Thoughts from the Frontline

This week’s letter is a result of two lengthy conversations I had today, which have me in a reflective mode. Plus, I finished the last, final edits of my book, all of which is causing me to mull over the unsustainability of the US fiscal situation. There is a true Endgame here, and it may happen before we are ready. The first conversation was with Kyle Bass, Richard Howard, and Peter Mauthe, over lunch (more on Peter, who has come to work with me, below). Kyle is the head of Hayman Advisors, a very successful macro hedge fund based here in Dallas. Then I recorded a Conversation with David Rosenberg and Lacy Hunt, which is one of the best we have ever done. Subscribers will be very happy. The new Conversation with George Friedman is now online, too. You can learn more about Conversations with John Mauldin at www.johnmauldin.com/conversations/ . And please comment on this and future letters in the readers’ forums of my new website. Now, to this week’s letter. My goal is to make this one a little shorter than normal. We’ll see how I do.

Last week, in the first part of my annual forecast, I suggested that 2011 would be better than Muddle Through, with GDP growth in the US north of 2.5%. World GDP growth should be even better. This week we look at what I see as the real downside risks to that prediction. Oddly enough, the risks are not in the US but on the other side of both our oceans, in Europe and China. Plus, we will visit a few other items, assuming we have space (Bernanke’s recent speech just screams for some comments). Two housekeeping items. First, I will once again be hosting, along with my partners Altegris Investments, our 8th annual Strategic Investment Conference, in La Jolla April 28-30. Save the date. Each year the conference gets better. We have as strong a lineup of speakers as any conference in the country. I will announce when we will take reservations. It always sells out, so I suggest you do not procrastinate. Secondly, between finishing my book and the holidays, I have been rather quiet the past few months in regards to my Conversations with John Mauldin, but that is getting ready to change. Over the next few weeks I will be doing conversations with David Rosenberg, Lacy Hunt (his quarterly will be next week’s Outside the Box), George Friedman of Stratfor, and John Burns and Rick Sharga to get the latest on the housing markets; and I am lining up some more very interesting Conversations, so that subscribers will get more than their money’s worth. Now, let’s jump into the letter.

For those who wish to subscribe you can go to www.browningnewsletter.com and either use PayPal or use a credit card. This is clearly not a letter for everyone, but for those of us who try to get a look at all the pieces of the puzzle as we figure out what the picture is, this is a latter which allows us to look at a piece which is often ignored, but is very important. It is very technical, and the initial reading may seem complex, but over time Ibn Browning’s daughter, Evelyn, has been able to give me a real education in climatology. Bundle up out there in the north!

It is time once again to throw caution and wisdom to the wind and actually make my 11th annual forecast. I have to admit this is the most stressful letter I write each year. I do at least 5-10 times more research and thinking about this issue than any other. On a positive note, this may be one of the more optimistic forecast letters I have done in a long time. But there are some asterisks, as always. We will survey the world, trying to peer through the fog of the future. There are some very interesting side trails we will want to explore. Did you know some events in Russia could have real ramifications for inflation in China, the US, and the world? I pay attention to the background details and bring them to you. So settle back as we tour the world. But first, as you are fastening your seat belts, I am proud to announce that FINALLY we are a full go on my new web sites, which have been in soft launch for a few weeks. The main site is now www.johnmauldin.com, where you can access everything I do, including Thoughts from the Frontline and Outside the Box, as well as ten years’ worth of archives. There’s a lot that’s new, as Tiffani is dragging me into the new world of Internet 2.0. Our old site was so ’90s. Now we are the cutting edge. Everything is done in HTML 5, and we are one of the first and few financially oriented sites to use this new code. Very crisp and clean. But more importantly to you, we have ways for you to interact with me and the “Mauldin Community.” You can comment on each weekly Thoughts from the Frontline and Outside the Box, and I will read your comments. There is a forum where you can join the community and discuss topics I bring up, whether you agree with me or not. I have always contended that my readers are the smartest, most well-informed of any writer’s, and now you can benefit from your collective wisdom. The only general rule is that you have to be civil and have some sense of decorum. At least on the small part of the Web I own, there will be a sense of dignity and probity. You can disagree with me or some other commenter to your heart’s content, and I encourage it, as that is the way I (and we) learn; but no flame mails, no casting aspersions on anyone’s character because of the views they hold. I will also be doing voice podcasts that we call The Mauldin Minute. And you can view my latest media spots. Want to ask me a question? There’s a spot for them in the upper left-hand corner of our home page, and each week I will pick 1-3 questions to respond to. Rule: it has to be a question that does not need a book chapter or an e-letter to answer! We also have a new site called The Mauldin Circle, where you can find investment professionals around the world who can help you find appropriate investments, generally in the alternative space, which can add some real diversification to your portfolio. (If you have signed up for the accredited investor letter in the past, you do not need to do so again. In this regard, I am president of and a registered representative of Millennium Wave Securities, LLC, member FINRA.) If you have a minute, go to www.johnmauldin.com, put in your email address, and sign up. (You won’t get two copies of my letters if you are already on the list!) Tiffani and I really would like your feedback on the new site. And now on to the topics of Forecast 2011, in no particular order.

