Thoughts from the Frontline

“How did you go bankrupt?”  “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” ―Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

If you look just at 2021, it seems the US economy is tearing higher. Real GDP grew an annualized +6.5% in the second quarter, the Commerce Department estimated last week. This follows a similar +6.3% first quarter, and a pandemic-interrupted 2020 that turned out not so bad in the end. The July unemployment report showed more impressive jobs growth. The Fed will increasingly have problems maintaining its credibility with interest rates at the zero bound and massive QE and inflation still rising.

“T.S. Eliot once wrote, ‘Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.’ It seems the US financial system is bound and determined to find out.” —John Hussman, July 29, 2021

Great news: The US economy is officially out of recession. We know this because the National Bureau of Economic Research’s official recession-calling committee said so this week. The economy has been in an expansion phase since last April, making this the shortest recession on record at only two months.

I have mixed feelings about China. On the plus side, I think the country’s massive economic transformation may be one of the most impressive events in human history. Bringing hundreds of millions from primitive rural lives into relatively prosperous cities within a few years was awe-inspiring. I greatly admire the millions of Chinese entrepreneurs worldwide who create jobs and technology. They’ve helped the entire world in countless ways.

In the 1980s, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher liked to say, “There is no alternative” to her market-driven economic reform ideas. She said it so much people began abbreviating it as “TINA.”

It is as essential to democracy that the minority should voluntarily submit to the measures adopted as it is that the majority should voluntarily approve them. Democratic government rests upon the principle that it is better to count heads than it is to break them. The principle is a good one, but unfortunately, men will not, under certain conditions, so regard it. By and large the principle works well enough, at least in countries where the democratic tradition is well established, only as long as the issues to be decided do not involve those interests which men will always fight for rather than surrender.

“At the end of the day” is a trite figure of speech, but it sometimes fits. It signals you’ve used all your time, and now you’ll wrap up and begin thinking about tomorrow.

If it seems I have been talking about the Strategic Investment Conference for weeks… well, you’re right. It really was that much to unpack, and I’ve still only scratched the surface. I will wrap up next week.

You can’t always get what you want But if you try sometime you find You get what you need —by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, 1969 There’s no way around it: Investing in public companies is always political. Corporations exist because governments charter these artificial entities and legally shield the owners (shareholders) from personal liability.

Macroeconomic forecasting is too politicized. I don’t mean that in a partisan sense, though it may be so. The bigger problem is that forecasters spend most of their time thinking about central bank decisions and government policies. In the long run, those aren’t the most important factors. Not even close.

If you could ask the world’s top central bankers what really terrifies them, I think the honest answer would usually be “deflation.” It is their greatest nightmare. They think a little inflation is good (thus the 2%+ target), and they’re confident they can subdue it if necessary. Deflation is a bigger problem.