John Mauldin's Outside the Box : David Galland

Ben Graham’s Curse on Gold

John Mauldin — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 06:48:00 GMT

This week we have a shorter Outside the Box, from my friend David Galland at Casey Research, with an interesting insight into why gold can be considered as a poor investment by some rather influential investors (like Warren Buffett) while others may see it as the core of a diversified portfolio. As usual when I use someone's material for an OTB, I include a link at the end, if you want to look deeper. The rather large team at Casey Research specializes in gold, natural resources, and energy-related investments, for those with such an investing bent.

As a quick note, the feedback on this weekend's letter on taxes has been substantial, and a great deal of it is quite good and worth thinking about. Many bring up real problems with the position I took in my letter, and I may surprise you by agreeing with some of them. My intention right now (barring something happening between now and Friday night) is to take some of the better statements and questions, and answer them. I am not married to any specific plan. I just want to solve the problem and am open to anything that is politically feasible and makes sense, as long as we solve the basic problem of the deficit. I think it will make for a very interesting letter. I do read your feedback, by the way. So if you wanted to respond and wondered if I might actually read it, the answer is yes I do, and this week will answer as many as I can.

And to answer a question I get a lot, I buy a little physical gold every month. I don't even look at the price. The check is written the same day each month, for the same amount. I take delivery. I hope the price of gold goes down so I can get more gold per dollar. I also hope it ends up being worthless, as that will mean everything else has worked out just fine. But my gold is there just in case my crazy gold bug friends are right and we can't actually trust the government to find a reasonable solution to our dilemma. And maybe because deep down I really don't trust the (insert your favorite expletive). Just a little insurance, you understand.

So, until we connect this weekend, have a great week!

Your I am not a gold bug analyst,

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

Ben Graham’s Curse on Gold

By David Galland, Casey Research

It seems that the mainstream investment community only takes a break from ignoring gold to berate it: one of gold's most outspoken critics, uber-investor Warren Buffett, did so recently in his latest shareholder letter. The indictments were familiar; gold is an inanimate object "incapable of producing anything," so any investor holding it instead of stocks is acting out of irrational fear.

How can it be that Buffett, perhaps the most successful (and definitely the most well-known) investor of our time, believes that gold has no place in an intelligently allocated investment portfolio?

Perhaps it has something to do with his mentor, Benjamin Graham.

Graham, author of Security Analysis (1934) and The Intelligent Investor (1949), is correctly respected as one of history's most knowledgeable investors. Over a career spanning 1915 to 1956, he refined his investment theories, in time becoming known as the father of value investing. Much of modern portfolio theory is based upon Graham's work.

According to Graham, while no one can tell the future, there are periods when the valuations of stocks and bonds would deviate from fair value by becoming excessively over- or undervalued. To enhance returns and reduce risk, investors should alter their portfolio allocations accordingly. A quick look at a long-term chart supports Graham's theory clearly shows periods when one asset class offered a better value than the other:

But what of the periods when both stocks and bonds stagnated or fell together? For much of the 1970s and again from 2001 through today, any portfolio allocated solely between stocks and bonds would have at best treaded water and at worst drowned in a sea of stagflation. To earn any real return, an investor would have needed to seek alternatives.

It's clear from this next chart that gold was exactly that alternative, a powerful counter-trend investment for periods when both stocks and bonds were overvalued. Yet gold is conspicuously absent from Graham's allocation model.

But this missing asset class is entirely understandable: for most of Graham's adult life and the most important years of his career, ownership of more than a small amount of gold was outlawed. Banned for private ownership by FDR in 1933, it wasn't re-legalized until late 1974. Graham passed away in 1976; he thus never lived through a period in which gold was unmistakably a better investment than either stocks or bonds.

All of which makes us wonder: if Graham had lived to witness the two great bull markets in precious metals during the last 40 years, would he have updated his allocation models to include gold?

We can never know.

We can know, however, that given Graham's outsized influence on investment theory, there is little question that his lack of experience with gold, and therefore its absence from his observations, has had a profound effect on how most investment professionals view the yellow metal. This, in our opinion, goes a long way toward explaining the persistently low esteem in which gold is held by the mainstream investment community. And, as a consequence, its widespread failure to even be considered as an asset class.

A couple of takeaways: first, perhaps now you can stop wondering why your broker, the talking heads in the financial media, and Warren Buffett continue to misunderstand gold as a portfolio holding. More importantly, however, is that in order to have sustained, long-term investment success, one must accept that an intelligent portfolio allocation needs to include not two but three broad categories of investment – stocks, bonds and gold, with the amounts allocated to each guided by relative valuation.

[JFM here: I would suggest additional broad categories of investments depending on your personal situation. Alternative investments like commodity trading funds. Low leveraged income oriented real estate consistent with your ability to handle the ups and down of the rental/leasing market and shorter term carry costs. I for one am not psychology capable of dealing with renters, of whom I am one. I want service and you to pay for major maintenance, and the ability to move at the end of my lease. My choice, not dependent upon your cash needs. But I know of plenty of people who can do that and have amassed considerable portfolios over time. Perhaps your own small business that has the potential to grow. Investments outside of your country of residence. Etc.]

Investors who understand this tenet have an almost unfair advantage over other investors as it allows them to get positioned in gold ahead of the crowd and enjoy the bulk of the ride, while others sit on their hands.

So when you hear commentators ridiculing gold as a barbarous relic, lamenting that they cannot eat it or smugly asserting that it produces nothing, rest contently in knowing that they're operating with a severe handicap in their own portfolio. Meanwhile, we'll prosper, armed with the understanding that gold fulfills a very important and specific purpose in a portfolio, namely as real money that protects net worth during periods marked by excessive government debt and currency debasement such as we are currently experiencing.

Given the powerful influence of Ben Graham and his disciples, his curse on gold will not go quietly into the night. But it should.

David Galland is managing director of Casey Research, which provides independent investment analysis on a subscription basis to a global network of over 180,000 self-directed investors and money managers. Recognizing the emerging bull market in gold early on, in the late 1990s, Casey Research formed a metals and mining division that has grown into a leading provider of actionable gold and resource intelligence. For investors looking to become familiar with the asset category, Casey Research offers a monthly newsletter, BIG GOLD (try it risk-free for 90 days), focusing on undervalued opportunities in mid- to large-cap producers, as well as best practices in buying, holding and selling precious metals. Learn now why it's more important than ever to invest in gold and gold-related equities.

Is the US Monetary System on the Verge of Collapse?

John Mauldin — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 06:04:00 GMT

This week we take in a piece that is somewhat outside my own box. There are a number of people who feel strongly that the US (and world governments in general) cannot pull out of the downward spiral they are in, that monetary policy is fixed on printing ever more money, and that the problems of fiat currencies are now coming to the fore.

I was interviewed last week by David Galland and Doug Casey of Casey Research. Those of you familiar with them know they (and especially Doug) have a strong libertarian bent and a distrust of government. Not all that unusual, of course, except that they work at finding ways to invest based on their philosophy. That has meant a lot of gold and natural resources, plus new tech, which has worked at rather well overall.

In the interview, I was the “optimist.” By that I mean I was the guy who thinks the US government will do what is necessary to bring down the deficit beginning in 2013. David pointedly asked, “So you mean your ‘optimism’ is based on your faith that the US political leaders will do the right thing?” And the blunt answer is, “Yes, because not doing it would be a disaster, and I think, based on conversations with some of them, that they actually get that.”

Which is the case I outlined in my book, Endgame.But if I am wrong and we do not deal with the deficit in a controlled manner, then all bets are off. Sadly, the guys at Casey would be right. So, today’s Outside the Box is an op-ed from David Galland.

If you like it you can click on the link at the end and, for the exorbitant price of your email address, you can see the entire webinar (and my part in it), or sign up now at http://www.americandebtcrisis.com?ppref=JMD420ED0911A.

I think this week we’re going to be focused on Europe. I am getting ready for my trip there at the end of next week, so I am reading more about the situation there to prepare myself. But right now let’s focus on the US.

Your wondering where the time goes analyst,

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

Is the US Monetary System on the Verge of Collapse?

By David Galland of Casey Research

Tune into CNBC or click onto any of the dozens of mainstream financial news sites, and you’ll find an endless array of opinions on the latest wiggle in equity, bond and commodities markets. As often as not, you'll find those opinions nestled side by side with authoritative analysis on the outlook for the economy, complete with the author’s carefully studied judgment on the best way forward.

Lost in all the noise, however, is any recognition that the US monetary system – and by extension, that of much of the developed world – may very well be on the verge of collapse. Falling back on metaphor, while the world’s many financial experts and economists sit around arguing about the direction of the ship of state, most are missing the point that the ship has already hit an iceberg and is taking on water fast.

Yet if you were to raise your hand to ask 99% of the financial intelligentsia whether we might be on the verge of a failure of the dollar-based world monetary system, the response would be thinly veiled derision. Because, as we all know, such a thing is unimaginable!

Think again.

Monetary Madness

Honestly describing the current monetary system of the United States in just a few words, you could do far worse than stating that it is“money from nothing, cash ex nihilo.”

That’s because for the last 40 years – since Nixon canceled the dollar’s gold convertibility in 1971 – the global monetary system has been based on nothing more tangible than politicians' promises not to print too much.

Unconstrained, the politicians used the gift of being able to create money out of nothing to launch a parade of politically popular programs, each employing fresh brigades of bureaucrats, with no regard to affordability.

Such programs invariably surged during political campaigns and on downward slopes in the business cycle when politicians hearing the cries of the constituency to “do something” tossed any concern about balancing budgets out the window of expediency. After all, the power to print up the funds for debt service whenever needed makes moot any concern over deficit spending.

Former VP Cheney, who fashions himself a fiscal conservative, let the mask drop when, in 2002, he stated that “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.”

Those words were echoed just a few weeks ago, when both former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and Obama economic advisor Larry Summers, in separate interviews, said almost the same, paraphrased as, “There is no chance of the US defaulting on its bonds, not when our government can borrow dollars and print new dollars to meet any future obligations.”

Of course, Greenspan and Summers were referring to an overt default – of just not paying – and not to a covert default engineered by inflation. Unfortunately, like virtually all of the power elite, both miss the point that the mountain of debt that has been heaped up since 1971 is fast reaching the point of collapsing like a too-big tailings pile and taking the monetary system down with it.

Importantly, the debt shown in this chart whistles past the government's unfunded liabilities, in particular for the Social Security and Medicare systems. Adding those would more than triple the US government’s acknowledged obligations – to over $60 trillion.

Given the role the US dollar plays as the world’s de facto reserve currency – with all major commodities priced in dollars, and dollars forming the bulk of reserves held by foreign central banks –the dismal shape of the US monetary system spells trouble for the global monetary system.

Making matters worse, following the lead of the United States, governments around the world long ago adopted similar fiat monetary systems. You can see the deficit contagion in this next chart. It is worth noting that the dire condition of the United States now leaves it in the same muddy wallow as Europe’s desperate PIIGS.

In a recent article in The Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard referenced a paper out of the BIS that paints the picture using appropriately stark terms.

Stephen Cecchetti and his team at the Bank for International Settlements have written the definitive paper rebutting the pied pipers of ever-escalating credit.

“The debt problems facing advanced economies are even worse than we thought.”

The basic facts are that combined debt in the rich club has risen from 165pc of GDP thirty years ago to 310pc today, led by Japan at 456pc and Portugal at 363pc.

“Debt is rising to points that are above anything we have seen, except during major wars. Public debt ratios are currently on an explosive path in a number of countries. These countries will need to implement drastic policy changes. Stabilization might not be enough.”

Viewing the situation from another perspective, we turn to the work of Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff, who studied the factors contributing to 29 past sovereign defaults. They found that default or debt restructuring occurred, on average, when external debt reached 73% of gross national product (GNP) and 239% of exports. Using the Reinhart/Rogoff findings, Casey Research Chief Economist Bud Conrad prepared the following chart showing that the US government is already far along on the path to bankruptcy.

It’s hard to argue against the contention that the situation is, to be polite, precarious. Given that the obligations of the US government, as well as most of the world’s other large economies, are now impossible to repay and that their reserves are just IOUs backed by nothing, the stage is set for a highly disruptive but entirely necessary do-over of the fiat monetary system.

“Preposterous!” say the lords of finance and masters of all.

Is it?

Of course, these very same mavens completely missed the looming housing crash and the depth and duration of the subsequent crisis – a crisis that is still far from over. In other words, listen to them at your peril, because in our view it’s essential in calibrating your financial affairs to understand that, if history is any guide, we are now well down the road to a collapse in the monetary system.

In fact, over its relatively short history, the US monetary system has come unglued time and time again thanks to politically expedient attempts to interfere with the workings of a free market in order to reward constituents or kick the can on the economic problems of the day down the road.

Thus it is our contention that while the mainstream media focus on the daily gyrations of equity markets or the futile political charade that is Washington, they overlook powerful tectonic rumblings indicating the world’s prevailing monetary system is about to fracture.

A Brief Timeline of US Monetary System Failures

Here’s a brief history of past disruptions here in the United States. Importantly, with the US dollar now the de facto reserve currency of the world, this time around it’s global.

1861 –When the Civil War begins, the dollar is convertible into gold and silver.

1862 –Congress passes the Legal Tender Act and authorizes the issuance of non-redeemable "Greenback" currency. Convertibility into gold and silver is suspended for all US currency.

1863 –National Banking Act authorizes the chartering of banks by the federal government.

1865 – A 10% tax is levied on the issuance of bank notes by state-chartered banks, effectively ending that practice.

1879 –The US Treasury resumes redeeming dollars for gold and silver.

1900 – Passage of the Gold Standard Act, adopting the gold standard by the United States and demonetizing silver.

Specifically, the act provided for "...the dollar consisting of twenty-five and eight-tenths grains (1.67 g) of gold nine-tenths fine, as established by section thirty-five hundred and eleven of the Revised Statutes of the United States, shall be the standard unit of value, and all forms of money issued or coined by the United States shall be maintained at a parity of value with this standard..."