I am neither a market timer nor the son of a market timer. I left my office in the Texas Rangers ballpark this year, and they went to the World Series. I bought Dallas Cowboys season tickets for the first time in 50 years, as they went down in flames. But I do know a few very good timers, and they are sending out warnings. Today, we look at a few of these, as it might pay to hedge some of your equity portfolio as we go into the New Year. I also answer some questions as to my view of the municipal bond market, given the 60 Minutes report of last week. The answers may surprise you. And as we approach the end of the year, I suggest a place where your help is most needed. I will try to keep it shorter, as there are more important things at this time of the year than the markets. A little housekeeping. I will not be doing an Outside the Box next Monday or an e-letter next Friday. I am off on a little R&R with my youngest son. But I will be back in full swing come the first of the year and will do my annual forecast issue the first Friday evening in January.

How often did we as young kids go down the street kicking a can? “Kicking the can down the road” is a universally understood metaphor that has come to mean not dealing with the problem but putting a band-aid on it, knowing we will have to deal with something maybe even worse in the future.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember that one of the reasons for QE2 was to lower rates on the longer end of the US yield curve. Clearly, that has not happened? Today we look at come of the unintended consequences of monetary policy, turn our eyes briefly to consumer debt, and wonder about deflating incomes. There are a lot of very interesting things to cover. (This letter will print long, but there are a lot of graphs. Usual amount of copy.) But first, the are some changes and upgrades being made to the database that houses the list of my 1.5 million closest friends. That means that some of you will be reading this on the website this week, rather than having the letter sent directly to you. If this letter doesn’t show up for some reason, you can always go to www.2000wave.com and get it directly from the website. We should be back on track by next week. Sorry for any inconvenience. Second, long-time readers know I have an avid interest in biotech. I am also a serial entrepreneur on the lookout for business opportunities. Some have been successful and others have been learning experiences. On the biotech front, I frequently talk and meet with CEOs and scientists in the biotech space. In this process I have come across what I think is an amazing new product. I have personally been using it and love it! I bought the marketing rights. Next week I will introduce you to it. We are rushing to get the material ready before Christmas, and production efforts on the websites are not up to my normal standards. But since it only goes to my closest friends, I trust you will cut me some slack. And it is an amazing product. More next week. You can be the judge as to whether I should have jumped at yet another opportunity. But rest assured, gentle reader, that my primary focus is on writing to you every Friday, and it always will be. That is what I love to do and what I seemingly do best. Now, into the letter.

Why is it that the Irish must take upon themselves the debts of their banks, which in reality are debts owed to German and French banks? Why should the Germans bail out the Greeks and the Spanish? Is the spread of “contagion” starting to taint the debt of Italy and even Belgium, the home of the EU? This week we look over the pond (of the Atlantic) and wonder how all these things will end. As I noted last week, we are getting a string of not so bad news out of the US, so now there are really just two things in the short term to worry about (at least in terms of a positive US GDP): will Congress extend the Bush tax cuts and will Europe sort itself out? While I am on a cruise ship off the coast of Mexico (with a sporadic and very slow internet connection), the news we do get seems to suggest that the former will get done, but the latter looks rather dodgy. This week we look at a few statistics and then I try and give my US readers some perspective on Europe, by comparing Texas to Ireland (or Portugal or…). There is a connection, or at least I will try and make one. It should be fun, if a little controversial. But first, and quickly, my friends from GaveKal will be in Dallas this week, on Wednesday December 8, for a full-day conference. If you are an accredited investor or a fund manager join me, Charles and Louis Gave (and some of their team), and George Friedman of Stratfor for a full day of presentations and analysis of the current world. Just drop me a reply and someone from either my staff or theirs will be in touch with you.

I've got to admit it's getting better A little better all the time I have to admit it's getting better It's getting better since you've been mine Getting so much better all the time - John Lennon / Paul McCartney, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band And the data out over the last few weeks tells us it is getting better. Does this take us out of the double-dip woods, even as the Fed is lowering its forecast? And what is a recession? Yes, we all know it’s when the economy doesn’t grow, but we are in a rather unique economic environment, this time. Maybe things are getting better, but is it enough to get us back on the road to full employment?

