Search results matching tag 'Globalization'

Beyond the Sound Bite: An Interview with Christian Menegatti

VinnyCatalano — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:31:00 GMT

In my interview with Nouriel Roubini's Head of Global Economic Research Mr. Menegatti expressed a cautiously optimistic outlook for the US economy with few signs of a double dip, a stagnant Eurozone outlook, limited concern re contagion from the Greek tragedy, key risks to global trade, and why Gold appears to be in a win/win situation.

The length of the interview is 18 minutes 01 second.

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Vinny Catalano, CFA, Global Investment Strategist with Blue Marble Research publishes the "Sectors and Styles Strategy Report" newsletter, which contains the market beating Model Growth Portfolio. To learn about subscribing as well as other benefits, click here.

Beyond the Sound Bite: An Interview with Alexander Young

VinnyCatalano — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:35:00 GMT

In my second interview with the International Equity Strategist for Standard and Poors we discussed the S&P economic outlook, the rebound in global trade, the advised investment focus on global cyclical leadership, and risks of an economic double dip.

The length of the interview is 12 minutes 05 seconds.

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V Shaped Rally ≠ V Shaped Recovery

VinnyCatalano — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:56:00 GMT

Yesterday’s posted interview with David Malpass brings into sharp focus a key aspect of the US economic recovery that far too few investors are tuned into. Specifically, the underappreciated dynamic that second, third, and lower tier companies (the backbone of employment growth in the US) may not deliver the much anticipated above consensus earnings results this and future quarters ahead. Moreover, as the backbone of employment growth, weakness in second, third, and lower tier companies act as a depressant on wages, hours worked, and consumer sentiment. Therefore, how the US (and global economy) will reach a sustainable recovery without the US consumer is a riddle wrapped in an enigma.

Lacking a large exposure to global markets (where the growth is and where the weak US dollar helps deliver strong short term results), the SMIDS (small and mid cap companies) on down are vulnerable to disappointing investors with at or below consensus earnings results next month. In this regard, David points out in the interview that above consensus earnings results this coming 3Q09 for large and mega cap multi nationals may come to pass via pricing power pressures on all companies offset by volume growth courtesy a cannibalization of the units growth to lower tier companies.

(As a reminder, 2Q09 bottom line results surprised to the upside thanks to cost cutting, as top line growth was largely in line with expectations. In the current quarter ending next week, expectations are for above consensus earnings results produced by top line growth that surprises to the upside (with cost cutting is largely done). With the US economy still on its knees, it is hard to see how US domestic top line growth (revenues = price x units sold) can surprise to the upside. How this happens for companies that will not benefit from global markets (and a weak dollar) is a mystery soon to be revealed.)

Investment Strategy Implications

In a liquidity driven stock market, all logic goes out the window – for a while. Justifications for over valued markets abound. And buy high to sell higher becomes the music that all performance based investors must dance to. Phrases like “melt up”, thanks to expectations that the $3.5 trillion sitting in near zero percent money market funds will be forced into equities, is the support rendered for P/E ratios that warrant above average (i.e. 15 times) levels. Sound familiar?

In such times, a prudent investor is a contrarian investor. Momentum driven/fast money “investors” awaiting sideline money to sell to on the basis of melt ups and a sustainable global economic recovery rooted in a deleveraging US consumer may turn out to be a fantasy bubble about to burst.

Vinny Catalano, CFA, is President and Global Investment Strategist with Blue Marble Research (BMR). BMR publishes the "Sectors and Styles Strategy Report" newsletter, which contains the market beating Model Growth Portfolio. To learn about subscribing as well as other benefits, click here.

Beyond the Sound Bite: An Interview with Vitaliy Katsenelson

VinnyCatalano — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:27:00 GMT

My conversation with the Director of Research for Investment Management Associates and author of "Active Value Investing: Making Money in Range-bound Markets" includes the investment significance re the wide gap between operating earnings and GAAP earnings, reasons to doubt China's published growth rate, the sustainability of the rally in gold, and a major contrarian call on healthcare.

The length of the interview is 17 minutes 58 seconds.

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The 3 Phases of this Bull Market

VinnyCatalano — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:41:00 GMT

The stock market rally since early March appears to have three distinct phases to it.

The first phase was the backing off from the economic abyss. The second phase was a bounce to fair value normalcy. The third phase (the one we are in now) is what I would call the return to business as usual phase (or “Recession. What recession?).

