Mauldin Newsletters

The World Turned Upside Down

2017-10-15T00:13:00+00:00

Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met at midnight In the hanging tree. – Lyrics from the theme song of The Hunger Games If buttercups buzz’d after the bee, If boats were on land, churches on sea, If ponies rode men and if grass ate the cows, And cats should be chased into holes by the mouse, If the mamas sold their babies To the gypsies for half a crown; If summer were spring and the other way round, Then all the world would be upside down. – Lyrics from a 17th...

Hoisington Quarterly Review and Outlook, Third Quarter 2017

2017-10-11T09:00:00+00:00

Lacy Hunt and Van Hoisington of Hoisington Investment Management do not exactly get us off to a hopeful start in their third-quarter review, today’s Outside the Box: The worst economic recovery of the post-war period will continue to be restrained by a consumer sector burdened by paltry income growth, a low and falling saving rate, and an increasingly restrictive Federal Reserve policy. Additionally, with the extremely high level of U.S. government debt and deteriorating fiscal situation, the...

Uncle Sam’s Unfunded Promises

2017-10-07T20:46:00+00:00

Here’s a surprisingly profound question: What is a promise? Dictionaries offer various definitions. I like this one: “An express assurance on which expectation is to be based.”

The Catalan Question and the Future of Europe

2017-10-04T09:00:00+00:00

It is 5 AM in Lisbon, and I am sitting in an airport lounge with wifi, writing this week’s OTB on my iPad, clumsily. GaveKal has written a very candid analysis of the Catalonia vote/debacle, which was a hot topic at the conference where I was speaking – Spain is right next door. There were numerous past and current foreign ministers and other parliamentary leaders here, all very pro-EU, and they were aghast at Rajoy’s heavy-handed response. Howewver, they all agreed that Catalonia could never...

Global Retirement Reality

2017-09-30T20:46:00+00:00

Today we’ll continue to size up the bull market in governmental promises. As we do so, keep an old trader’s slogan in mind: “That which cannot go on forever, won’t.” Or we could say it differently: An unsustainable trend must eventually stop.

Low Inflation Is No “Mystery”

2017-09-27T09:00:00+00:00

When is a mystery not a mystery? When Janet Yellen is puzzling over a lack of inflation, that’s when. So say Brian Wesbury, chief economist, and Robert Stein, deputy chief economist of First Trust, in today’s Outside the Box. The bottom line: QE didn’t work, and Janet knew it was unlikely to work, from the start. So where did all that easy money go? I think I’ll let the authors tell you. I think you’ll enjoy this brief, clear-headed essay. The essay was sent to me along with a rant by my...

Build Your Economic Storm Shelter Now

2017-09-23T20:06:00+00:00

If you’re idly conversing with someone you don’t know well, the weather is usually a safe topic. It affects everyone in some way, so it’s a shared experience – but there’s something else, too. The weather is no one’s fault. It is what it is, so you need not worry that the other person will blame you for it. None of us can control the weather. And lately, the weather has been interesting, unless you had to live through its more extreme manifestations. Then it’s been hell. Before this week, I...

Yet Again?

2017-09-20T09:00:00+00:00

This week’s Outside the Box is from one of my favorite writers and analysts. Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital is simply an investing legend. He writes several “memos” a year on the world of investing, and I put quotes around the word memos because they are typically longer than what you would think of as a memo. This week’s selection is reduced from the full memo, which you can see here. (And for those who are wondering what I omitted, Howard did a long section on Bitcoin that I had to edit...

Pension Storm Warning

2017-09-16T20:51:00+00:00

This time is different are the four most dangerous words any economist or money manager can utter. We learn new things and invent new technologies. Players come and go. But in the big picture, this time is usually not fundamentally different, because fallible humans are still in charge. (Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart wrote an important book called This Time Is Different on the 260-odd times that governments have defaulted on their debts; and on each occasion, up until the moment of collapse,...

On Swamp Draining in Texas, Florida … and DC

2017-09-13T09:00:00+00:00

For this week’s Outside the Box we have a two-parter of short essays. They are unrelated but equally important. First, in “Time to Drain the Fed Swamp,” Brian Wesbury and colleagues at First Trust make the case that it was the private sector, not the federal government or the Fed, that saved the economy after the Panic of 2008. The Fed has outgrown its britches, they argue, and it’s time to fill the Board of Governors chair and vice-chair positions with people who will hold the Fed to account...