But 33 years later, to gain the power to inflate the currency and collect the profit from doing so…

1933 – By executive order, Franklin Roosevelt prohibits the private ownership of gold. Congress passes the Gold Reserve Act, which enacts Roosevelt's executive order, abrogates all gold clauses in all contracts public or private, past or future (which cancels the convertibility of Federal Reserve notes into gold), though it confirms the convertibility of US Treasury notes held by foreigners into gold. Eleven years later, the US government takes its show on the road…

1944 – Bretton Woods system adopted with signature countries agreeing to tie the exchange rates of their currencies to the US dollar, which itself is linked to a fixed price of gold. Foreign trading partners retained the right to swap dollars for gold, imposing a de facto restraint on printing more dollars. For all intents and purposes, the US dollar becomes the world’s reserve currency. But 27 years later…

1971 – Nixon abruptly closes the “gold window,” unilaterally reneging on the Treasury's promise to allow foreign governments to redeem dollars for gold. Bretton Woods collapses. With no remaining tie to a tangible, the dollar is reduced to a paper token. The transition to a global fiat monetary system is complete.

Until 40 years go by and the inevitable consequences of giving politicians free rein over money creation become untenable…

Present day – Sovereign debt crisis. Desperate, debt-laden governments around the globe – the bulk of their reserves composed of fiat US dollars and euros at risk of going up in smoke – turn to the only thing they know, printing more money and issuing yet more debt. The global monetary system cracks and heads toward failure with no workable alternative on the horizon.

Governments, corporations and investors alike are caught unprepared in the downward spiral of failing fiat currencies and are wiped out by a combination of frantic currency debasements, higher taxation, exchange controls and worse. Social unrest spreads, with the public paradoxically demanding that governments do more, not less.

That’s because all the world’s major currencies are at risk, simultaneously, as the issuers engage in a dangerous race to the bottom. As the monetary system moves inexorably toward terminal debasement and collapse, the results will be catastrophic for the unprepared.

Importantly, while the list of historical attempts to re-jigger the US monetary system have, to this point, more or less succeeded in kicking the can a bit further down the road, the sheer scale of today’s government obligations has driven us into a box canyon, with no way out. As the government’s debt and spending obligations are mathematically impossible to resolve, it is now a certainty that a lot of people are going to wake up one morning to the reality that they are a lot poorer than they thought.

Fortunately for those now paying attention, the collapse of a monetary system doesn't happen in a flash. It is a progression, like the spiral of water down a drain. Thus, while no one can predict exactly when the downward spiral will accelerate out of control, there is still time to prepare.

Dark though the lens may be, this is the lens through which we here at Casey Research view all our investments. Simply, being right or wrong about your investment decisions in the years just ahead will be insignificant if the currencies underpinning those investments shrivel to just a fraction of their current values.

The dismal state of the US economy and out-of-control government spending affects every American’s life and wealth. In the free online video event, The American Debt Crisis– How Big? How Bad? How to Protect Yourself, held on September 14, 2011, a Casey Research team of Doug Casey, Bud Conrad, Olivier Garret, Terry Coxon and David Galland will be joined by guests John Mauldin, Mike Maloney and Lew Rockwell to discuss the potential for a breakdown in the monetary system, and specific ways to protect and build your assets. Register for this free event today at www.americandebtcrisis.com?ppref=JMD420ED0911A

The End of QE2: Major Policy Shift Ahead

John Mauldin — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 22:42:00 GMT

This week’s Outside the Box is from my friend David Galland, an interview he did for The Casey Report, and it represents a philosophical train of thought more in line with Austrian economics and libertarianism than my own. But if we only read what we already think, then how do we learn? It is only when your ideas are challenged and you must determine why the other guys are wrong and you are right, that you can either become more firm in your beliefs, or change. And much of what David says in this interview resonates. (I wrote about the end of QE2 a few weeks ago.)

The guys at Casey are natural resources, commodities, and precious metals investors. Yet David argues that cash might be the wise thing now, after pounding the table for years on gold. He believes that the end of QE2 will be more important and dramatic than most think. That it is coming to an end I have no doubt, so it is important to think about what the effects, if any, will be. There are those who argue that we can live without it now. I argued (and still do) that we should have never had it. The unintended consequences are the ones I worry about. We just don’t know. It was a crazy experiment, with no understanding of what would really happen. But hoping for the best is not a strategy, so let’s think about it. David provides us with some different ways to look at the process.

You can subscribe to The Casey Report at a 20% discount for my readers, right here.

And for those who want to read more, you can get a free subscription to Conversations with Casey, which is a weekly e-letter delivered directly to your inbox every Wednesday. Contrarian investor and financial bestselling author Doug Casey talks about the economy, the markets, politics, society, and anything else that matters in life… a fireworks of informative, controversial, and entertaining viewpoints from one of the most original free-market thinkers of our time. Occasionally CWC will also feature interviews with Casey editors or “outside experts” on current market moves or important economic or political events. If you don’t like libertarian thought, be warned. You can subscribe here.

Last, a housekeeping item. I “fat-fingered” my inbox and lost about a hundred emails from the last three months or so, which I planned to get around to, but now they are buried in about 25,000 deleted files. (It’s what happens when you don’t touch-type and have to look at the keyboard. Yes, I know…) One way to clean out your inbox I guess, but if I owe you something, you might want to drop me a note again.

Your already buried with 75 new emails in a few hours analyst,

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

The Casey Report's David Galland: The End of QE2: Major Policy Shift Ahead

(Interviewed by Louis James, Editor, International Speculator)

Editor’s Note: David Galland, Casey Research partner and managing editor of The Casey Report, sees a major shift in Federal Reserve policy ahead and has advice on how to invest accordingly. Time is short, so we’ve asked David to share his thoughts with us.

L: David, in recent editorials you’ve warned of what could be an important shift in Fed policy – can you fill us in?

David: Sure. The purpose of The Casey Report is to keep subscribers well positioned in powerful, long-term trends – the kind of trend that will keep giving and giving. The trend in precious metals – gold and silver – which we’ve been heavily recommending for ten years is a good example. The overarching goal of The Casey Report is first and foremost to identify those critical larger trends and then closely monitor them until they play out – which is another way of saying that we aren’t big about market timing or jumping in and out of trades. I mention this to set the context for the coming shift in Fed policy.

L: And that context is?

David: That the shift, and it is imminent, will not change the larger trend, but it has the potential to be quite disruptive over the short term.

L: Explain.

David: In terms of the larger trends, the fundamentals that have caused so much pain and economic woe over the last ten years or so remain intact. If anything, they’ve gotten worse. We’ve gotten currency debasement, not just in the U.S., but especially in the U.S. dollar, which is not just any currency, but the world’s reserve currency.

We’ve got a truly mind-boggling expansion of the reach of government into all aspects of society and the economy, with all that that implies in terms of regulation, taxation, controls over investments and finance, impact on personal liberty, and so forth. By recognizing this destructive trend for what it is, investors can position themselves to avoid the worst, and to profit by betting on things like the continuing debasement of the dollar.

So that’s the big picture.

There is growing evidence that in the next month or two, we will head into a very dangerous period. The Fed has been extremely supportive of the U.S. government’s insane spending, polluting its own balance sheet by buying up toxic loans by the hundreds of billions and by pumping enormous quantities of cash into the money supply.

You don’t have to look very hard to understand why we have seen some small recovery in the economy, much of which has been driven by the financial sector that has been the recipient of so much largess – it was bought and paid for by the government, working hand in glove with the Fed.

But there is about to be a fundamental change in this arrangement. It appears that the Fed has decided that it’s time to take a step back from its monetization – or quantitative easing (QE), as they now term it – in the hopes that the market will step in to fill the large gap it will leave.

They can’t know how that’s going to work out, but if they don’t stop pumping money into the economy, they never will know if the quantitative easing has worked.

Based on a lot of statements from a number of the voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee, the change just ahead is that they are serious about stopping QE in June.

As they won’t wait until the last minute to confirm the end of their Treasury buying, I would expect their intentions to be made clear following their end-of-April meeting, the full minutes of which should be released in early May.

L: To be clear, do you mean no QE3, or that they cancel the portion of QE2 they haven’t spent yet?

David: They may leave themselves a bit of wiggle room by holding back some of the funds slated to be spent as part of QE2, in the hopes of demonstrating a high level of confidence in their decision to stop the monetization.

That would also give them a bit of powder to use should the need suddenly arise, without exceeding the mandate of QE2. The important point is that I am increasingly sure they won’t just roll out QE3, and that will have consequences.

L: Are you saying, no QE3 at all?

David: No. I think there will be a QE3, but it won’t materialize until after a relatively lengthy period during which the Fed stands aside in order to give the market the opportunity to adapt and adjust to their exit from the Treasury auctions. In other words, once they stop, I wouldn’t anticipate them jumping right back in at the first sign of trouble – say, if the stock market crashes.

In time, however, as the ponderous problems weighing on the economy come back to the fore and return the economy to its knees, the Fed will be forced to reinstitute the monetization, though they will likely try to come up with a moniker other than quantitative easing to describe it.

L: You’re as cheerful as Doug. Why are you so sure there will be a QE3?

David: Because the problems that made the economy stumble in 2008 have not been solved. As I said before, most have gotten worse. Have the impossible levels of sovereign debt and trillions in unresolved bad mortgages embedded in the balance sheets of Fannie, Freddie, the Zombie Banks and even the Fed been resolved? Hardly.

Is there any real sign coming out of Washington that the deficits will be substantively tackled? You don’t have to be as active a skeptic as I to understand that the deepest spending cuts being discussed don’t even scratch the surface of the $1.5 to $2 trillion deficit. As for the $60 trillion or so in debt and unfunded obligations, forget about it.

The U.S. government and the governments of most large nation-states are fundamentally bankrupt. In time, they will have to default on their obligations. While there will be some overt defaults, I expect most of them to follow the path of least resistance, which is to try to inflate the problem away. And that means QE3.

For now, however, the Fed will claim victory over the economic crisis and follow suit with many other central banks – switching to a less accommodative monetary policy.

L: They’ve done their job and now it’s time for back-slapping and cigars.

David: Yes.

L: Consequences?

David: If you look at a chart of the dollar, you’ll see that it has been bumping along the bottom recently. Logically, if the Fed stops monetizing the Treasury’s spending, we should see a rebound in the dollar. The big traders – the big institutional money out there – are going to use the change in Fed policy as a clear signal that it’s safe to get back in the U.S. dollar.

It would be wrong to underestimate the amount of money that needs to find a home, and the liquidity advantages offered by the U.S. Treasury market. If the river of money redirects into Treasuries, it could – at least for a time – offset the Fed’s exit and push the dollar up, maybe significantly so. And if the dollar comes roaring back, commodities, including gold and silver, would likely take a fairly hard hit.

Again, this is a short-term view. The longer-term trend for the precious metals is absolutely intact, because the fundamentals are entrenched – namely that the sovereign debt and spending is out of control, and politically uncontrollable.

L: Let’s talk about that for a moment. These people – the big money – are financial types. Bankers. They know about all the bad debt they have, even if the ever-so-convenient new reporting rules allow them to keep some of their problems off the books. They must know that a so-called jobless recovery is not a recovery.

They are well aware of all sorts of dirt they don’t discuss in public – how could they be stupid enough to let the Fed convince them the economy is healthy when their own information tells them it isn’t?

David: First off, “they” are not one guy. They are a lot of people with a lot of different perspectives and a lot of different objectives. Right now, for example, people look at the lack of yields in bonds and the potential for inflation in bonds, so they’ve been easing back on bonds and getting into equities more, in the hope of generating some kind of return.

If you’re a fund manager or a large institutional trader, you’re not paid to sit on your hands. You’ve got to “do something,” even though there are times – and I think this is one of those times – when doing nothing is exactly the right thing to do. So, I wouldn’t say they are being stupid–

L: Doug would: “An unwitting tendency toward self-destruction.”

David: Yes, he would – but these guys are not stupid; it's rather that they’ve made their own calculations and concluded that U.S. equities are still safe – a position that is supported by the very low levels of volatility. Even the troubled financials have seen strong gains of late, even though nothing has been fixed. Of course, if you look under the hood, you find they’ve benefited substantially from the cheap money and rigged deals the government has orchestrated to bail them out.

While no one can say when the shift out of equities and back into Treasuries and lower-risk assets will begin, in my view the Fed’s exit from quantitative easing sets the stage for that to happen. After that, it will just be a matter of time before traders are going to wake up and decide equities are not safe, and they’ll start leaving in droves.

Remember, however, that the stock market and the economy are by nature very complex systems. There are so many variables, you just can’t know which variable is going to rule the day at any given time. But given the importance of the Fed’s intervention and the government spending that has helped engender, its policy shift is certainly a variable to keep an eye on.

L: I find the capacity of bankrupt financial companies to defy gravity truly amazing. Disbelief sustained for such lengths of time makes me dizzy.

David: You’re not alone. The vast ocean of bad debt out there is just as big as ever. Everything I hear from people in the financial industry is that the banks’ debt profiles are not getting any better. People are not getting on top of their debts. They are not paying down their mortgages. Default rates are still astronomical…

L: How could it be otherwise? Unemployment is still high.

David: Unemployment is still stubbornly very high, though if you buy into the government’s figures, it is moving steadily in the right direction. Of course, the government has no reservations about jiggering the data to suit itself. That makes it important – if you want to get a more realistic picture – to look at the topic from different angles.

One telling statistic is unemployment as a percentage of the employable population, which screens out many of the government’s self-serving adjustments to its official figures. Looked at that way, you can see that unemployment is continuing to rise, even though the government is reporting that it’s falling markedly.

L: No! You can’t be suggesting good old Uncle Sam would lie to us…

David: You could say we have another deficit, one in government accountability. Clearly, it’s very politically important that unemployment be perceived as declining, therefore, voilà, it is.

L: “Alas, Bartleby.” Okay, let’s back up a bit to the debasement of the dollar. You mentioned that as a given, almost in passing, but there are a lot of people who don’t see it. Inflation is low, Uncle Sam assures us, so the dollar has not been debased. Q.E.D.

David: Well, anyone who can see beyond the tip of their nose can see that inflation is going up. Just pull up a chart of the CRB Index for commodities – the real stuff required for life – and one can see it has been on a steep upwards trajectory. Inflation is very much here and alive.

L: John Williams’ Shadow Stats chart shows inflation at nearly 10%, while the Bureau of Labor Statistics is reporting 2.1%.

But even Williams’ statistics don’t report real inflation; they just report what it would be if the government reported inflation the way it used to, before it started “improving” its reporting in the 1980s. It’s still an incomplete view, because the government’s original reporting was flawed to begin with.