From where I sit, the first two phases were justified on many levels. Both phases featured massive amounts of government intervention combined with strong technicals to produce a rally to fair value. The elimination of the tail risk of the Great Depression II was followed by the above consensus macro economic readings (my MERI indicator), which was reinforced by the above consensus earnings results of 2Q09. Stocks rose to a reasonable fair value. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, at this point the seeds of questionable earlier decisions began to bear fruit. (Now, this going to sound very libertarian, so here goes.) Instead of pursuing the necessary cleansing process that all excesses produce, the Obama administration (which includes the US Treasury and the “independent” Federal Reserve) opted for a massive debt transference from the private to the public sector with the hope that time will heal all wounds. Along with this decision to socialize the bad behavior of the private sector most responsible for the crisis, the financial services industry, the Obama administration supported its core structure built on the laissez-faire era of the past two decades, accepting the largely unsubstantiated argument that financial innovation is a vital and necessary good for the economy.

With the government’s tacit support of the status quo, the investment mood shifted from fear and concern to hope and then enthusiasm.

The evidence of this mood shift back to the animal spirits days of yore came from a logical source – the financial services industry, the very sector of the global economy that provided the financial innovation grease to the out of control freight train of credit. And what better symbolic locomotive than Goldman Sachs, whose earnings report of July 14th whistled the bad old days were back in action. At this point, the Obama administration swung into action – with silence.

With its absence of outrage, the increasingly politically tone deaf Obama administration sent the public policy signal that its okay to bring the world economy to its knees, its okay to get bailed out with taxpayer money, its okay to shrink the competitive landscape (via Bear and Lehman’s demise), and its okay to return to the way things were – big profits and in your face fat bonuses.

The product of this wink and nod to Wall Street was the backlash at town hall meetings, which were as much about fairness as they were about healthcare reform concerns, a paranoid view of government, and a reactionary view of what constitutes being an American. It also produced an enthusiasm for stocks and an implied return to the bad old days.

Investment Strategy Implications

When you combine all these factors with the massive amount of investment capital ($3.5 trillion) still sitting in the near zero interest rate money market sidelines, the rising belief among many institutional investors that P/Es above their historical average are justified in the current low inflation environment, and the fledgling confidence that the global economy is on the mend* (along with the blind faith that the economic data from China is real), it is understandable how valuation levels could get to where they are today – stretched.

The investment question then becomes, “Is this a solid enough foundation upon which sustainable bull markets are built?” I have my doubts.

*I suggest reading Nouriel Roubini's comments in yesterday's FT.

The End User Dilemma

VinnyCatalano — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 03:02:00 GMT

Back on August 3rd subscribers to my weekly newsletter - Sectors and Styles Strategy Report - read the following:

"China may become the bigger fly in the bullish ointment. Unlike the US, China has spent all of its stimulus package money not on consumer demand related areas (where it is most needed) but on more infrastructure projects. Since the US consumer is and will remain in balance sheet repair mode for a while and developed economy consumers (Europe and Japan) reluctant and/or unable to pick up the slack, end user (consumer) demand must materialize from emerging economies. With savings rates very high in China and other developing economies, expectations of V-shaped global economy recovery of a sustainable nature (meaning balanced and asset bubble free) seem fairly unlikely.

Therefore, a close eye should be kept on China and the very real prospect that a bubble burst may occur in that country. Should such an event occur, the global growth story becomes highly suspect, and equity values based on a global V-shaped recovery and expansion very problematic."

At the end of the day, somebody has got to buy something from someone else. The government may be the lender of last resort but it is not the buyer of last resort. That title belongs you and me - the consumer. And, despite its best Keynesian wishes, the prospect of demand being a guaranteed result of fiscal stimuli remains an unresolved mystery. Therefore, as helpful as next year's conveniently politically-timed US stimulus package will be, it cannot be, nor should be, counted on as lifting the world economy out of its end user dilemma. Moreover, government schemes like "cash for clunkers" get you only so far. They're like a life preserver keeping one's economic head just above the water, and nothing more.

Investment Strategy Implications

When stocks moved away from the abyss a certain sense of relief was taken to a modestly enthusiastic extreme. The more optimistic drank the valuation kool-aid of born again bullish investment strategists. "The more things change, the more they remain the same" became the mantra as business as usual replaced the panic-driven mindset - business most unusual.