The CPI was out this week, and it showed a continued drop in inflation. There were those who immediately pointed out that this vindicated the Fed’s move to QE2. We have to get ahead of this deflation thing, don’t we? Well, maybe, depending on how you measure inflation/deflation. This week we look deep into the BLS website on inflation to see just exactly what it is we are measuring, and then take a walk down Nostalgia Lane. But first we look at what I think we can call The Sputtering Economy, because that will tie into our inflation discussion.

China’s currency is rising ever so slowly against the dollar. But is that hurting China? We will look at a very interesting chart and some research. And then we’ll gain some more insight into why the employment numbers seemed to surprise. I guess if you lower the bar, it’s easier to jump over. I also deal with the pushback from last week’s Outside the Box! And Ireland is on my radar. There is a lot to cover, so let’s jump in. I start this week’s letter on a flight from Cleveland (where I was at the Cleveland Clinic meeting with my good friend and doctor Mike Roizen (of Oprah and the various “YOU” books with Mehmet Oz) on some non-health-related business, and we talked last night about the state of health care. Mike keeps pointing out that much of our health-care cost comes from chronic diseases that are either directly or partially lifestyle choices. And he is right. The data shows it. Smoking, overeating, lack of exercise – all contribute to our health-care bills. And health care was on my mind. Now, a little mea culpa. I get letters from readers who start their missive out with something like, “I know you probably won’t read this, but…” Well, I can’t say I read every letter, but someone does and I get and read as many as I can. And my rule is that I get all the negative ones, and any letters that show particular thoughtfulness and give me suggested reading or just good suggestions. I do pay attention to you. It takes some time, I admit, but I think it is important. And the feedback I got on last week’s Outside the Box on health care was definitely running much more on the negative side. And as it turns out, for good reason. There were just simply some factual errors in the piece that made it more partisan than it sounded when I first read it. And many readers justifiably took me to task for that. What attracted me to the piece to begin with was the central fact that the incentives within the health-care bill give businesses significant monetary reasons to do things that are not in what I think of as the best interests of the economy or labor. Businesses will be able to save a great deal of money by canceling their employer-paid insurance plans and simply paying the fine and offering their employees some kind of cash payment to buy managed-care programs. Go to Friday’s USA Today. Read the story on Medicare-managed health care, about the shortage of specialty doctors and the denial of benefits that I think of as routine in my more or less plain-vanilla health insurance plan. I don’t think people are going to be happy. Second, there is the incentive to hire part-time employees over full-time, and thereby not have to provide insurance. This is already an issue I see every week with my own kids, as getting full-time jobs even in relatively OK Texas is an issue. As a nation, we are already witnessing a disconcerting and still-rising level of part-time employment. Do we really want to encourage more of that? If there is one thing we know in economics (and there are admittedly distressingly few of them), it is that people respond to incentives, whether intended or unintended. I don’t think the writers of the health-care bill intended to increase part-time employees, keep payrolls under 50 employees, or encourage businesses to dump their health insurance or move to outsourcing, etc. But if you are a business person facing budget and sales shortfalls, rising prices, and fierce competition (is there any other kind?), saving $2-3,000 per employee is going to be tempting. When two part-time employees cost $3-6000 a year less than one full-time? What do you choose when the boss is breathing down your neck about expenses? The recent employment data tells me that already businesses are opting for more part-time workers. It doesn’t work for every business, but it will for a lot of them. I hope that is not going to be the case, but I want policies that encourage and reward good corporate behavior. For many people who read the letter, the factual errors obscured the main points. Frankly, I understand. I often have that reaction in reading other material myself. But Outside the Box is not “other material.” I put this out there, and with the core standards we have in place, I should not have been as tone deaf. I WILL be better. And in a few weeks, we will have a new website with reader forums and feedback (targeting December – this is a major project and they always take more time than I would like). Two things I did take away from the feedback. First, most of my readers are amazingly civil in an era where simple civility on the internet is not the norm. And second, this is an extremely emotional issue. Most of us have stories about people who have been hurt by not having access to health care. And it is a lot more complex, with more moving parts, than any issue we face as a nation. I spent some time with Newt Gingrich this Wednesday. He seems to me surprisingly upbeat about the potential for solutions to the health-care issue. He points out that there are some amazing medical advances just around the corner. A cure for Alzheimer’s would save, according to Newt, about $20 trillion over the coming decades. Cancer? Heart disease? My friend Pat Cox suggests we are on the edge of a tsunami of medical breakthroughs. But we have been seemingly on the edge for a long time. As I wrote a few weeks ago: Let's look down the road. I think we will at best be in a Muddle Through Economy for the next two years. Unemployment is going to be above 8%, best-case, in 2012. If the Bush tax cuts are not extended, in my opinion it is almost a lock that we go into recession next year, unemployment goes to 12%, and underemployment gets even worse. That is not a good climate for Obama and the Democrats in 2012. It is especially bad when you look at the number of Democratic Senate seats up for re-election that are in conservative states. The Republicans could take a serious majority in the Senate. And then what? Right now Republicans are running on promises that they will not cut Medicare and Social Security, but are going to reduce spending and get us closer to a balanced budget. But everyone knows that the only way to get the budget into some reasonable semblance of balance will be to either cut Medicare benefits or increase taxes.” There are only the two options. Yes, you can reform medical care, and I think much of Obamacare should certainly be repealed, but that does not get us anywhere close to dealing with the real issue, and that's a fact. There are tens of trillions in unfunded liabilities in our future, which must be dealt with. Let me be very clear on this. I am not really worried about the supposed $75 trillion in unfunded Medicare liabilities in our future. That is an impossible number. If something can't happen it won't happen. Long before we get to that apocalypse, we find a bond market that simply refuses to fund US debt at anywhere near an affordable cost. Crisis and chaos will ensue. People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them. - Jean Monnet The simple reality is that if We the People of the US want Medicare, in even a reformed and more efficient manner, we must find a way to pay for it. It will not be cheap. Raising income taxes on the "rich" is not enough. You have to go back and raise income taxes on the middle class, too. Oh, wait, that will be a drag on the economy and consumer spending. And in any event it will not be enough. The only real way to pay for those benefits will be a value-added tax, or VAT. And while it could be introduced gradually, let there be no mistake that it will be a drag on economic growth. Government spending does not have a multiplier effect on the economy. It is at best neutral. What creates growth is private investment, increases in productivity, and increases in population. That's it. Tax increases have a negative multiplier. A significant VAT along with our current income taxes will give us an economy that looks more like the slow-growth, high-unemployment world of Europe. Can we figure out how to deal with that? Sure. But it is not growth-neutral. Republicans in 2013 will be like the dog that caught the car. What do you do with it? The last time they (embarrassingly, we) really screwed it up. The defining political question of this decade will not be Iraq or Afghanistan, or the environment or any of a host of other problems. The single most important question will be what do you do with Medicare? Cut it or fund it? Reform it for sure, but reform is not enough to pay for the cost increases that will come from an increasingly aging Boomer generation. There is no free lunch. At some point, Republicans cannot run on "no cuts in Medicare" and "no new taxes" and be honest. At least not this decade. Maybe when we have cured cancer and Alzheimer's and heart disease and the common cold at some future point, medical costs will go down, but in the meantime we have to deal with reality. You may be able to fool the voters, but you will not be able to fool the bond market. Not dealing with reality will create a very vicious response. Ask Greece. And that is the national conversation we must have with ourselves. There is a cost to government. There is a cost to extended Medicare benefits. (I am blithely assuming we deal with all the "easy" stuff like Social Security, and make real cuts in other areas.) Enough on medical issues. Let’s jump into the rest of the letter.