David: Right. And one of those flaws is the way they weigh housing. It plays a big, big role in CPI, and in 2008 housing was dealt, if not a death blow, at least a blow that put it in the hospital. And it will be there for a very long time, because government policies encouraged bad decisions on the part of both lenders and borrowers. This has left trillions of dollars of bad debt hanging out there.

The retracement of housing prices, as a component of official CPI, pulls the official inflation figures down, even though those figures don’t sync up with the actual cost of living. Of course, a low CPI gives the government cover for continuing to monetize its debt.

Inflation problem? What inflation problem?

L: The net of this for inflation is that the crushing of the housing sector makes the CPI drop, making it look like life is getting cheaper, whereas the reality is that people’s hard-earned wealth put into real property has taken a beating at the same time as the things they consume on a daily basis cost more. Life has gotten a lot more expensive even as savings have been wiped out. Not good.

David: Right. And the government is trying to get people to ignore the signs of inflation, saying everything is all right. But recently, several Fed governors have been saying outright that there is a problem and that they need to cool off the money creation and start dealing with inflation. This is why I think there isn’t going to be an immediate QE3.

L: So, what happens next?

David: Consider Japan as an example of an advanced economy that has been struggling to deal with the aftereffects of a collapsed bubble in real estate and stocks for many years – well before the recent earthquake.

If you look at what happened when they did their equivalent of QE after the initial stock market crash, the spending stimulated a fairly significant recovery in Japanese equities, taking the market back up about halfway to the bubble’s top; but the rally didn’t last.

Once the Japanese government put an end to its quantitative easing, the Nikkei plummeted. The government resisted reinstating quantitative easing for two years before throwing in the towel and once again cranking up the money engines in an attempt to break the economy out of the doldrums.

The long-term result is a Nikkei still well below the crash level (even before the earthquake), and all the spending has caused Japanese government debt to rise to 200% of GDP. While no two situations are identical, I think the U.S. is following a very similar script.

L: If the Fed decided to hold off on QE3, do you think it could take as long as two years for them to feel forced back to it, forced to do something?

David: It could. It would depend on how sharp the downtick is. There are so many factors at work here that it’s really unknowable at this point. Nearer-term, all the signals are that the Fed will hold off on QE3 at their next meeting. And, as I have tried to make clear, that will have consequences – for equities, for the dollar, for the commodities sector.

L: Can you give those readers not familiar with The Casey Report some reason to believe your crystal-ball gazing? What’s your track record with these sorts of predictions?

David: Well before the current financial storm hit, we were forecasting that the Fed would begin monetizing the government’s debt, and we were writing about a credit crisis leading to a currency crisis, which is exactly what’s happened. We absolutely nailed it, and our subscribers made a lot of money on some of our recommendations – and safeguarded a lot of their wealth with others.

L: That’s true, though back then, before The Casey Report separated out the big-picture writing from the International Speculator our portfolio did take a temporary beating – along with everything else at the end of 2008.

David: Yes, but everything we said about the debasement of the dollar and its consequences for gold was borne out. Further, we made a bold move, counseling people to go a third in gold and gold-related assets, a third in cash, and a third in other assets that could do well in an economic crisis. Subscribers who actually followed this allocation suffered very little in 2008.

L: Isn’t it a bit contradictory to recommend that people keep 33% of their wealth in cash, if you think the dollar is being destroyed?

David: The dollar is being destroyed, as one can see by how much gold, oil, wheat, cotton or any other number of things one can buy with it. However, while it’s not dropping day to day and the markets remain extremely volatile, cash is not a bad thing to hold – especially in relatively safer currencies, like the Canadian dollar and the Norwegian krone.

So, again, the big trends remain intact. Our question now is what’s going to happen next, in the short term. And in that context, the Fed’s switch in policy is a big deal. When you go from the Fed showing up every week and buying Treasuries, to the Fed stepping back and saying “No more,” it can send major shock waves through the economy.

L: So, if the Fed does what you think it will, by June, how do readers invest accordingly?

David: [Laughs] This may not be a popular answer, but I think the correct answer is that the best thing you can do in the near term is to increase your cash position. I would be very cautious about moving into any other asset class at this point, including gold.

L: You wound me.

David: I know. Listen, if you own high-quality gold stocks, such as those you recommend in the International Speculator – companies that have the goods and can weather the coming storm – you can certainly just ride right through what’s coming. But if you’re not quite confident enough to avoid panic selling in a correction, or if you have some mutts in your portfolio that haven’t performed and you’re not sure why you own them, I’d get rid of them fairly quickly.

Remember: the time line on the Fed’s decision is quite near-term. That doesn’t necessarily mean there would be an immediate stock market crash, but it certainly would have an effect on the commodities sector.

On the other hand, as I’ve said, markets are complex. Saudi Arabia could go up in flames, sending oil and gold both way up. So I’m not telling anyone to get out of the markets. There’s no way to predict such events – but what we do feel confident about predicting is that the Fed will not roll right into QE3.

L: Agreed. And if you’re wrong, having cash to deploy into new opportunities won’t be a bad thing. Anything else?

David: If you’re of a mind to play in the currency markets, you could take a leverage bet on the dollar rising against competitive currencies. But right now, personally, I’m inclined to do nothing, except maybe to lighten up on some investments and go to cash.

That sets you up for the real play. If I’m right, and commodities – including precious metals – sell off, and mining stocks sell off even more, there will be some fantastic opportunities to take advantage of. The people who are paying attention will be able to clean up.

L: Now you’re singing my song: short-term cash, and get your shopping list ready.

David: That’s the way I see it.

L: Okay then, thanks for your predictions – I look forward to seeing how they bear out.

David: It was fun. We should do this again sometime.

L: I’m sure Doug won’t mind, especially when you get a strong sense of where the markets are going, like this one.

David: Until next time, then.

-----

(Whether the quantitative easing ends or not, one thing is for sure: inflation is baked in the cake. To learn how destructive this insidious force can be to your portfolio and bank account… and what you can do to outrun it, read our free report.)

The Doctor and the Dealman: An Energy Update

John Mauldin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 21:13:46 GMT

It has been a busy day in Rome, doing the Vatican Museum, St. Peter's and the Trevi Fountain. But I have to find time to get you your Outside the Box and have I got a great one for you. David Galland of Casey Research was kind enough to let me use an interview he did with two of his energy research staff normally only available to his subscribers. A big thank you to David.

This is a special treat for Outside the Box readers, as they talk about the future of the energy markets. I have been following their work for some time and I think they are the real deal if you are looking for an energy letter to regularly read. You can subscribe at here.

I am going to sign off as the "kids" are waiting. One quick observation. Stop lights in Rome seem to be more of a suggestion than an actual statement. Oh, but what a city!

Your in the city of restaurants analyst,

John Mauldin, editor
Outside the Box.

The Doctor and the Dealman: An Energy Update

By David Galland

At first glance, no two individuals could seem more different.

The Doctor, middle-aged and balding, could be the very archetype of the college professor. The Dealman is young with a full head of well-styled hair: more than a few people have compared his looks to Elvis in his prime.

The Doctor is quiet and soft-spoken. The Dealman is outspoken and, under the right circumstances, even outrageous.

On further examination, however, you begin to uncover the similarities that make them one of the energy sector's most potent teams, starting with the fact that they each possess an intimidating intelligence.

Case in point, while only 23 years old, the Dealman taught advanced mathematics at the university level.

The Doctor, an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a PhD professor of petroleum and coal geology at the University of British Columbia and the winner of the coveted Thiessen Award, the highest award presented by the International Committee for Coal and Organic Petrology.

They also both share a passion for the energy sector, though as is typical with this atypical team, they approach the sector from two different perspectives.

The Doctor, one of North America's leading experts in "unconventional" oil and gas, loves to analyze every aspect of modern-day hydrocarbon exploration and production.

While fully conversant in the technological and geological facets of the global hunt for energy, in his work as the chief investment officer for Casey Research's Energy division, the Dealman lives to find the next big money-making energy play. Even if it requires working almost around the clock, he is passionate to uncover companies with the magical combination of the right management, the right commodity in the right place and with the right geology. And, most important, the right financial structure at the right price that allows investors to lock in serious upside potential but with very little downside risk.

Individually, the Doctor, Dr. Marc Bustin, and the Dealman, Marin Katusa, are powerful resources when it comes to separating facts from fiction about today's energy scene and where the real opportunities for investors are to be found. But working as a team, they become a force of nature.

With oil gushing into the Gulf, the global economy under pressure as well as the prices of energy and energy stocks, and with the new American Power Act lurking in the background, John Mauldin called to ask if we could provide an update for readers on the always-important energy sector.

And so, with that goal in mind, I arranged to sit the Doctor and the Dealman down for a chat. The highlights of that chat follow.

Q: Let's start by asking your opinion, Dr. Bustin, on the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig off the coast of Louisiana and the impact that could have on oil exploration in the U.S.

Bustin: It's an environmental ecological disaster, and everything else pales besides that fact. That said, I think what we're looking at is a major shutdown in offshore exploration off North America.

In addition to the Obama administration, the Canadian government has also come out and said that there will be no further offshore exploration until we understand what went wrong and there is something in place to better control a similar incident should it happen.

The impact of the disaster is already being felt in that Obama had only recently announced an expansion of offshore drilling, but that's now dead. Likewise, probably for the rest of my life, offshore Western Canada won't go ahead, so it's a huge impact, and of course this is going to affect the mid-term oil price.

Katusa: It is really important to understand that, for companies with existing drilling permits, the costs are going to be significantly higher... in terms of construction and maintenance costs, labor, permits, battling lawsuits filed by environmental groups and others with an interest in the water – the fishing industry, for example. Then there is a big increase in insurance costs, more taxes, and special clean-up funds.

As a result, when you start looking at the bottom line impact on companies you might want to invest in, when it comes to offshore projects, the netbacks are going to decrease significantly, so your profits are going to decrease significantly. Then there's the overhang of the potential for another actual disaster and the clean-up costs.

Ironically, the most recent disaster will cause any new potential offshore permits to come with significant upfront environmental bonds, which will exclude any mid-size to junior exploration company. So, the majors, by accident, have excluded any competition. You got to love that result – the guys who caused the accident will ultimately reap the rewards.

Also, the deep offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico are going to need to find new waters to work in. The Gulf of Mexico makes up roughly 25% of the worlds deep/ultra deep offshore oil sector, and these drillers are going to be under extreme pressure to keep their utilization rates high, with the 6 month moratorium on all offshore drilling in the US. This will result in lower earnings for these drillers and E&P companies, which means lower stock prices. The BP blowout really was a game changer event, and its very important to be aware of the risks in the energy sector right now. The good news is that those risks will soon lead to some great opportunities, several of which we are now evaluating.

Q: So this is clearly going to be a setback to offshore drilling. What are the implications from a supply perspective? Are you guys believers in the whole Peak Oil thing?

Bustin: Fundamentally, I'm a believer in the concept of Peak Oil. Yet, with the new accessibility to reservoirs made possible by technologies that allow us to drill horizontally and release petrocarbons unconventionally through fracking, I am not sure we have actually seen Peak Oil. Ultimately, however, we are burning through an awful lot of what is undeniably a finite resource.

Katusa: David, the problem with the Peak Oil theory is, it doesn't take into account the increase of production and supply and the economic value of the reserve using unconventional technologies, which are always improving. Moving forward, we are long-term bulls on the oil price, but we've been consistent in telling our subscribers to stick to the fundamentals – that the companies they should be investing in are those that are able to produce at the lowest costs. Viewed from another angle, if a company in your portfolio needs $150 oil to make a profit, you should be a seller.

Q: What cutoff price do you think investors should be looking at for a company they want to own?

Katusa: In our in-house calculations, we use US$45 per barrel. If a company cannot produce economically and with a solid netback at $45 oil, they are not a low-cost producer and should be avoided.

Q: For the readers who are not familiar with the term, can you define "netback"?

Katusa: Netback is basically the difference between your production costs and what you sell your oil for at the well head. Let's say the spot oil price you are receiving is $75 and your all-in costs are $40, your netback would be $75 minus $40, for a netback of $35.

Q: On the topic of unconventional production, there's clearly a trend towards viewing the oil sands from an environmental standpoint as being a bad thing. Do you anticipate there being additional taxes levied or even a complete ban on the sale of oil from oil sands?

Katusa: The oil sands have too big of a production profile for them to be banned as a source. Already, one out of every six barrels of oil consumed by a U.S. citizen comes from the Canadian oil sands. We'll almost certainly see increased taxes, however, that assure that oil sands are not going to be our cheap source of oil, though it will continue to be a sure source of oil.

Q: Won't that ratchet overall prices higher?

Bustin: The overarching problem is that the oil sands projects are so capital intensive – we're talking about 60-80 billion dollars already invested, with potentially another 300 billion dollars yet to be invested to maximize the resource. You can't put together projects with a capex of that magnitude unless you have a predictable price of oil.

Katusa: It's worth noting here that the existing production is profitable at a cost of around $40-$45 per barrel. But of course, that doesn't take into account any new taxes.

For the time being, taking into account the netbacks being earned by both conventional and unconventional producers – with even the oil sands operators currently operating at margins of close to 100% -- we see the potential for some downward pressure in the price of oil in the short term. Remember, for years and years, the big oil companies were running at 10-15% margins.

Q: Do you think we'll see a carbon tax – cap-and-trade and all that?

Bustin: Absolutely.

Katusa: Whether you like it or not, it's coming. While we all know it's complete nonsense, if there is one certainty in today's world, it is that the governments are going to tax whatever they can, and most of the people who support the current government in the U.S. believe that a carbon tax is good because they're taxing the bad polluting companies that have billions of dollars in their banks. So it's coming.

Right now the voluntary market for CO2 is trading around $8-10 per ton, but in Europe, which has a mandatory market, the cost is double that. That's a big cost.

Q: Let's talk a bit about natural gas. From the geological perspective and also as an energy investor. Dr. Bustin, what's your outlook for natural gas?

Bustin: In North America, we see natural gas lingering around the $5-or $6 range probably for the rest of the year. There really is a lot of natural gas available. Also keeping a lid on prices is that there are a lot of projects on line that aren't quite economic at current prices. However, as soon as prices start moving up a little, a large amount of gas will become economic and therefore hit the market.

Prices in Europe are starting to decline significantly from a year ago as well, thanks also to increased supplies, so we're pretty soft on natural gas. That doesn't mean you can't make money in natural gas or by investing in natural gas-producing companies – you can, but you have to be very selective and focus on low-cost producers.

