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October 13, 2010
BEEN DOWN SO LONG...
A glum consensus about the economic future has enveloped our collective minds like fog descending on the coast at sunset. Our recent financial crisis and its glum sequel have been lightning rods for the feelings of disappointment, frustration and intense anger that have been building for a long time. However, we repeat that high unemployment, high inequality, low economic growth, low inflation and low interest rates are all logically and historically good for stock markets and for government. 

September 16, 2010
ADDICTION
Corrupt regulatory oversight, cutting corners to save costs, plus citizens and politicians chanting “Drill, baby, drill”-- is the BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe really any surprise? Like an addict resorting to riskier and riskier behavior to get a “fix”, we have adopted riskier and more desperate measures to feed our addiction to oil. The cost of our addiction has escalated, driving us literally to the ends of the earth to uncover more.

June 28, 2010
LOST
Not long ago, Japan lost a decade.  For an equity investor, a review of Japan’s experience is unnerving. Of course, equity prices tell only a small and distorted part of the story. During two decades widely accepted as having been lost, the Japanese achieved broad improvements in the quality of life.  So what are the lessons for the US as a likely second lost decade looms? Focus on employment.  

April 12, 2010
BEAT THE DEVIL
Governments, businesses, homeowners and taxpayers have all made a sort of Faustian bargain with the Devil in recent decades. He has presented us with his bill and everyone is trying to beat the Devil at his own game by having governments borrow still more money and lend it to leveraged speculators to inflate the prices of damaged assets. So far this game is working once again with the help of new Wizard-of-Oz accounting rules; but the potential for renewed financial distress is still strong along with the various possibilities for military, political or terrorist reversals.

October 20, 2009
CAPITALISM HAS THE LAST LAUGH (AGAIN)
If you want to be foreboding, just because it suits you or you hope to attract readers to your blog, here is something to worry about that you can also be angry about. As there can be no doubt that we are in a recovery, there can be even less doubt that the steps taken to get us here have been overwhelmingly crafted to benefit the rich and powerful.

July 16, 2009
THE LIMITS OF GROWTH
The future is always unknown, and at present it remains rather more uncertain than usual. Nevertheless, some answers are taking shape to the outcome of what we have described as an unprecedented economic “experiment.” It appears….”.

February 6, 2009
MAY YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES
Although there have been a few hopeful straws in the wind recently, investors who grasp them may be in peril still. The forces of depression remain fierce and relentless. While monetary and fiscal economic stimuli continue to proliferate in number and size, their ultimate effectiveness is yet unproven in the present or based on any analogy from the past. As we mentioned in last July's memo, we are in the midst of a great, global experiment whose outcome cannot be anticipated with any confidence because it has not previously been clearly imagined, let alone experienced.

September 26, 2008
BAILED OUT OR OUTFOXED
Perhaps the genial Washington bi-partisan approbation of wealth and distrust of the poor stays the hand that might provide succor directly to the poor borrower at the expense of the campaign contributor’s bank ...
This is unquestionably a very bad and dangerous environment for common stocks. We have reduced common stock holdings in all of our accounts to much less than half of a normal position …

July 7, 2008
BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS
We cannot say there is no chance of a financial and economic collapse because each of the few previous examples of such events was different and each caught nearly everyone by surprise.

January 3, 2008
In the mid 1930’s with the Depression still causing widespread unemployment, idle factories and poverty, John Maynard Keynes wrote his famous treatise arguing that we had it in our power -- any sovereign government had the power -- to end the Depression promptly and to end or avoid any future depressions. 

October 3, 2007
The economies of developed countries, like their stock markets, are acting more like the end of something than the beginning.

August 14, 2007
In January 2000, Steve Case the Internet entrepreneur who founded and owned a large part of AOL, persuaded the management of Time Warner to a merger between the two firms. …  His timing was superb.  Two months later the Internet bubble burst.

April 16, 2007
The U.S. stock market is setting a new, post-911 high, and markets in the rest of the world have mostly done the same in the past couple of weeks.  In our view the U.S. market is now quite fully priced and will probably provide disappointing returns to investors over the next year or so

October 3, 2006
Slow but continuing growth, low inflation and low interest rates are a launching pad for markets to the moon.  While markets have definitely achieved lift off, they are still a long way from the moon, and a decent capital gain away from fair value. 

