shadow Bank!

And indeed that is unambiguously the case, as evidenced by the on-going partial re-intermediation of the Shadow Banking System back into the sovereign-supported conventional banking system, as well as the mad scramble by remaining Shadow Banks to convert themselves into conventional banks, so as to eat at the same sovereign-subsidized capital and liquidity cafeteria as their former stodgy brethren.

The new conventional wisdom: levered capitalism is good, and made even better with a bit of socialism to protect the downside.

Well Maybe

I'm quite sure that last sentence is not going to sit well with some of you. It's not supposed to sit well. It doesn't sit well with me, I must acknowledge, nay confess. Like most of us, I've always had a separation in my mind between strictly capitalist activities and strictly public activities. Not that the demarcation is always clean. But it's a useful way of thinking.

As far as I know, the place where I buy my fishing tackle is a capitalist outfit. If we customers don't buy enough rods and reels, the owner will go broke; his operation is simply not systemically important enough to be bailed out by the taxpayers, including my neighbors who don't fish. In contrast, the local Department of Motor Vehicles, sometimes called the DMV, is unambiguously not a capitalist outfit, but a public outfit. It cannot go broke, as evidenced by our tolerance of its fluctuating service level, because it provides a public service that the private sector can't provide. To be sure, AAA can get you new plates for your car, but you can't renew your driver's license at the AAA; for that, you have got to go to the monopoly called the DMV.

Well actually, that's not entirely true, either. The DMV is actually an oligopoly, with offices in many surrounding neighborhoods. And rumor has it here that the service is a lot quicker at the San Clemente office than the Costa Mesa office, which serves Newport Beach. So the consumer does have the choice of driving to San Clemente, a form of time arbitrage versus going to the Costa Mesa office. However, rumor also has it that this rumored better service in San Clemente is so widespread that, as Yogi Berra might say, the San Clemente office has become so popular nobody goes there anymore.

But you get the point: there is private enterprise and there is public enterprise. And then there is banking, a hybrid of the two. There is no way 'round this, for good or bad, because fractional reserve banking depends upon the sovereign's safety net against liability runs, a safety net that the private sector definitionally can't universally supply. In this sense, the safety net is like national defense: we all need it, but since nobody individually has the incentive to pay for it, we collectively tax ourselves to pay for it.

Yes, sometimes we collectively end up paying $800 for military toilet seats, as was the case about 25 years ago. But that doesn't change the proposition that public goods do exist, and a stable system of intermediation of private savings into private investment is indeed a public good. The maturity transformation power of a fractional reserve banking system provides an unambiguous benefit to society and as such, must be underwritten by society.

Bottom Line

I could regale you yet again about the power of the analytical thinking of Hyman Minsky, complete with his Forward Journey turning into his Moment, followed by his Reverse Journey. But I don't need to do that any more: we've collectively lived it and are now caught in the debt-deflationary pathologies of "the paradox of deleveraging." Not everybody in the private sector can delever at the same time without creating a depression. Accordingly, the sovereign must go the other way, levering up the public balance sheet. And Washington has finally started to do so with appropriate vigor and enthusiasm.

It's not a pretty picture. In fact, it's repugnant, giving proof to the proposition that breaking the paradox of deleveraging does involve socializing the downside of previously profitable private sector activities. In a recent speech, I called it "creeping socialism" and was interrupted by an irate, older man in the back of the room bellowing, "It ain't creeping socialism, it's galloping socialism!" I really didn't have a soothing come back, noting that many things are what they are only in the eye of the beholder. But his point wasn't lost on me or anybody else in the room.

And it is not lost on Washington, DC either, I can assure you. If the sovereign must backstop a private sector activity that produces a public good, then the sovereign will, at least in a democracy, rightfully demand both bottom-up and macro-prudential rules to harness the greed that lubricates the invisible hand of capitalism. Yes, the visible fist of government and the invisible hand are presently engaged in a massive arm wrestling contest in the provision of financial services. And the fist is winning.

At least for now. Capitalism, and especially financial market capitalism, brought this outcome upon itself through greed and hubris. Capitalism is now re-grouping and learning how to play by new rules, which are still being written. And ultimately, I'm sure, capitalistic bankers will once again bend those rules in the pursuit of higher profitability. And that's okay, I think. In the end, we really don't want to turn our banking system into the DMV. At the same time, we also don't want our banking system to be nothing more than a betting parlor.

Or, in the famous words of Keynes again:

"Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done."

Paul McCulley



Your watching the bubbles deflate analyst,
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John F. Mauldin
johnmauldin@investorsinsight.com
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Ms Tinna

Dear Miss/Sir
I am writting this letter with due respect and heartful of tears since we have not known or meet ourselves previously I am asking for your assistance after I have gone through a webpage that speaks good of you. I want to find out if it's possible for you to deal with individual as to investment. My dear i will be so glad if you can allow me and lead me to the right channel towards your assistance to my situation now.I will make my proposal well known to you. I would like to use this opportunity to introduce myself to you. I am Miss Tinna Lammi 34yrs lady from Sierra Leone in west Africa,I am the daughter of late Dr Lammi Willi. My father Dr Lammi was the personal advicer to the former state Secretary who is now in exile, before the rebels attacked our house one early morning killing my mother and my father It was only me and my younger boy who`s 15 is alive now,I managed to make my way to MALAYSIA where i am under the UN staying as a refugee .
The main reason why I am contacting you now is to seek your assistance in the area of my future investment,I came to Malaysian with 5.2 million usa dollars fund that my late dady was sign to carry on a project before he pass away,Since am the only One left i have to use the help of the UN to move the fund here to malaysia with out the UN Knowing such amount of money is in the Luggage,Am still in the UN camp while know body have note am having such fund,
Please try and write back and i will let you know how to commincate with me in the camp.If you are honest to help me i can follow you to your country where i can have a better life.I will also let you know that i will want my younger brother to join us after leaving the UN camp here in malaysian,Is not easy for me here. I really need your help,I promise to give you 20% of the fund for anything that will cos you in moving to malaysia to meet with me,I do hope to hear from you soon,please state your self clear for me to understand vie my email: tinna.mmi@gmail.com
Regards,
Tinna