Katusa: Moving forward, there are two things that will be very important to the sector. The first is that, thanks to unconventional technology becoming increasingly streamlined and effective, there are thousands of wells that have been drilled, fracked, but not completed. Those wells can come on stream with between 2-10 BCFs per day and are just sitting there. Think of it as a shadow supply of natural gas in the U.S.

The second thing to keep in mind is that the success that companies have had in exploiting the shales has resulted in massive new deposits.

Finally, it's important to understand some of what's going on with the oil-to-gas-equivalent ratio, which has traditionally been around 6:1. Consequently, at current spot prices, many analysts and promoters are saying, "Well, natural gas is cheap relative to the price of oil." Be careful when you hear that.

For instance, a lot of oil companies are purchasing gas companies because lower gas prices have made the companies cheap. The oil companies then look to boost the reserves on their balance sheets by reflecting the gas they acquire as BOEs, or barrels of oil equivalence. They will then actually book it as a barrel of oil to analysts at a ratio that is something like 22:1 today.

Q: What are the implications to us as investors?

Katusa: It all comes down to what a company is actually worth, which will guide you in what you pay for it. If a company says it has a billion barrels of oil equivalent in the ground, it will command a much higher price than if it showed its actual oil reserves and that it also had, say, three TCFs (trillion cubic feet) of gas. A surprising number of companies are doing this, including mid-tiers and majors. Imagine the implication to shareholders if this con is exposed for what it is?

Q: Can these companies actually convert their gas into usable oil?

Katusa: No.

Q: With the oil/gas ratio skewed in favor of gas, what about the market for substituting oil with gas?

Katusa: You have to ask, can we create a market for the natural gas that actually substitutes for oil? Of course, the big one would be having more compressed natural gas stations to encourage car manufacturers to make the switch, and there are a number of companies in North America looking to do just that. The big movers in that initiative are Canadians, but the idea has a lot of potential given the general theme of trying to reduce reliance on oil from foreign sources.

Q: Isn't an increasing amount of base power generation switchable from oil to gas?

Bustin: With a lot of effort. Of course, the big one is the switch from coal to natural gas. Natural gas is much cleaner burning. In Canada, just a couple of weeks ago, legislation was passed calling for no new coal-fired plants. I think after a period of 15 years, they won't allow the existing coal-fired plants to be refurbished and continue to burn coal. So there's going to be a huge shift towards natural gas-fired electrical generation in North America, because of the carbon issues.

Q: I know you guys like coal, which is kind of counterintuitive, seeing how most people view it as dirty and dangerous. What's driving your outlook on coal – again from a fundamental standpoint and also in terms of finding investment opportunities?

Katusa: Start with the big picture. As much as 75% of China's electricity generation currently comes from burning coal. That's not going to change anytime soon. In fact, 2009 was the first year ever that China actually imported coal. Not so long ago, it had been a big exporter. But already half of the coal in the world that is produced is used by China.

On top of that, and this is pretty ironic given the popular view of coal, is that the U.S. is the second largest consumer of coal in the world, after China – with India being a distant third. Everyone is saying coal is dirty, coal is ugly, coal is smelly. It's done. We're going green. Even Obama said so. Yet if you're careful, it's where the profit is to be made. In fact, coal has been the biggest winner of all the energy subsectors over the last 12 months.

Q: How do we invest?

Katusa: In terms of investments, we like those related to met coal, versus thermal. As a reference point, there have been contracts signed in China at $105 per ton of thermal coal, but and as high as $500 per ton of met coal.

That's because on the order of 90% of all steel production is dependent on met coal because of the temperature it produces. In North America, there are serious difficulties bringing on a thermal coal project, starting with environmentalists and government regulators, but also because transportation of the coal is the largest cost of a coal project – and therefore the deciding factor in the economics. Simply, at today's prices, if you don't already have a train running almost right up to your new thermal coal mine, it's almost certainly not going to get off the ground.

So we have decided to stick with met coal for North America. On our North American met coal plays, we have recently recommended two in our alert service. They are doing well, and we expect them to go a lot higher.

Q: You like companies with significant upside as opposed to run-of-the-mill returns. That typically means small-cap companies. Are there smaller coal companies investors can get into, or are these all large companies?

Katusa: The coal companies have huge amounts of cash right now, because they're kind of like the base metal of the energy sector. They're boring, but they make a lot of money.

There are ETFs you can use to play the coal sector, but the reason why I like the juniors is the share price can go up ten times, as was the case recently with Western Canadian Coal. Of course, there are big companies with good coal exposure, like Peabody or Nobel or Teck Cominco. They have great assets, but the bang for your buck is not going to be as high as with a small-cap play.

Q: Let's talk nuclear. There has been a lot of talk about pebble-bed reactors dotting the Chinese landscape, yet here they are scrambling for coal. Whatever happened to the dozens of new nuclear plants that were supposed to be headed for China?

Katusa: Despite popular conceptions, the pebble-bed reactors are actually an old technology, initially developed by the Nazis. The Chinese bought the technology off the Germans.

Pebble-bed reactors were supposed to be the Henry Ford Model T of nuclear reactors. They would actually be built in an assembly line. Imagine it like a LEGO set. As a town grows, you add a module. As the city grows and the energy requirements grow, so does the number of nuclear reactors.

However, the technology is still not ready for prime time. In fact, it's years away. That said, in the not-too-distant future, the demand for power and the need for governments to launch make-work projects will almost certainly kick off a rush to get a piece of the action. Especially in China.

Q: How would you play it as an investor?

Katusa: The best way is through a small-cap uranium company with a substantial economic resource, because these reactors are going to need a lot of feed. The time will come when the spot price of uranium is going to return north of $100 per pound. The last time that happened, a lot of the early investors in the better uranium juniors – most of which are Canadian – made a lot of money.

Q: What's your time line for uranium to push back over $100 per pound?

Katusa: I'd say 3-5 years.

Q: What are the fundamental reasons for this?

Katusa: The HEU Agreement, which involved nuclear warheads being dismantled and the uranium blended down to nuclear fuel has now come to an end and it will be three years before it is renegotiated. The last time it was negotiated, Boris Yeltsin was in power and Russia was on its knees. That's not the situation today. Russia is very powerful and Putin is still running the country behind the scenes. This time around, they're going to negotiate a much different agreement. And don't forget that today, unlike back when the last treaty was negotiated, the China factor is huge.

We would expect the Russians to go to the Chinese first before they renegotiate with the Americans. So the Americans are a victim of their own success by depending on the cheap Russian nuclear fuel. That time is coming to an end in three years, and within five to six years you'll see spot prices very high.

With the world increasingly looking to ramp up nuclear energy production – as it very much is – any of the companies with large reserves and the potential for low-cost production are going to be trading at a nice premium to where they are today.

Q: As an investor, where in the energy sector is your biggest focus right now? Where are the big opportunities in the relative near term?

Katusa: Before you can talk about specific opportunities, it's important to be sure you have the right strategy to bringing those opportunities into your portfolio. These are very fragile markets, and so our strategy has been very conservative for some time now.

For instance, we spend a lot of time identifying great management teams that are personally heavily invested in their own companies – and then wait for them to raise cash through private placements that allow investors to pick up both a share and a warrant on favorable terms. Once the holding period is over, which can be as little as a few months, selling the shares and riding the warrants can be a good move as it gives you most of the upside with none of the downside if the markets tumble.

Likewise, we don't chase stocks but instead decide what we're willing to pay for a stock – which in these volatile times might be 20% below where it currently trades – and then wait patiently for it to come to us. That approach doesn't always work, as sometimes we don't get filled, but we're okay with having a greater-than-normal allocation to cash at this point.

Another technique we use is what we call the Casey Cash Box – which involves running regular screens of a universe of small to mid-sized energy companies, looking for prospective companies selling at discounts to cash and other liquid assets. You might say we look to buy dollars for quarters.

Finally, when we get the desired result from our analysis – i.e., we buy good companies cheap and watch them move higher, we don't hesitate to cash out our initial investments and take a free ride on the balance.

These are dangerous markets, and being cautious while building a diversified portfolio of energy plays makes a lot of sense. At least to us.

Okay, with that foundation, where would I invest today?

For starters, I might try to get ahead of the large sovereign wealth funds. And they are being pressured to invest in green energy. That's one reason we're more bullish than ever on green energy plays with the real potential to be economic.

Q: So which of the green energies are potentially economic?

Katusa: Geothermal and run-of-river are two we particularly like just now.

Q: Geothermal is not a new technology. It's been used in energy production for something like 100 years, right?

Katusa: That's correct.

Q: So why isn't it in wider use? What percentage of the base load in electricity in the U.S. comes from geothermal?

Katusa: Less than 1%.

Bustin: Economic geothermal projects are found in areas where you have very high heat flow or fluids near the surface. Of all the deep dry rock geothermal projects, where the real energy potential exists, none are actually economic. Currently they're still in the experimental stage. At some of the more prospective sites in Australia, they ran into some significant problems, so it's still in the science box.

As a consequence, most of the geothermal projects you see are not where the real future is, which is in the deep dry rock geothermal projects, and those are going to take more time and a lot of money to get right.

Q: Aren't government subsidies that can help the geothermal companies try to reach economic sustainability a big part of the attraction just now? Isn't that also the case with run-of-river?

Katusa: No question, depending on the jurisdiction a company operates in, the subsidies for green energy projects can be very substantial. So much so that it makes it almost impossible for a company to lose money. Which, of course, all but eliminates the risk to shareholders as the company tries to build something that can last.

As for run-of-river, which involves diverting flow from a strongly running river, using it to turn a turbine, then returning it to the main river, there are actually quite a few opportunities. In fact, our latest look at the sector found over 45 small-cap companies. We recommended two, and one of them gave us a double that allowed us to cash out all of our initial investment, giving subscribers a free ride on the rest.

Overall, the prices on these companies have reached the point where we are holding off on any new recommendations in the sector, but we expect the prices will come back to an attractive level in the not-too-distant future. We'll be ready when they do.

Q: Dr. Bustin, we've heard from the Dealman. Now, speaking from the technical perspective, are there any particular energy sectors now attracting your attention?

Bustin: Well, I'm really concerned about the coal sector. We're so dependent globally on coal. If we start slapping some major carbon taxes on coal, it's going to be catastrophic. I'm not quite sure how it's going to work out, because there is no way China and India and a lot of the developing nations, particularly in Southern Africa, which are so dependent on coal, are going to be able to manage. If they have to face these carbon taxes, I'm not sure where the world economy is going to head, because there's no way we can free ourselves from coal.

Q: I've heard the idea to use taxes to level the playing field between the dirty and the clean sources of base power. So coal would be weighed down, if you will, by added taxes to the point where there is no cost advantage to using it over natural gas. Have you heard the same thing?

Katusa: The beauty of coal is, it's base load. It's cheap and it's easy. The problem with solar is nighttime, and the problem with wind is no wind. And even run-of-river, which we like, fluctuates according to the climate, which is why geothermal is our favorite green energy because of its base load potential.

Taken together, these alternative energy sources are okay as secondary sources to meet excess demand, but they're not your go-to sources. What most people don't realize is that much of the power used isn't from people charging their Blackberry or running their computers, or any of that. It's used by big commercial industries, such as manufacturing and mining, for example.

Q: In the past, Dr. Bustin, you've said that is the question is not so much about which energy sources to use, but rather that, in order for the world to maintain even the status quo, the answer will be "All of the above." In order to avoid the economic devastation of runaway energy costs, we're going to need every single source we can get over the next ten years. Fair statement?

Bustin: Yes, it is. Unfortunately, when we look at our gross national product per capita, it's directly proportional to our energy consumption. And, of course, if you look at multiple billions of people who have very low standards of living and if you want to give them a gross national product per capita comparable to that we enjoy in the developed world, you have to expect global energy consumption is going to continue to skyrocket.

As I've tried to indicate, the only way to even come close to meeting that energy demand is with coal. There is just no alternative for the foreseeable future, until we get into bigger reactors or some other interesting usage of nuclear power. Bottom line, we're stuck with fossil fuels, and the fossil fuel that is readily available and most economic is coal.

Q: Are you looking from an investment standpoint at any offshore opportunities to tap into some of that demand for coal coming out of China?

Katusa: We've got one on our radar screen now, but it's premature to mention it here. I've actually visited the site twice and like the story. It's a great project, the management is heavily invested in it themselves, but we haven't recommended it yet because we are waiting for a couple of financings to come free trading, which will result in more stock available – and that will create downward pressure. By being patient, investors should be able to get it at a cheaper price. That theme, of being patient, can't be stressed enough. Especially in markets as volatile as these.

Q. Good advice, and a good place to leave off. Thanks for your time.

David Galland is a partner in Casey Research, LLC., an international firm providing research and investment recommendations to individuals in over 150 countries. Prior to joining Casey Research, he was a founding partner and director of a successful mutual fund group (Blanchard Group of Mutual Funds), and well as a founding partner and executive vice-president for EverBank, one of the biggest recent successes in online financial services.

If you're interested in the staying closely in touch with the ever changing investment opportunities in the energy sector, you'll find no better team than Marin Katusa and Dr. Marc Bustin as your guides. 19 out of the 19 last stocks Marin and his team have recommended have been winners... a 100% hit rate. Learn more about the secrets of his success, and how you can tap into the team's unique brand of analysis.

An Insider's View of the Real Estate Train Wreck

John Mauldin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:02:00 GMT

I have been writing for a very long time about the coming debacle that the commercial real estate problem is going to be. This week's Outside the Box is an interview that my good friend David Galland did with Andy Miller, a man on the inside of the coming commercial real estate crisis. I thought it was very revealing, as there are so many nuances to the problem. For instance, in some cases, if you default and walk away from the loan you may trigger huge taxes as the loan loss to the bank is now considered income to you. Ouch! So many strings to unravel as you figure this one out.

I asked David if I could use this as an Outside the Box, and he agreed. This was from Casey Research, a very good source for non-mainstream investment ideas. You can learn more or subscribe at a discount at here.

I really think you will find this a very easy and informative read. Have a great week.

Your writing from Monaco on my way to Zurich analyst,

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

An Insider's View of the Real Estate Train Wreck

By David Galland, The Casey Report

The first time I spoke with real estate entrepreneur Andy Miller was in late 2007, when I asked him to serve on the faculty of a Casey Research Summit. As John Mauldin, a former faculty member himself, knows, we're very selective with our speakers. And there was no one in the nation I wanted more than Andy to address the critical topic of real estate.

