Mauldin Newsletters

Three Black Swans

2017-07-22T21:26:00+00:00

“The world in which we live has an increasing number of feedback loops, causing events to be the cause of more events (say, people buy a book because other people bought it), thus generating snowballs and arbitrary and unpredictable planet-wide winner-take-all effects.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan

Trade War Games

2017-07-19T16:52:00+00:00

“We’re already in a trade war with China. The problem is we’ve not been fighting back.” – Peter Navarro “The battle for Helm’s Deep is over. The battle for Middle Earth is about to begin.” – Gandalf the White

“You Look Like I Need a Drink”: Comments Before the National Association of Chain Drug Stores

2017-07-12T09:00:00+00:00

Today’s Outside the Box is a rollicking address to the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, delivered by my friend Richard Fisher, former President & CEO of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank. Richard is simply one of the most entertaining and informative thinkers I know. I cherish his thoughts and the all-too-brief times I get to be with him. He is the source of a thousand stories, and you always learn something new. In this speech he makes all the points I just made in last week’s letter –...

Prepare for Turbulence

2017-07-09T17:08:00+00:00

“The job of the central bank is to worry.” – Alice Rivlin “The central bank needs to be able to make policy without short-term political concerns.” – Ben Bernanke “… from the standpoint of the overall economy, my bottom line is we’re watching it closely but it appears to be contained. – Ben Bernanke, repeatedly, in 2007 “Would I say there will never, ever be another financial crisis? You know, probably that would be going too far, but I do think we’re much safer, and I hope that it will...

Hostages to History at the G-20 Summit

2017-07-07T09:00:00+00:00

For this week’s Outside the Box, I again bring you the sterling work of George Friedman and his team at Geopolitical Futures. Today, George delivers a sobering analysis of the G-20 Summit now underway in Hamburg. Our leaders, he says, like to think of themselves as intrepid decision makers whose national interests are defined through their interactions with their global peers in venues like the G-20. But, he argues, history is marching on – and at a rather brisk pace these days, you may have...

The Wedge Goes Deeper

2017-06-30T14:48:00+00:00

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” – Abraham Lincoln “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

Shale Oil: Another Layer of US Power

2017-06-28T09:00:00+00:00

George Friedman and I have been talking regularly about pressing geopolitical issues for at least 10 years – it is a shared obsession. George and Meredith and Shane and I regularly try to get together, and sometime in August we will make our annual pilgrimage, wherein we spend a long weekend with my getting history lessons and geopolitical insights – and I try to share a little economics. I know no one else with George’s breadth and depth of insight into today’s world. Right at the root of...

Mad Hawk Disease Strikes Federal Reserve

2017-06-25T14:12:00+00:00

“A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.” – Ernest Hemingway

Secular Stagnation?

2017-06-21T19:21:00+00:00

In today’s Outside the Box my good friend Charles Gave shares an instructive “Tale of Two Countries.” Since 1981 in the UK and France, structural growth rates have diverged: The rate has fallen by two-thirds in France, while in the UK it has risen. Why? Well, to begin with, in the UK Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister in 1979 and almost at once reduced the role of the bureaucracy in managing economic activity and dialed back government spending as a percentage of GDP. Meanwhile, in...

The Next Minsky Moment

2017-06-17T22:35:00+00:00

“China’s economy has entered a state of new normal.” – Premier Li Keqiang, 2015 “Success breeds a disregard of the possibility of failure.” – Hyman Minsky