Ms Tinna

Dear Miss/Sir
I am writting this letter with due respect and heartful of tears since we have not known or meet ourselves previously I am asking for your assistance after I have gone through a webpage that speaks good of you. I want to find out if it's possible for you to deal with individual as to investment. My dear i will be so glad if you can allow me and lead me to the right channel towards your assistance to my situation now.I will make my proposal well known to you. I would like to use this opportunity to introduce myself to you. I am Miss Tinna Lammi 34yrs lady from Sierra Leone in west Africa,I am the daughter of late Dr Lammi Willi. My father Dr Lammi was the personal advicer to the former state Secretary who is now in exile, before the rebels attacked our house one early morning killing my mother and my father It was only me and my younger boy who`s 15 is alive now,I managed to make my way to MALAYSIA where i am under the UN staying as a refugee .
The main reason why I am contacting you now is to seek your assistance in the area of my future investment,I came to Malaysian with 5.2 million usa dollars fund that my late dady was sign to carry on a project before he pass away,Since am the only One left i have to use the help of the UN to move the fund here to malaysia with out the UN Knowing such amount of money is in the Luggage,Am still in the UN camp while know body have note am having such fund,
Please try and write back and i will let you know how to commincate with me in the camp.If you are honest to help me i can follow you to your country where i can have a better life.I will also let you know that i will want my younger brother to join us after leaving the UN camp here in malaysian,Is not easy for me here. I really need your help,I promise to give you 20% of the fund for anything that will cos you in moving to malaysia to meet with me,I do hope to hear from you soon,please state your self clear for me to understand vie my email: tinna.mmi@gmail.com
Regards,
Tinna

Ms Tinna

Dear Miss/Sir
I am writting this letter with due respect and heartful of tears since we have not known or meet ourselves previously I am asking for your assistance after I have gone through a webpage that speaks good of you. I want to find out if it's possible for you to deal with individual as to investment. My dear i will be so glad if you can allow me and lead me to the right channel towards your assistance to my situation now.I will make my proposal well known to you. I would like to use this opportunity to introduce myself to you. I am Miss Tinna Lammi 34yrs lady from Sierra Leone in west Africa,I am the daughter of late Dr Lammi Willi. My father Dr Lammi was the personal advicer to the former state Secretary who is now in exile, before the rebels attacked our house one early morning killing my mother and my father It was only me and my younger boy who`s 15 is alive now,I managed to make my way to MALAYSIA where i am under the UN staying as a refugee .
The main reason why I am contacting you now is to seek your assistance in the area of my future investment,I came to Malaysian with 5.2 million usa dollars fund that my late dady was sign to carry on a project before he pass away,Since am the only One left i have to use the help of the UN to move the fund here to malaysia with out the UN Knowing such amount of money is in the Luggage,Am still in the UN camp while know body have note am having such fund,
Please try and write back and i will let you know how to commincate with me in the camp.If you are honest to help me i can follow you to your country where i can have a better life.I will also let you know that i will want my younger brother to join us after leaving the UN camp here in malaysian,Is not easy for me here. I really need your help,I promise to give you 20% of the fund for anything that will cos you in moving to malaysia to meet with me,I do hope to hear from you soon,please state your self clear for me to understand vie my email: tinna.mmi@gmail.com
Regards,
Tinna

Ms Tinna

Dear Miss/Sir
I am writting this letter with due respect and heartful of tears since we have not known or meet ourselves previously I am asking for your assistance after I have gone through a webpage that speaks good of you. I want to find out if it's possible for you to deal with individual as to investment. My dear i will be so glad if you can allow me and lead me to the right channel towards your assistance to my situation now.I will make my proposal well known to you. I would like to use this opportunity to introduce myself to you. I am Miss Tinna Lammi 34yrs lady from Sierra Leone in west Africa,I am the daughter of late Dr Lammi Willi. My father Dr Lammi was the personal advicer to the former state Secretary who is now in exile, before the rebels attacked our house one early morning killing my mother and my father It was only me and my younger boy who`s 15 is alive now,I managed to make my way to MALAYSIA where i am under the UN staying as a refugee .
The main reason why I am contacting you now is to seek your assistance in the area of my future investment,I came to Malaysian with 5.2 million usa dollars fund that my late dady was sign to carry on a project before he pass away,Since am the only One left i have to use the help of the UN to move the fund here to malaysia with out the UN Knowing such amount of money is in the Luggage,Am still in the UN camp while know body have note am having such fund,
Please try and write back and i will let you know how to commincate with me in the camp.If you are honest to help me i can follow you to your country where i can have a better life.I will also let you know that i will want my younger brother to join us after leaving the UN camp here in malaysian,Is not easy for me here. I really need your help,I promise to give you 20% of the fund for anything that will cos you in moving to malaysia to meet with me,I do hope to hear from you soon,please state your self clear for me to understand vie my email: tinna.mmi@gmail.com
Regards,
Tinna