My interest in Andy was due to the fact that he has been singularly successful in pretty much all aspects of the real estate market, including financing and developing large projects – such as shopping centers, apartment communities, office buildings, and warehouses – from one end of the country to the other. His expertise has also allowed him to build an impressive business providing assistance to large financial institutions that need help in dealing with problem commercial real estate loans. As you might suspect, business is booming.

Back in 2007, however, what most intrigued me about Andy was that he had been almost alone among his peer group in foreseeing the coming end of the real estate bubble, and in liquidating essentially all of his considerable portfolio of projects near the top. There are people that think they know what's going on, and those who actually know – Andy very much belongs in the latter category.

In fact, he initially refused to speak at our event, only agreeing very reluctantly after I had hounded him for several months. The reason for his refusal, I later found out, was that he had spoken at several industry events before the real estate collapse and had been all but booed off the stage for his dire outlook.

The happy ending of this story is that Andy's speech at our Summit was a rousing success, and he enjoyed it so much that he has now spoken at several, and has kindly agreed to sit for periodic interviews to keep our readers up to date on the latest developments in this critical sector. So far, Andy's real estate forecasts continue to come true.

As you'll read in the following excerpt from my latest interview with Andy, who now spends considerable time each day helping the nation's biggest banks cope with growing stacks of problem loans, he remains deeply concerned about the outlook for real estate.

David Galland

No one has been more right on the housing market in recent years. So, what's coming next? Some of the housing numbers in the last few months look a little less ugly. Could housing be getting ready to get well?

MILLER: I don't think so.

For all intents and purposes, the United States home mortgage market has been nationalized without anybody noticing. Last September, reportedly over 95% of all new loans for single-family homes in the U.S. were made with federal assistance, either through Fannie Mae and the implied guarantee, or Freddie Mac, or through the FHA.

If it's true that most of the financing in the single-family home market is being facilitated by government guarantees, that should make everybody very, very concerned. If government support goes away, and it will go away, where will that leave the home market? It leaves you with a catastrophe, because private lenders for single-family homes are nervous. Lenders that are still lending are reverting to 75% to 80% loan to value. But that doesn't help a homeowner whose property is worth less than the mortgage. So when the supply of government-facilitated loans dries up, it's going to put the home market in a very, very bad place.

Why am I so certain that the federal government will have to cut back on its lending? Because most of the financing is done via the bond market, through Ginnie Mae or other government agencies. And the numbers are so big that eventually the bond market is going to gag on the government-sponsored paper.

The public doesn't have any idea of the scale of the guarantees the government is taking on through Fannie, Freddie, and FHA. It's huge. If people understood what the federal government has done and subjected the taxpayers to, there would be a public outrage. But you can't get people to focus on it, and it's very esoteric, it's very hard to understand. But it's not something the bond market won't notice. The government can't keep doing what it has been doing to support mortgage lending without pushing interest rates way up.

Refinancings of single-family homes are very interest-rate sensitive. Consumers have their backs against the wall. They have too much debt. Refinancing their maturing mortgages or their adjustable-rate mortgages is very problematic if rates go up, but that's exactly where they're headed. So anyone who's comforted by current statistics on single-family homes should look beyond the data and into the dynamics of the market. What they'll find is very alarming.

On that topic, recent data I saw was that something like 24% of the loans FHA backed in 2007 are now in default, and for those generated in 2008, 20% are in default, and the FHA is out of money.

MILLER: Fannie Mae had a $19 billion loss for the third quarter of 2009, and they are now drawing on their facility with the U.S. Treasury. We have all forgotten that Fannie and Freddie are still being operated under a federal conservatorship. On Christmas Eve, the agency announced that they were going to remove all the caps on the agencies.

So what about commercial real estate?

MILLER: When I saw what was happening in the housing market, I liquidated all my multifamily apartments, shopping centers, and office buildings. I liquidated all my loan portfolios, and I'm happy I did.

Then it occurred to me in 2005 and 2006 that the commercial world had to follow suit. Why? Because it's a normal progression. Obviously, when single-family homes decline in value, multifamily apartments decline in value. And when consumers hit the wall with spending and debt, that's going to have an impact on retailers that pay for commercial space.

Furthermore, the financing for retail properties had gotten ludicrous. The conduits were making loans that they advertised as 80% of property value when they originated them, but in reality the loan-to-value ratios were well over 100%. And I say that to you with absolute, categorical certainty, because I was a seller and nobody knew the value of the properties that I was selling better than I did. I had operated some of them for 20 years, so I knew exactly what they were bringing in. I knew what the operating expenses were, and I knew what the cap rates were. And, you know, the underwriting on the loan side and the purchasing side of these assets was completely insane. It was ludicrous. It did not reflect at all what the conduits thought they were doing. They were valuing the properties way too aggressively.

I became very bearish about the commercial business starting in late '05. In fact, I think I was in Argentina with Doug Casey, sitting on a veranda at one of the estancias, and he and I were lamenting what was going on in the real estate business, and I said there was going to be a huge adjustment in the commercial market.

Beyond the obvious, that the real estate market has taken pretty significant hits and some banks have been dragged under by their bad loans, what has really changed in real estate since the crash?

MILLER: I think the first thing that changed was that people learned that prices don't go up forever. Lenders also saw that underwriting guidelines for commercial real estate loans, especially in the securitization markets, were erroneous. They realized that some of their properties had been financed too aggressively, but still, I don't think even at the fall of Lehman, anybody was predicting a wholesale collapse in commercial real estate.

But they did see they should be more circumspect with loan underwritings. In fact, after the fall of Lehman, they completely stopped lending. I think they realized we had been living in fantasy land for 10 years. And that was the first change – a mental adjustment from Alice in Wonderland to reality.

Today it's clear that commercial properties are not performing and that values have gone down, although I've got to tell you, the denial is still widespread, particularly in the United States and on the part of lenders sitting on and servicing all these real estate portfolios. People still do not understand how grave this is.

Right now there are an awful lot of banks that do an awful lot of commercial real estate lending, and for about a year now you've been telling me that you saw the first and second quarter of 2010 as being particularly risky for commercial real estate. Why this year, and what do you see happening with these loans and the banks holding them?

MILLER: It's an educated guess, and it hasn't changed. I still think that it's second quarter 2010.

The current volume of defaults is already alarming. And the volume of commercial real estate defaults is growing every month. That can only keep going for so long, and then you hit a breaking point, which I believe will come sometime in 2010. When you hit that breaking point, unless there's some alternative in place, it's going to be a very hideous picture for the bond market and the banking system.

The reason I say second quarter 2010 is a guess is that the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the FDIC can influence how fast the crisis unfolds. I think they can have an impact on the severity of the crisis as well – not making it less severe but making it more severe. I will get to that in a minute. But they can influence the speed with which it all unfolds, and I'll give you an example.

In November, the FDIC circulated new guidelines for bank regulators to streamline and standardize the way banks are examined. One standout feature is that as long as a bank has evaluated the borrower and the asset behind a loan, if they are convinced the borrower can repay the loan, even if they go into a workout with the borrower, the bank does not have to reserve for the loan. The bank doesn't have to take any hit against its capital, so if the collateral all of a sudden sinks to 50% of the loan balance, the bank still does not have to take any sort of write-down. That obviously allows banks to just sit on weak assets instead of liquidating them or trying to raise more capital.

That's very significant. It means the FDIC and the Treasury Department have decided that rather than see 1,000 or 2,000 banks go under and then create another RTC to sift through all the bad assets, they'll let the banking system warehouse the bad assets. Their plan is to leave the assets in place, and then, when the market changes, let the banks deal with them. Now, that's horribly destructive.

Just to be clear on this, let's say I own an apartment building and I've been making my payments, but I'm having trouble and the value of the property has fallen by half. I go to the bank and say, "Look, I've got a problem," and the bank says, "Okay, let's work something out, and instead of you paying $10,000 a month, you pay us $5,000 a month and we'll shake hands and smile." Then, even though the property's value has dropped, as long as we keep smiling and I'm still making payments, then the bank won't have to reserve anything against the risk that I'll give the building back and it will be worth a whole lot less than the mortgage.

MILLER: I think what you just described is accurate. And it's exactly a Japanese-style solution. This is what Japan did in '89 and '90 because they didn't want their banking system to implode, so they made it easier for their banks to sit on bad assets without owning up to the losses.

And what's the result? Well, it leaves the status quo in place. The real problem with this is twofold. One is that it prolongs the problem – if a bank is allowed to sit on bad assets for three to five years, it's not going to sell them.

Why is that bad? Well, the money tied up in the loans the bank is sitting on is idle. It is not being used for anything productive.

Wouldn't banks know that ultimately the piper must be paid, and so they'd be trying to build cash – trying to build capital to deal with the problem when it comes home to roost?

MILLER: The more intelligent banks are doing exactly that, hoping they can weather the storm by building enough reserves, so when they do ultimately have to take the loss, it's digestible. But in commercial real estate generally, the longer you delay realizing a loss, the more severe it's going to be. I can tell you that because I'm out there servicing real estate all day long. Not facing the problems, and not writing down the values, and not allowing purchasers to come in and take these assets at discounted prices – all the foot-dragging allows the fundamental problem to get worse.

In the apartment business, people are under water, particularly if they got their loan through a conduit. When maintenance is required, a borrower with a property worth less than the loan is very reluctant to reach into his pocket. If you have a $10 million loan on a property now worth $5 million, you're clearly not making any cash flow. So what do you do when you need new roofs? Are you going to dig into your pocket and spend $600,000 on roofing? Not likely. Why would you do that?

Or a borrower who is sitting on a suburban office property – he's got two years left on the loan. He knows he has a loan-to-value problem. Well, a new tenant wants to lease from him, but it would cost $30 a square foot to put the tenant in. Is the borrower going to put the tenant in? I don't think so. So the problems get bigger.

Why would the owner bother going through a workout with the bank if he knows he's so deep underwater he's below snorkel depth?

MILLER: It's always in your interest to delay an inevitable default. For example, the minute you give the property back to the bank, you trigger a huge taxable gain. All of a sudden the forgiveness of debt on your loan becomes taxable income to you. Another reason is that many of these loans are either full recourse or part recourse. If you're a borrower who's guaranteed a loan, why would you want to hasten the call on your guarantee? You want to delay as long as possible because there's always a little hope that values will turn around. So there is no reason to hurry into a default. None.

So that's from the borrower's standpoint. But wouldn't the banks want to clear these loans off their balance sheets?

MILLER: No. The banks have a lot of incentive to delay the realization of the problem because if they liquidate the asset and the loss is realized, then they have to reserve the loss against their capital immediately. If they keep extending the loan under the rules present today, then they can delay a write-down and hope for better days. Remember, you suffer if the bank succumbs and turns around and liquidates that asset, then you really do have to take a write-down because then your capital is gone.

So here we are, we've got the federal government again, through its agencies and the FDIC, ready to support the commercial real estate market. They've taken one step, in allowing banks to use a very loose standard for loss reserves. What else can they do?

MILLER: Well, obviously nobody knows, but I can guess at what's coming by extrapolating from what the federal government has already done. I believe that the Treasury and the Federal Reserve now see that commercial real estate is a huge problem.

I think they're going to contrive something to help assist commercial real estate so that it doesn't hurt the banks that lent on commercial real estate. It'll resemble what they did with housing.

They created a nearly perfect political formula in dealing with housing, and they are going to follow that formula. The entire U.S. residential mortgage market has in effect been nationalized, but there wasn't any act of Congress, no screaming and shouting, no headlines in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times about "Should we nationalize the home loan market in America." No. It happened right under our noses and with no hue and cry. That's a template for what they could do with the commercial loan market.

And how can they do that? By using federal guarantees much in the way they used federal guarantees for the FHA. FHA issues Ginnie Mae securities, which are sold to the public. Those proceeds are used to make the loans.

But it won't really be a solution. In fact, it will make the problems much more intense.

Don't these properties have to be allowed to go to their intrinsic value before the market can start working again?

MILLER: Yes. Of course, very few people agree with that, because if you let it all go today, there would be enormous losses and a tremendous amount of pain. We're going to have some really terrible, terrible years ahead of us because letting it all go is the only way to be done with the problem.

Do you think the U.S. will come out of this crisis? I mean, do you think the country, the institutions, the government, or the banking sector are going to look anything like they do today when this thing is over?

MILLER: I know this is going to make you laugh, but I'm actually an optimist about this. I'm not optimistic about the short run, and I'm not optimistic about the severity of the problem, but I'm totally optimistic as it relates to the United States of America.

This is a very resilient place. We have very resilient people. There is nothing like the American spirit. There is nothing like American ingenuity anywhere on Planet Earth, and while I certainly believe that we are headed for a catastrophe and a crisis, I also believe that ultimately we are going to come out better.

Andy Miller is the co-founder of the Miller Frishman Group (www.millerfrishman.com), which includes three companies serving different sectors of the real estate market – from mortgage brokerage and banking, to the building, management, and marketing of commercial real estate across the United States. His firm is currently deeply involved in the distressed real estate business, assisting lenders across the nation with their growing portfolios of non-performing loans.

Real estate crashing, unemployment rising, sky-high government debt – is there any silver lining in all of this? There is, and the editors of The Casey Report are pros in locating it. Analyzing tomorrow's mega-trends and finding the best opportunities to profit from them is what they do. Learn how these expert trend hunters can help you make money even in the toughest crisis... click here.

Into the Fourth Turning

John Mauldin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:33:00 GMT

This week for your Outside the Box reading pleasure I am pleased to offer you the beginning of a very intriguing interview with Neil Howe he did with my friend David Galland at Casey Research. I think Neil is one of the premier forward looking thinkers of our time. His book The Fourth Turning is one of the more important books of the last two decades. 12 years ago, he and the late Richard Strauss basically outlined the psycho-social dynamics of our current time and his predictions have been uncannily accurate.

Basically, he and Strauss demonstrated that the Anglo-Saxon world has a pattern of four repeating generational types. As each generation assumes its period of dominance, the character of the various nations change in a pattern that rhymes throughout 500 years of history. We are in the beginning–middle of what he calls the Fourth Turning. This is a lengthy (17 pages) but fascinating interview but one you definitely should read. It is too long for me to put up in its entirety, but if you want to read more there is a link to the full interview at the end of the article. Just type in your email and the people from Casey will send it to you. They will also add you to their very interesting letter written by members of their research team. And of course you can easily unsubscribe if you like, but you might want to read it for a few weeks to see if you like their angle on things.

