Thoughts from the Frontline

Collectivized Risks

By John Mauldin

January 3, 2003

Introduction
Collectivized Risks with Bill Bonner
Vacation Update

This week we are in for a very special edition of the Millennium Wave Online. I have persuaded my good friend Bill Bonner of Daily Reckoning fame to give us a special preview of his new book "The Soft Depression of the 21st Century: How to Survive the Crisis of Degenerate, Mass Capitalism," (working title) due out in September. In it, he and fellow Daily Reckoneer Addison Wiggin, argue that popular democracy, aging populations and bad economic theories doom the US and other Western economies to follow the Japanese model, with recession, bear markets and failing consumer spending over the next 10 to 15 years. (Heavy stuff, I know... )

I read The Daily Reckoning almost every day. It's part of my morning ritual. In fact, I wrote to Bill last year to tell him that there are times when I feel like a house painter in front of a Rembrandt as I read his commentary. He is that good. In the following essay - which he tells me will comprise a portion of the finished book - he takes issue with economist Paul…

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