I am in London finishing my new book, The End Game, which will be out after the first of the year, as soon as Wiley can make it happen. Working with my co-author, Jonathan Tepper, we are making good progress. We intend to quit (a book like this is never finished) tomorrow afternoon. I am going to beg off from personally writing a letter this week, but will give you something even better. Dr. Lacy Hunt offers us a few cogent thoughts on the unemployment numbers. The headline establishment survey came in much better than expected, but the household survey was much weaker. In addition, Dr. John Hussman wrote a piece last week that I thought was one of his best, on liquidity traps and quantitative easing, and that’s included here, too. We are embarking on a course through uncharted waters. No one (including the Fed) has any idea what the unintended consequences will be. I remarked a few weeks ago that the Fed is throwing an inflation party and not sure whether anyone will come. Last night at dinner, Albert Edwards of Societe Generale noted that not only do they not know whether anyone will come, they do not know what they will do if they do come, how much they will drink, or when they will leave. My quick takeaway is the $600 billion is not all that much, and the buying is concentrated in the middle of the curve, where it is likely to do the least in terms of lowering rates (they are already low!), so also likely to do the least damage. Mohammed El-Erian thinks that if nothing happens the Fed will be forced to continue, which is a dangerous thing. I wonder whether they might just shrug their shoulders and say, “We tried, and now it is up to the fiscal side of the equation.” We shall see. It will be important to listen to the speeches of the Fed governors to get some idea. Before we jump in, let me give you a few thoughts I am picking up in Europe. The yield spreads on Irish and Spanish bonds are blowing out even as we speak, as well as those on the rest of the periphery. While all eyes are on the Fed, the real action may be in Europe. We will visit that thought in the near future. Now, first to Lacy.