Neil Howe is a historian, economist, and demographer who writes and speaks frequently on generational change in American history and on long-term fiscal policy. He is cofounder of LifeCourse Associates, a marketing, HR, and strategic planning consultancy serving corporate, government, and nonprofit clients. He has coauthored six books with William Strauss, including Generations (1991), 13^th Gen (1993), The Fourth Turning (1997), and Millennials Rising (2000). His other coauthored books include On Borrowed Time (1988). He is also a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he helps lead the CSIS "Global Aging Initiative," and a senior advisor to the Concord Coalition. He holds graduate degrees in history and economics from Yale University. He lives in Great Falls, Virginia. His website which has more information is www.lifecourse.com.

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

Into the Fourth Turning

A Casey Research interview with Neil Howe, co-author of The Fourth Turning

The Fourth Turning is an amazingly prescient book Neil Howe wrote with the late William Strauss in 1997. The work, which describes generational archetypes and the cyclical patterns created by these archetypes, has been an eye-opener to anyone able to entertain the notion that history may repeat itself. At the time the book was published, the Boston Globe stated, "If Howe and Strauss are right, they will take their place among the great American prophets." Read this visionary interview published in The Casey Report, and see for yourself.

DAVID GALLAND: Could you provide us a quick introduction to generational research?

NEIL HOWE: We think that generations move history along and prevent society from suffering too long under the excesses of any particular generation. People often assume that every new generation will be a linear extension of the last one. You know, that after Generation X comes Generation Y. They might further expect Generation Y to be like Gen X on steroids – even more willing to take risk and with even more edginess in the culture. Yet the Millennial Generation that followed Gen X is not like that at all. In fact, no generation is like the generation that immediately precedes it.

Instead, every generation turns the corner and to some extent compensates for the excesses and mistakes of the midlife generation that is in charge when they come of age. This is necessary, because if generations kept on going in the same direction as their predecessors, civilization would have gone off a cliff thousands of years ago.

So this is a necessary process, a process that is particularly important in modern nontraditional societies, where generations are free to transform institutions according to their own styles and proclivities.

In our research we have found that, in modern societies, four basic types of generations tend to recur in the same order.

DAVID: The four generational archetypes. Can you provide a sketch of each for those of our readers unfamiliar with your work?

HOWE: Absolutely.

The first is what we call the Hero archetype. Hero generations are usually protectively raised as kids. They come of age at a time of emergency or Crisis and become known as young adults for helping society resolve the Crisis, hopefully successfully. Once the Crisis is resolved, they become institutionally powerful in midlife and remain focused on outer-world challenges and solutions. In their old age, they are greeted by a spiritual Awakening, a cultural upheaval fired by the young. This is the typical life story of a Hero generation.

One example of the Hero archetype is the G.I. Generation, the soldiers of World War II, who became an institutional powerhouse after the war and then in old age confronted the young hippies and protesters of the 1960s. Going back in American history, we have seen many other Hero archetypes, for example the generation of Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and President Monroe. These were the heroes of the American Revolution, who in old age were greeted by the second Great Awakening and a new youth generation of fiery Prophets.

After the Hero archetype comes the Artist archetype. Artist generations have a very different location in history -- they are the children of the Crisis. For Hero generations, child protection rises from first cohort to last. By the time Artists come along, child protection reaches suffocating levels. Artists come of age as young adults during the post-Crisis era, when conformity seems like the best path to success, and they tend to be collectively risk averse. Artists see themselves as providing the expertise and refinement that can both improve and adorn the enormous new institutional innovations that have been forged during the Crisis. They typically experience a cultural Awakening in midlife, and their lives speed up as the culture transforms.

A great example of the Artist archetype is the so-called "Silent" Generation, the post World War II young adults who married early and moved into gleaming new suburbs in the 1950s, went through their midlife crises in the '70s and '80s, and are today the very affluent, active seniors retiring into gated lifestyle communities.

The third archetype is what we call a Prophet archetype. The most recent example of this archetype is the Baby Boom Generation. Prophet generations grow up as children during a period of post-Crisis affluence and come of age during a period of cultural upheaval. They become moralistic and values-obsessed midlife leaders and parents, and as they enter old age, they steer the country into the next great outer-world social or political Crisis. Boomers, for example, grew up during the Postwar American High, came of age during the Consciousness Revolution of the 1960s and '70s, and are now entering old age.

Finally there is what we call a Nomad archetype. Nomads are typically raised as children during Awakenings, the great cultural upheavals of our history. Whereas the Prophet archetype is indulgently raised as children, the Nomad archetype is underprotected and completely exposed as children. They learn early that they can't trust basic institutions to look out for their best interests and come of age as free agents whose watchword is individualism. They are the great realists and pragmatists in our nation's history.

The most recent example of the Nomad archetype is Generation X. This generation grew up during the social turmoil of the 1960s and '70s and are now beginning to enter midlife. They are the ones that know how to get things done on the ground. They are the stay-at-home dads and security moms trying to give their kids more of a childhood than they themselves had. Their burden is that they tend not to trust large institutions and do not have a strong connection to public life. They forge their identity and value system by "going it alone" and staying off the radar screen of government. It could be very interesting to see the rest of the life story of this generation, particularly as they take over leadership positions.

DAVID: Could you tell us the general age ranges of these archetypes now?

HOWE: One Hero generation that is alive today is the G.I. Generation, born between 1901 and 1924. They came of age with the New Deal, World War II, and the Great Depression. They are today in their mid-80s and beyond, and their influence is waning.

Today's other example of a Hero archetype is the Millennial Generation, born from 1982 to about 2003 or 2004. These are today's young people, who are just beginning to be well known to most Americans. They fill K-12 schools, colleges, graduate schools, and have recently begun entering the workplace. We associate them with dramatic improvements in youth behaviors, which are often underreported by the media. Since Millennials have come along, we've seen huge declines in violent crime, teen pregnancy, and the most damaging forms of drug abuse, as well as higher rates of community service and volunteering. This is a generation that reminds us in many respects of the young G.I.s nearly a century ago, back when they were the first boy scouts and girl scouts between 1910 and 1920.

DAVID: Then following the Hero, we have the Artist, right?

HOWE: Yes. As I mentioned earlier, one example of that archetype is the Silent Generation, born between 1925 and 1942. This generation was too young to remember anything about America before the Great Crash of 1929, and too young to be of fighting age during World War II.

That 1925 birth year is filled with people like William F. Buckley and Bobby Kennedy, first-wave Silent who just missed World War II. Many of them were actually in the camps in California waiting for the invasion of Japan when they heard that the war was over. Part of their generational experience is that sense of just barely missing something big. Surveys show that this generation does not like to call themselves "senior citizens." They did not fight in World War II. They did not build the A bomb. They are more like "senior partners." Unlike G.I.s, they are flexible elders, focused on the needs of others. Many of them are highly engaged in the family activities of their children and grandchildren. In politics, they are today's elder advisors, not powerhouse leaders.

There is a new generation of the Artist archetype just now beginning to arrive. They started being born, we think, around 2004 or 2005. We did a contest on our website to choose a name for this new generation, and the winner was Homeland Generation, reflecting the fact that they are being incredibly well protected. So we are tentatively calling them the Homelanders.

This generation will have no memory of anything before the financial meltdown of 2008 and the events that are about to unfold in America. If our research is correct, this generation's childhood will be a time of urgency and rapid historical change. Unlike the Millennials, who will remember childhood during the good times of 1980s and '90s, the Homelanders will recall their childhood as a time of national crisis.

So, those are the two examples today of the Hero archetype, and two examples of the Artist archetype.

DAVID: What about the Prophet and the Nomad generations?

HOWE: There is only one Prophet archetype generation alive today: the Boomer Generation. We define them as being born between 1943 and 1960. Those born in 1943 would have been part of the free-speech movement at Berkeley in 1964, the first fiery class whose peers include Bill Bradley, Newt Gingrich, and Oliver North. The last cohorts of this generation came of age with President Carter in the Iran Hostage Crisis.

For the Nomad archetype, we again have only one example alive today, and that is Generation X. We define Gen Xers as being born between 1961 and 1981. Actually, there may be a few members of the earlier Nomad generation still around – those of the Lost Generation born from 1883 to 1900, but today they would be around 110. This was the generation that grew up during the third Great Awakening, the doughboys who went through World War I. They were the generation that put the "roar" into the "Roaring '20s" – the rum runners, barnstormers, and entrepreneurs of that period. They were big risk-takers.

DAVID: Is the Millennial Generation the next group up in terms of controlling or being a powerful force in society?

HOWE: It depends what you mean by a powerful force in society.

DAVID: Who is going to be in the driver's seat?

HOWE: Let me put it this way. The generation that is about to be in the driver's seat in terms of leadership is Generation X, the group born 1961 to 1981. In fact, we now have our first Gen-X President, Barack Obama, who was born in 1961 and who is in every way a Gen Xer, despite being born at the very early edge of his generation. His fragmented family upbringing, with his father leaving while he was young and his mother moving all over the world, is typical of the Gen X life story. A telling anecdote from his biography is that, when he arrived at Columbia University, he spent his first night in New York sleeping in an alley because no one had arranged to have an apartment open for him.

His life story has a "dazed and confused" aspect. He made his own way against a background of adult neglect and lack of structure. It's interesting that he is the first leader in America to call himself "post-Boomer." As a matter of fact, he talks regularly about how he intends to put an end to everything dysfunctional about Boomer politics: the polarization, the culture wars, the scorched-earth rhetoric, the identity politics, all of that. I understand a lot of people do not believe he can actually do this, but it's interesting that this is the rhetoric he chooses. That rhetoric is one reason why the vast majority of Millennials voted for him.

Obama is the opening wedge of Gen Xers who will assume very high leadership posts. They are not yet the senior generals in control of the military, but they are taking over the reins of government and, of course, the top spots in American businesses.

If you want to know what Neil Howe foresees for the U.S. economy, future investment opportunities, and American society in general, sign up here to read the rest of this 17-page, FREE Special Report - Click Here.

A 20-Year Bear Market?

John Mauldin — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:31:31 GMT

Long time readers know that I am a huge fan of the work of Neil Howe. His book, The Fourth Turning, was one of the seminal pieces of my reading over the last 30 years. And it has turned out to be stunningly prophetic. Uncomfortably so. A roughly 80 year cycle has been repeating itself for centuries in the Anglophile world, broken up into four generations or turnings. We have begun what Howe called many years ago The Fourth Turning.

Neil Howe is the co-author, with the late William Strauss, of a number of seminal works on the impact of generations on cycles of history. Howe is a founding partner of LifeCourse Associates (lifecourse.com) which provides research to institutions looking to capitalize on generational research.

The June 2009 edition of The Casey Report, the flagship publication of Casey Research, featured a comprehensive 23 page interview with Neil Howe as well as suggestions on how to position your portfolio to profit during a Fourth Turning crisis. I persuaded my friend David Galland to at least summarize it for my Outside the Box this week, and he graciously did so. David is the managing editor of The Casey Report and has had a long career in the financial services industry; as a founding partner of the successful Blanchard Group of Mutual Funds and, before joining Casey Research, as a founding partner of EverBank, one of the big success stories in independent online banking.

Casey Research is offering readers of Out of the Box the opportunity to read the full edition of The Casey Report featuring the Howe Interview, and receive the publication for the next three months with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. For details click here... http://www.caseyresearch.com/crpmkt/crpSolo.php?id=144&ppref=CSN144ED0609B

I trust you will find this week's Outside the Box to be helpful. The more things change.....

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

A 20-Year Bear Market?

By David Galland, Casey Research

In November of 1997, my partner and co-editor of The Casey Report, Doug Casey, wrote an article titled "Foundations of Crisis," which leaned heavily on the research of Neil Howe and the late William Strauss.

Howe and Strauss have written many books on how generations determine the course of history and how they will shape America's future. Their forecasts on a wide variety of indicators have turned out to be amazingly accurate. They were among the first to predict (back in the late 1980s) the rise of Boomer-driven culture wars and the simultaneous rise of Gen-X-driven free agency and distrust of government. And they were completely alone back then in predicting, for the post-X "Millennial Generation" (a label they coined), a decline in youth crime and risk taking and an increase in youth civic engagement that would first become apparent around the year 2000. Guess what? For the last ten years, everyone has been noticing exactly these trends among teens and 20somethings.

Howe and Strauss also made extensive predictions, based on generational aging, on how America's entire social mood would likely change, in dramatic fashion, during our current 2000-2010 decade. To quote Doug's prescient 1997 article, which was reprinted in Outside the Box late last year...

"... an excellent case can be made the U.S. is approaching another time of secular crisis, a Fourth Turning, with an expected due date of 2005 – seven years from now – plus or minus a few years in either direction.

The Stamp Acts catalyzed the American Revolution, the election of Lincoln catalyzed the Civil War, the Crash of '29 catalyzed the Depression/WW II era. What might precipitate the elements now floating in solution? The answer is practically any random event that's sufficiently traumatic. Any of the theses of current disaster/action novels and movies will do nicely. Perhaps the accidental or intentional release of a super plague vector. The crashing of an airliner into the Capitol during a joint session. An all-out assault on the IRS computers by an armed group – or perhaps the computers just melting down due to the Year 2000 Problem. Perhaps a financial disaster that cascades into the Greater Depression. In any of these, or a hundred other scenarios, the federal government would almost certainly act precipitously and with a heavy hand, which would bring on a whole other set of consequences.

There's no way of telling where the Crisis will lead, or how it will end. That's going to depend not only on exactly who's in control, but what they do, who they're up against, and a hundred other variables we can't even anticipate.

One thing that seems certain is that real crisis brings out strong leadership. Because of its age and size, it will come from the Boomer generation, and it will be in the mold of Roosevelt or Lincoln – both very dangerous precedents. The boomers in elderhood will be dogmatic, harsh, puritanical, and quite willing to burn down the barn in order to destroy whatever rats they see. Admix that attitude to a time resembling the Revolution, the Civil War, or WW II, overlain with today's ethnic strife, urbanization, financial overextension, and powerful, compact new weaponry in the hands of foreign fanatics out to teach the Great Satan a lesson and it's a real witch's brew.