May 17, 2006
An American economy that continues to grow at a moderate pace is good news for the rest of the world’s economies, particularly in developing nations, and it is good news for stock markets.  It is only good news, however, if economic growth does not lead to rising inflation, something we have been incorrectly forecasting for about five years.

September 26, 2005
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have devastated lives, homes, a whole city, and significant portions of the American oil economy and transportation network.  For the time being, at least, hurricane winds have blown the cover off many previously unchallenged myths and unseen realities.

May 5, 2005
It’s spring and democracy is breaking out all over, or so it seems, especially in American media and political orations. 

January 3, 2005
In his wonderful recent book, Blood and Oil, Michael Klare shows how our invasion of Iraq has been focused on the oil and how this is merely a continuation of a singularly focused American policy over more than the past sixty years. 

September 27, 2004
Where to begin in this time of turmoil and turpitude?  How about roughly 2,100 years ago?  Julius Caesar had just been born.  But, the Roman Republic had already transmuted into an entity that belied its name and its principles. 

May 26, 2004
In one of their moving declarations from Chiapas about eight years ago the Zapatistas declared:  “In place of humanity, they offer us the stock market index.” 

January 12, 2004
The permanent “War on Terrorism” trudges across our TV screens wrapped in a spin of lies and various colored alerts.  In this respect Orwell’s “1984” has finally arrived…

October 10, 2003
 Public events in the world continue, for the most part, to bemuse, confuse and profoundly sadden at least some of us.  Afghanistan and Iraq continue to seethe.  In the former the American handpicked government remains confined to the capital where it justly complains that neither we nor anyone else has prevented the continuing resurgence of the Taliban. 

July 9, 2003
Greenspan has made clear that the course of housing prices and construction has been a satisfaction to the Fed and, in his view also, a strong prop to the economy.  The problem is that the Fed may have replaced the burst stock market bubble by creating a housing bubble. 

April 14, 2003
 Now that an instantaneously famous victory has been won by the United States, even before the war was quite finished, it is appropriate to ask exactly what it is that has been won.  And what has been lost. 

January 16, 2003
Like Senator McCarthy with his never unveiled list of Communists in the State Department, the President’s men claim to have certain knowledge of the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and, like Senator McCarthy, they are unwilling to share this information apparently even with the UN weapons inspectors.

April 16, 2002
As is often the case early in an economic and stock market recovery there is an abundance of alarming news on all fronts. 

January 25, 2002
If the U.S. persists in flying around the world and dropping bombs on people, the immediate consequences for the U.S. economy will remain positive.  But, as is clear already, the longer run consequences of this murderous mayhem are seriously negative.

October 16, 2001
The horrifying and quite unexpected events of September 11th dramatically changed the outlook for almost everything, including the economy and financial markets. 

July 17, 2001
[We] remain very sanguine about the potential for equities in Mexico, Brazil, Europe and certain export-focused companies in Japan.

April 11, 2001
George W. seems bent on proving himself as bad for the economy and the stock market as Clinton was good. 

July, 2000
Many have worried that the large size of the Federal budget surplus and the fervent, bipartisan rhetoric in favor of continued surpluses will provide a deadly downward push to any economic decline.  This ignores the equally strong bipartisan appetite for every imaginable tax cut under the sun or the moon. 

April 10, 2000
… it is hard to believe that the speculative enthusiasm for all kinds of Internet stocks will end up anyway but badly.

January 12, 2000
This is now the fourth year in a row that [we] have been concerned about slowing growth, falling profits and a recession, all of which continue not to happen. 

October 6, 1999
The spectacular stock market returns of 1995 through 1998 seem to have ended. 

July 14, 1999
It is not yet clear how the Federal Reserve or anyone else can ultimately avoid some kind of contraction.  Hence, I continue to prefer caution in the midst of enticing speculative excess.

February 8, 1999
The one area that appears to be caught up in a speculative mania beyond question and well beyond rationality is the group of Internet stocks.

December 8, 1998
The prices of large, successful, rapidly growing, multinational American companies are for the most part once again at new record levels relative to their earnings, assets and dividends.