As eye-opening as Doug's predictions were, they brought us only to the onset of the current crisis. Consequently, we thought it both timely and important to check back with the source of much of the research he relied on. And so it was that I spent several hours talking with Neil Howe, co-author of the seminal work on generational cycles, The Fourth Turning, and, just recently, the subject of the DVD "The Winter of History." Howe is not just an historian, but also a Washington DC-based economist and demographer. While our conversation covered a great many topics, the overriding focus was on how things are likely to unfold from here.

Many bullish readers won't be thrilled to hear Howe's latest findings about the future, but given his predictive track record, dismissing them out of hand could be a costly mistake.

The summary outlook, according to Howe, is that we are in the very early stages of a 20-year period of economic and institutional upheaval – an era denominated by a crisis during which we'll likely witness the tearing down and reconstruction of many aspects of society as we know it.

As individuals, understanding Howe's views and taking some reasonable precautions makes a lot of sense. As investors, those views also have the potential to make us a lot of money.

Following is my high-level recap of my long conversation with Neil Howe, along with some general thoughts on the investment implications of a 20-year bear market.

Remember the Sixties?

If you're old enough -- or possess even a rudimentary sense of history -- think back to the 1950s, with roller-skating waitresses, crew cuts, and nuclear families of the sort represented by the iconic Leave it to Beaver. Fathers worked, while many mothers stayed home. Life had a certain predictable quality and, as far as anyone knew, would continue along the same lines for time immemorial.

But then something happened... the 1960s. Literally no one saw it coming. It was as if someone had flipped a switch that electrified America and, quickly, the world. Most everything changed, and a society accustomed to conformity was blown away with a fierce individualism expressed with long hair, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, topped off with civil disobedience and bloody riots in the streets.

What happened?

According to Neil Howe, in the mid-1960s, generational change pushed society around a dramatic corner as idealistic, individualistic young Baby Boomers (born 1943 to 1960) rebelled against the midlife leadership of their G.I. Generation parents (born 1901 to 1924).

These periods of transitions are part of a larger cyclical pattern made up of four distinct eras, or "Turnings," each lasting approximately 20 years. It can be helpful to think of the four turnings as you might think of the four seasons, repeating predictably in their own natural rhythm. A full cycle of turnings takes place over a period of about 80 to 90 years -- roughly the span of a long human life. A new turning begins as a new youth generation comes of age, bringing a new social ethic that compensates for the excesses of the midlife generation then in power.

While we don't have the space here to go into the full details of Howe's research, it's important to the topic at hand that we quickly recap the Four Turnings.

The First Turning is referred to by Howe as a High. As this follows a period of crisis, one of the hallmarks of a First Turning is a heightened sense of community and collective optimism, driven in part by the fact that the society has just come through a difficult and challenging time. Consequently, during First Turnings, societal institutions tend to be strong while individualism is weak. The post-World War II "High" of the mid-1940s through early '60s is the most recent example of a First Turning.

The Second Turning, called an Awakening, typically starts out feeling like the high tide of a High, with signs of progress and prosperity everywhere. But just as everything seems to be going along swimmingly, large swaths of society begin to chaff under the social conformity of the High, beginning to gravitate to more individualistic pursuits and demanding that their personal interests come first. You may recognize the "Consciousness Revolution" of the mid-1960s through early 1980s, correctly, as the Second Turning.

Next up, the Third Turning, which Howe calls an Unraveling, is much the opposite of a High. To wit, individualism dominates, while institutions are increasingly weak and discredited. Quoting Howe on the Unraveling...

"This is a time when social authority feels inconsequential, the culture feels exhausted, and people feel bewildered by the number of options available to them. It is a time of celebrity circuses and a tremendous amount of freedom and creativity in our personal lives, but very little sense of public purpose.

The most recent Third Turning began in the mid-'80s with Morning in America, and continued through the '90s. Previous periods of Unraveling in American history were also decades of cynicism and bad manners. Think of the 1920s, the 1850s, the 1760s. And history teaches us that the Third Turnings inevitably end in Fourth Turnings.

Finally, there is the Fourth Turning, called a Crisis. The recent Third Turning appears to be winding down, and we are currently on the cusp of a Fourth Turning. This is a time of great turmoil, when society's basic institutions are torn down and rebuilt, and seemingly insurmountable problems are addressed. During Fourth Turnings, America engages in a struggle for its very survival and redefines its identity as a nation. Large wars are often a part of this process. The American Revolution, Civil War, Great Depression, and World War II were all features of past Fourth Turnings.

In sum, Howe's research has shown that, with remarkable predictability, history is not a straight line extending toward a better and brighter (or increasingly awful) future, but rather a repeating cycle of the four distinct social eras. These four turnings have recurred with remarkable consistency throughout Anglo-American history, as Neil Howe outlines at length in Generations and The Fourth Turning. It is therefore no accident that America has experienced great cataclysms or "Crises" about every 80 years. Travel back eighty years from Pearl Harbor Day, and you land in the middle of the Civil War. Eighty years before that takes you to the Revolutionary War. If the rhythms of history hold, America is now poised to enter another Fourth Turning.

Bad News, Potentially Good News

You don't need me to tell you that the United States and in fact the world are now facing a plethora of intractable problems. The world's former powerhouse economy, the U.S., is now the world's largest debtor nation – and by a wide margin. The nation has trillions in unpayable liabilities coming due on Social Security and Medicare, to name just two of many broken government programs weighing on the country. And our much vaunted democracy is increasingly dysfunctional – rotten to the core, truth be known – thanks largely to entrenched special interests and a voting public clamoring for their own piece of the pie, while trying to hand the bill off to somebody else.

Meanwhile, the economy – despite rigorous jawboning by the government and its many friends in the large banking institutions -- is in serious trouble, with the housing market buffeted by tsunami-like waves of defaults, foreclosures, overvaluations, historic levels of personal debt, and tight credit that has left the U.S. government as the sole lender in many markets.

Bernanke and his ilk may see green shoots, but what they're really seeing is the deep, green sea rising up once again to bury the economy.

That's the bad news.

The potentially good news, if you credit Howe's research, is that the Crisis we're now entering will change pretty much everything. While this change will entail a great deal of pain and a reduced standard of living for a large number of people, by the time the Crisis subsides, society will have pretty much remade itself in ways that no one can predict at this point.

Put another way, today's intractable problems will be solved... one way or another.

What's Next

When discussing what's likely to follow next, Neil Howe turns to his generational profiles and points out that the rising societal power today belongs to the generation he calls the Millennials, individuals born between 1982 and 2004. They are a "Hero" generation, just like the G.I. Generation that coped so well with the turmoil of the Great Depression and World War II -- the last Fourth Turning. Coddled as children, the G.I.s were ultimately called upon to help society through a dark and dangerous period and rose to the occasion. Again, quoting Howe on the Millennials...

"These are today's young people, who are just beginning to be well known to most Americans. They fill K-12 schools, colleges, graduate schools, and have recently begun entering the workplace. We associate them with dramatic improvements in youth behaviors, which are often underreported by the media. Since Millennials have come along, we've seen huge declines in violent crime, teen pregnancy, and the most damaging forms of drug abuse, as well as higher rates of community service and volunteering. This is a generation that reminds us in many respects of the young G.I.s nearly a century ago, back when they were the first boy scouts and girl scouts between 1910 and 1920.

Unlike the Baby Boomers, who are largely individualistic and anti-establishment, the Millennials are good team players. We hear a lot these days about working together for a common cause, volunteerism, and the need for stronger government institutions, largely because these are the new priorities of the Millennial Generation.

As you may recall, out of the devastation of World War II, a spate of transnational political and economic institutions were born, including the United Nations, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and the International Monetary Fund. By the time the current Fourth Turning is over, expect more of the same -- but probably even bigger and more ambitious.

What Does This Mean to You?

Most importantly, if Howe is right, this crisis is far from over. In fact, when I asked him where we are today on a scale from 1 to 10 -- with 10 representing as bad as the crisis will get -- he replied that we are at either 2 or 3. In other words, the worst is very much yet to come. And, per above, he expects this period of turmoil to take 20 years to play out. Thus, if nothing else, you may want to continue approaching matters of personal finance cautiously.

Secondly, if you're the type of individual that tends to get steamed up by larger and more intrusive government programs, you may want to take a few deep breaths and resolve yourself to the fact that this phenomenon is likely to get far worse before we see a return to celebration of individual rights. (And the cycle shows that we will see such a return -- about 40 to 50 years from now, when the next Second Turning comes around.)

If it is any consolation, the Millennial Generation places a great deal of weight on teamwork and the notion of doing things "smart." That doesn't mean, of course, that the various programs that are kicked off in an attempt to fix the many problems now confronting society will in fact turn out to be technically smart. But they will almost certainly be better thought out than some of the numbskull initiatives we've seen over the last 20 years.

You can also take some comfort in the fact that Millennials are builders, not destroyers. By contrast, the individualistic Boomers that dominate today's aging political class are world-class dissenters, radio talk show aficionados always ready to scrap it out for their beliefs. Millennials want to skip the philosophical debate and get straight to fixing things.

Other insights about Fourth Turning periods gained from my conversation with Neil Howe...

Government grows powerful, and sweeping new legislation is enacted. The old 1990s rule was: just compete and stay off the state's radar screen. The new 2010s rule will be: better have a presence in Washington so you're not dealt out of the "new" new deal. One political party tends to dominate. The Democrats under FDR during the last Fourth Turning offer a good example. While Neil Howe doesn't think it will necessarily be the Democrats this time around, they are certainly in the pole position at this point.
While public history speeds up, personal life slows down. Families will spend more time together, like in the old Frank Capra movies. Ever more households will be multi-generational, a trend now spurred by Boomers with large, empty McMansions and Millennials without jobs. There will be a blanding of the pop culture, with the entertainment of the young (put Miley Cyrus or "High School Musical" on fast forward) increasingly regarded as tamer than the entertainment of the old.
Innovation tends to stagnate, while a few new technologies will be chosen to be adopted on a large scale. We will see the equivalent of canals or railroads or interstates being built across America. To borrow from Carlotta Perez' four-stage description of technological revolutions, we are moving from the "innovation" to the "implementation" stage.
New laws and regulations will do less to referee a free market and more to pursue one or another national priority. They will increasingly favor the large producer over the retail buyer, investment over consumption, planning over risk, debt over equity. Businesses will hustle to reposition themselves. Anti-trust legislation will weaken.
The authority and obligations of community will strengthen at all levels, from local to national and possibly beyond (if our alliances prove durable). Personal reputation and membership will matter more. A "new localism" will reshape town and urban planning. A global slide toward national or regional protectionism will loom as a real danger.
It is too early to tell whether the crisis will ultimately be inflationary or deflationary, though we at Casey Research come down on the side of inflation for the simple reason that the government possesses the means to inflate. Due to the gold standard, that was not the case early in the Great Depression.
In the past, Fourth Turning periods have always resulted in the nation redefining who we are in some essential way. That was certainly the case during the American Revolution, when we transitioned from a British colony into a collection of independent states -- and the Civil War, when those states were hammered into a single nation. And, again, after World War II, when the U.S. went from being a relatively isolated nation to a global empire. A wild card, for instance a terrorist nuke going off in a city anywhere on the planet, could similarly take the country, and the world, into unforeseeable new directions.

li>Baby Boomers will continue to be respected for their cultural achievements (it's not a fluke of history that Boomer music and other entertainments are still wildly popular among the young), but will be increasingly ignored in the political debate. The term "senior citizen," already in decline, will disappear entirely. And if push comes to shove, Boomer's financial interests – including Social Security – will be subjugated "for the greater good."
There will be a growing push to rebuild the middle class. The wealthy and the impoverished alike will both come under pressure thanks to new pro-middle class initiatives. If you are a high-income earner, it's a certainty your taxes are going up, and likely by a lot. If you want to make a fortune, don't pursue the niche or the "long tail." Invent the next big brand that will appeal to Everyman.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

That is, at best, a sketch of my long conversation with Neil Howe and doesn't do justice to his research. If nothing else, however, I hope I've succeeded in giving you at least some sense of the man and his unique research and encouraged you to think outside the box about the nature of today's crisis.

A couple of final observations.

First, Neil Howe is not a negative person, nor a professional doomsayer. Rather, he is a social scientist and historian with decades of experience in the social sciences. As you speak to him, you get the sense that he doesn't view the world through any particular philosophical bias, but rather is simply reporting what his research is telling him about the current players on the global stage, and which act we are currently in.

Secondly, speaking as a Baby Boomer and someone with a lifelong distrust of government and its meddling institutions, talking to Neil left me feeling oddly relaxed -- letting go, if you will, of some of the frustration that has been building within me as I watch the nanny state grow more and more bloated.

That is not to say we won't continue to speak out against government waste and prolificacy. We will. But it seems increasingly clear that we're now caught up in a powerful trend toward bigger, not smaller, societal institutions -- and that these institutions will, over the period ahead, change the world as we know it.

Of course, being active investors, at the same time we raise our voices in protest, we'll deal with the reality of the situation by strategically positioning our portfolios to profit from the coming changes.

And so, like the Rockefellers and J.P. Morgan during the Great Depression, we'll make the trend -- to matter how negative -- our friend. You may want to consider doing so yourself.

Making the trend your friend is more important than ever, if your assets are to make it through the Fourth Turning intact. The Casey Report discovers and analyzes budding economic trends and turns them into hands-on, actionable recommendations for its subscribers. Read the latest report from Casey Chief Economist Bud Conrad about our favorite investment of 2009... a play on an all but inevitable economic development. Click here to read more.

What the Export Land Model Means for Energy Prices

John Mauldin — Mon, 19 May 2008 22:10:00 GMT

Goldman Sachs recently forecasted that oil would be at $141 a barrel by the end of the year, and rising to $200 a barrel in the not too distant future. I have seen other forecasts calling for oil to slip significantly under $100 a barrel before starting yet another bull market.

I have written for years that we are not going to run out of oil or energy, just cheap oil. I was just in South Africa, where much of their gas and diesel comes from coal gasification. At one time this was an expensive way to make gas, and South Africans had to pay more for their gas than the rest of the world. Now, it is getting close to "par" to the cost of gas in the US, and is cheaper than gas in Europe.

In this week's Outside the Box, my friend David Galland at Casey Research presents some very troubling thoughts on why oil may rise higher than we think in the next few years. Many of the countries from which the US gets its oil are seeing production fall, not rise. Some of it is political ineptitude, but much of it is from oil production peaking.

Yes, we can move to coal gasification, and the US has centuries of coal for such purposes, but building such plants takes time and capital and political will, the latter of which is in short supply. In the meantime, and until we get a full-blown crisis, oil is going to continue on its path to $200 and higher. But such a rise will not only make gasoline prices higher, it will make a host of new technologies competitive for the first time. The shift in how we make energy is inevitable.

As a quick aside, if we would start a project to build a massive nuclear infrastructure, such as in France, which produces 80% of its energy from nuclear, while at the same time pushing ahead in a Manhattan-type project the development of electric cars (or some hybrid), we could reduce our dependence on foreign oil and lower travel costs by the middle to the end of the next decade. And the environment would be cleaner and safer.

We are headed to such a future. It would be nice if we did it sooner rather than wait for a real crisis. But in the meantime, the price of oil is going to rise and opportunities for investors will rise along with it. My friends at Casey Research publish an excellent newsletter highlighting the opportunities not just in exploration companies but in all manner of energy-related firms. As David writes:

"The good news is that there are no shortage of high-quality energy-related investments available ... in coal, heavy oil, LNG, photovoltaics, natural gas consolidators, "run of river" hydroelectric, uranium and small to mid-cap oil companies with the potential for significant near-term gains in reserves or production."

They have agreed to give my readers a risk-free three-month trial to the Casey Energy Speculator. If you like the research you read below and want more of it, you can click on this link and subscribe.

And now let's see one of the main reasons why the price of oil is going up.

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

What the Export Land Model Means for Energy Prices

By David Galland,
Managing Director
Casey Research - Casey Energy Speculator

Jeffrey Brown is someone you should know. That's because he can help you understand today's high energy prices and that, as an investor, can make you a lot of money.

I'll introduce to you to Jeff Brown in a moment. But first, as it's relevant to the discussion, I want to touch on an important concept related to investing in challenging times.

You might call it "the Davy Crockett principle" in honor of something that American icon said during the War of 1812: "Be sure you are right and then go ahead."

Simply, it's critical to step away from all the noise and clutter that passes for knowledge on the financial talk shows, and take the time to be very sure you are investing in close concert with a powerful unfolding trend. That accomplished, come what may, you'll come out okay once the dust has settled.

And the earlier you can get on board with a trend, the more money you can make.

In fact, Casey Research chief economist Bud Conrad has shown how, by making just four trades over the last four decades -- into exactly the right sector at the beginning of a strong new trend -- you could have turned $35 into $150,000. Or $350 into $1,500,000 ... or $3,500 into $15 million. And that assumes you don't use leverage. Toss in some options or futures and the returns run exponentially higher. Here's the chart.

While it is unlikely anyone actually made those exact trades, it is a certainty that many investors got in early on one or more of those big moves.

(Interestingly, replacing the last trade -- the move into crude -- with gold produces a final number of $131,496. Proving there is more than one path to the top.)

The key point I'm trying to make is simple: focusing your investments on big trends is a big leg up in your quest for investment success. By then digging in to find the right opportunities, whether they be in commodities or undervalued companies that benefit from those trends, assures you earn returns that are well above average.

More importantly, in the context of the current market environment, the combination of the right investment in the right trend makes your portfolio bullet-proof.

Which brings me to the work being done by Jeffrey Brown, a professional geoscientist with an avid academic and professional interest in something called the Export Land Model.

Turning off the Taps

You don't have to have an awful lot of gray hair to remember the excitement around England's massive North Sea oil fields. While discovered in 1969, it wasn't until well into the 1980s, on the back of surging oil prices, that the fields came into full production. Turning up the taps, the United Kingdom (as well as Norway and Germany, who also have North Sea production) became a significant exporter of oil.

But then, in 1999, something happened: the UK's North Sea production hit peak ... that tipping point after which reservoirs go into decline, setting in motion both reduced production and progressively higher costs related to extracting the remaining oil.

While the experience of North Sea oil production provides yet another useful example of the validity of the Peak Oil theory, what concerns us today is a critical but usually overlooked aspect of the discussion, exports.

At the time the North Sea peaked in 1999, the U.K. was exporting 1 million barrels of oil per day. By August 2004, it had become a net importer. What happened to cause the situation to turn around so quickly?

The Export Land Model

To understand the importance of exports when discussing peak oil, ask yourself the question, "What's more important: the fact that global oil production is falling ... or that the oil-exporting nations are cutting off their exports?"

While the two questions are clearly linked, it is the nuance of the export question that clearly matters the most. Especially if you live in a country such as the US, which currently imports about 70% of its oil.

Which brings us to the Export Land Model (or ELM, as I will refer to it from here). The basic thesis expressed by Jeff Brown and other students of the ELM is that, to fully appreciate the impact of peak oil, you cannot look only at the production declines so presciently anticipated by MK Hubbard in 1956. You also have to look at the rate of local consumption and the effect of that consumption on the ability of a country to export its oil.

The following ELM graph looks at both sides of the equation, and the result as it applies to exports:

As you can see, for illustrative purposes the ELM assumes that, after a country's oil production hits peak it will decline at a rate 5% annually, at the same time that local consumption increases by 2.5%. The dotted red line then shows the impact those two metrics will have on the ability of the country to export its excess production. Using these assumptions, the ELM shows that exports reach zero in 9 years.

Real-world data shows that the metrics used in the ELM are quite conservative. The chart below plots the hypothetical ELM against the actual data from the United Kingdom and Indonesia. While the ELM forecast hypothesizes 9 years between peak to the end of exports, Indonesia's exports ceased 7 years after peak, and the UK's exports stopped just 6 years after peak.

The important take-away here is not that the UK and Indonesia are no longer receiving the oil export income of the good old days -- that is entirely a localized concern.

Rather it is that the global market is now deprived of those exports; between UK and Indonesia alone, the change over just the last decade amounts to a swing in the wrong direction of a total of 2 million barrels per day. And those are just two of a number of important countries which have swung from exporters to importers in recent years.

China, for example, became a net importer in 1993, the result of flattening production against skyrocketing consumption. Over the last decade alone, China's oil consumption has almost doubled, to about 8 million barrels a day, about half of which is now imported.

So, again, while people tend to focus on production, they are overlooking the impact on exports forecasted by the ELM. In the case of China, they went from a net exporter in 1993 to importing 4 million barrels a day today ... with those imports projected to rise another 50% over the next 10 years.

This is what is creating so much international competition for the remaining supplies of oil. And why the trend to higher energy prices is so well entrenched. And if the ELM is right, things are about to get far worse ... far sooner than most people expect.

The #3 Source of Oil to the US Is About to Go Offline

Mexico provides about 14% of the oil the US imports. On any given day that makes it either the #2 or #3 leading source for US oil imports after Canada and Saudi Arabia. Given that the US currently imports close to 70% of its oil needs, the Mexican oil is critical.

But here's the thing. Using straightforward ELM calculations, Jeffrey Brown is confident that Mexico will ship its last barrel of oil to the United States -- or anywhere else, for that matter -- about 6 years from now, in 2014. In a recent interview with Brown, I asked about this forecast.

"Mexico was consuming half of their production at peak in 2004. And if you look at the '05, '06, '07 data, they're basically on track, on average, to approach zero net oil exports no later than 2014," he confirmed.

Of course, the US is completely unprepared to replace this source of oil, especially considering the growing stresses on global oil supplies causing by ballooning demand from emerging markets. That means the international competition for available supplies is only going to get more desperate in the months and years ahead.

What will this mean to oil prices, according to Brown?

"From this point out I think we'll see a geometric progression in prices ... you know, $50, $100, $200, $400, whatever. The only question now is how short the periods will be between prices doubling again."

Coincidentally, while this report was in preparation, on April 30, 2008, PEMEX, Mexico's national oil company, announced it would be unable to fulfill this year's scheduled oil export obligations to the United States ... falling short by about 11%, or 184,000 barrels a day.

(As an aside, I also have to believe that Mexico's coming transition to a net importer and the loss of almost 6% of the country's GDP, now earned from exporting oil, will trigger serious social issues in that country. But that is another story for another day.)

The Even Bigger Picture

In my interview, I also asked Jeffrey to share his thoughts on the situation globally. Here's his response.

"Global production peaked in 2005, and we're now into the third year of decline. And the critical point to keep in mind is, our model and case histories show that the decline rate accelerates, year by year. Using the Lower 48 in the United States as an example, you can see the annual declines going 2%, 3%, 5%, 7%, 10%, 15%, 20, on and on. So it's an accelerating decline rate."

Underscoring Brown's concerns:

On April 15, 2008 the Russians, the world's second largest oil exporter, announced that their oil production appeared to have peaked, with production in the first quarter of this year declining for the first time in a decade. If they have indeed peaked then, based on the ELM, the world could lose Russia's current ~7 million barrels a day in exports within 6 to 9 years.
Echoing the baseline premise of the ELM, Herman Franssen, president of International Energy Associates, projects that Iran, the world's fifth largest exporter, may consume an amount equal to their exports by 2015. A prominent oil analyst, the late Dr. Ali Samsam Bakhtiari, estimated that Iran is either at or near peak.
Most concerning, this April Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah announced they were not going to raise oil production above 12.5 million barrels a day. Commenting on the news, Tom Petrie, vice president of Merrill Lynch, said

"King Abdullah's quote speaks to the fast-emerging reality of what I call 'practical peak oil.' The Saudis and other exporters are placing a new emphasis on elongating the petroleum exploitation and depletion cycle. This stems from a growing awareness of the challenges of conventional resource maturity, as well as rising resource nationalism. This is likely to result in an earlier occurrence of global peak oil output than many consumers yet recognize."

Summing it up, Brown told me that "The reality is that this thing is coming so much faster and so much harder than even most pessimists were expecting."

Rice & Oil: a Useful Comparable

For a useful way to think about energy exports and prices, Jeff Brown points to the current situation with global rice supplies.

As long as there are abundant local supplies, countries are happy, eager in fact, to export excess production in order to generate foreign exchange. But as soon as local consumption exceeds locally available production, then all hell breaks loose, and the next thing you know countries are banning exports, a move that has already been undertaken by Vietnam and a number of other countries.

In that scenario, price is eventually no longer a factor in the availability of the commodity. Vietnam, for example, is not going to let its people starve just because higher global prices would allow it to earn an extra $10 per bag of rice.

And so in the face of the prospect of any serious shortage of an important resource -- energy being maybe the most important - export markets freeze up and the price begins to be set at the margin, literally based on a global competition for the dwindling supplies that manage to leak out around the edges.

"People are crazy not to be focusing on the oil export situation," Dr. Brown told me.

Any White Knights on the Horizon?

Of course, the question of energy alternatives is a big topic and one which needs a far more extensive discussion than space allows for here.

Will viable alternatives be developed to help mitigate a domino collapse of oil exports? Absolutely. Of those alternatives, nuclear, solar, and heavy oil seem to hold the greatest promise.

But the sheer scope of the problem - with the world now consuming the energy equivalent of 1 billion barrels of oil every 5 days - assures that we are probably decades away from a real solution.

In the words of Jeff Brown:

"If you look at the situation in US presidential terms, looking at fossil fuels plus nuclear, the world burned through the equivalent of 10% of all oil ever consumed in Bush's first 4-year term. And, in our model, we're going to burn 10% of all remaining conventional crude in the second 4 years of Bush's term.

"That is the equivalent of around 25 billion barrels a year. So that's 100 billion barrels every four years, and we've burned 1,000 billion barrels. It gets interesting when you consider that current estimates are that we've only got 1,000 billion barrels of conventional crude remaining. I think with natural gas liquids, we've got a little bit more. But of the conventional crude oil, we've got 1,000 billion remaining. Which then begs the question, how fast can we bring on the tar sands and everything else?"

Grasping for straws, I asked Jeff about an article I had read recently about the Bakken oil shale reserves around North Dakota.

"They're talking about somewhere between 200 billion and 500 billion barrels in situ, but the USGS recently came out with a mean estimate of between 2.5 and 4.4 billion barrels recoverable, as an outer limit," he replied, before continuing:

"In 1966 they said, if Lower 48 ultimately recoverable is 150 billion barrels, then the US would peak in 1966. If the recoverable oil from the Lower 48 ultimately came in at 200 billion barrels, then the US peak would come in 1971. The higher-end estimate probably turned out to more accurate, and the U.S. peaked in 1970. But the point is this: a one-third increase of estimated ultimate recoverable - a total increase of 50 billion barrels - postponed the peak by all of 5 years."

Rigging for Persistent High Energy Prices

The trend for sustained higher energy prices appears solidly in motion. If Brown and the ELM are correct, energy prices will double, then double again.

Even if he is wrong and prices don't rise geometrically, the global dogfight to replace declining supplies - decidedly exacerbated by the loss of Mexican and maybe Russian (and ??) exports in the near future - is going to get ugly and expensive.

So, what's the investment angle? Paradoxically, the larger energy companies are probably a bad bet, because they are forced to replace their depleting reserves, which is getting harder and more expensive to do with each passing day.

It is our contention that, because the solutions to the world's energy problems are going to involve a variety of energy sources and technologies, you have to build a portfolio that is equally varied.

That assures you are well positioned to profit from the broader trend, while avoiding the risks of being overly exposed to a single sector. (As an example, solar has had a great run, but most solar plays are now overvalued.)

The good news is that there are no shortage of high-quality energy-related investments available ... in coal, heavy oil, LNG, photovoltaics, natural gas consolidators, "run of river" hydroelectric, uranium, and small to mid-cap oil companies with the potential for significant near-term gains in reserves or production.

In the final analysis, it comes down to two choices: you can either suffer the consequences of persistent higher energy prices, or use the work Jeffrey Brown has done with the Export Land Model as an early warning and get positioned to profit.

The decision is yours, but don't wait long to make it.

David Galland is the Managing Director of Casey Research, publishers of the Casey Energy Speculator, a comprehensive newsletter dedicated to helping individuals and institutions uncover today's most undervalued and compelling energy investments. A no-risk three-month trial subscription is available that allows you to access all current recommendations and to decide for yourself if the service is right for you. Learn more by clicking here now.

Your believing the cure for high prices is high prices analyst,

John Mauldin

Why the Big Money in Gold Shares Still Lies Ahead

John Mauldin — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 18:17:00 GMT

Introduction This week in Outside the Box we take a quizzical gander at the gold market, its growth-to-date, and potential future investment opportunity. We have witnessed a significant rise in the gold market from a July 1999 price of $252 an once, to...(read more)