With the past few days of market decline, perhaps reality will begin to sink into the valuation equation. Hopefully (but not likely), the vital focus on what is necessary for a sustainable global economic recovery will take center stage. And with it a concentrated effort to appreciate the end user dilemma.

When Goldman Talks, Investors Listen

VinnyCatalano — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:46:00 GMT

For the past two months, I have made the argument that above consensus macro economic data would lead to above consensus earnings results and that investors would see the evidence of this as 2Q09 earnings season got underway. Based on the reports issued thus far, this argument has won the day as above consensus earnings results have matched the above consensus macro economic reports preceding them. Accordingly, stocks responded.

The second part of my argument was that such positive data would eventually encourage bottom up analysts (along with many investment strategists and top down economists) to reassess their more cautionary views and begin to raise their full year earnings expectations for this and next year. This, too, has begun to occur – none more significantly than from the investment strategy folks over at Goldman.

In a research report published yesterday, the Goldman strategists raised their estimates of S&P 500 operating earnings for this and next year - from $40 to $52 and from $63 to $75, for 2009 and 2010, respectively. In the process, the group estimated the target fair value for the S&P 500 at 1060 – ten points above my best guesstimate for the year (as reported in the Wall Street Journal on December 30, 2008) and my more evolved view of the same number based on the simple math of the historical average P/E of 15 times a mid 2010 estimate of $70 = 1050. As John McLane (“Die Hard”) might say, “Welcome to the party, pal”.

With Goldman in tow and many fence-sitting traditional money managers and individual investors being forced to reconsider the wisdom of leaving $3.5 trillion in money market funds earning 0.1%, the more meaningful investment strategy question is “Where are we in the stock market cycle?”

Investment Strategy Implications

As expressed in this week’s research report to subscribers, stocks are clearly in extreme overbought territory at the top end of the range. A completed bottom has not occurred. Therefore, stagnation (at best) or a pullback (most likely) appears to be in the very short-term offing for stocks.

That said, each week provides more evidence that the global economy has moved further away from the economic abyss of early March. Now that monetary stimulus and creative governmental action has done its work, the bulk of the fiscal stimulus package (conveniently timed for the 2010 election cycle) will provide the needed power to move the economic needle from stabilization to growth.

Aided by the global growth story (from emerging economies) as well as the likely positive forces of the wealth effect (from higher financial asset values), corporations, having demonstrated their ability to manage solid results in times deep economic distress, should be able to generate very satisfactory earnings results in an overall improving global economic climate - including a modest contribution from the US consumer.

So, where are we in the stock market cycle?

Stocks appear to be well into a transitional phase – one in which sector (style, country, and regional) rotation will (must?) produce the new leadership necessary for a new bull market to sustain itself to 1050 and beyond. The rotation to new leadership coupled with a completed bottom are the stock market signs most worthy of investor attention.

Europe on the Brink

JohnMauldin — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 03:30:00 GMT

Europe on the Brink
And Then There Was Leverage
Too Big To Save
Those Wild and Crazy Swiss
A Positive Third Quarter?
New York and Maine

We have avoided Armageddon, at least for now. The cost to the US taxpayer has been a few trillion. Some in the media are loudly announcing the end of the recession. But we are not out of the woods yet. There are a few more bumps in the road. Actually, some of them are quite steep hills. As big as the subprime problem? Maybe.

When asked a few weeks ago what was my biggest short-term concern, I quickly replied, "European banks have the potential to create significant risk for the entire worldwide system." This week we will glance "over the pond" to see what gives me cause for concern. Then we briefly look at a few of the bumps I mentioned, which are likely to stretch out any recovery, and maybe even dip us back into recession.

But first, a quick announcement. We are making dramatic changes to my free Accredited Investor E-Letter and service, and will have a new web site and much improved content in a month or so. But in the meantime, I have just finished a new letter; and if you sign up at the current site, you will of course get all the new services and benefits when we make the changes, as well as this new letter. Basically, this service is for accredited investors (net worth of $1.5 million or more) who are interested in learning more about and investing in alternative funds like hedge funds, commodity funds, and so on. You will get a call from one of my worldwide partners (Altegris Investments in the US, Absolute Return Partners in Europe, Nicola Asset Management in Canada, Plexus Asset Management in Africa, and Fynn Capital in Latin America) and gain access to a lot of information and an easy way to preview what I think is a great line-up of quality funds and managers. You can go to www.accreditedinvestor.ws and sign up today. Don't procrastinate! (In this regard, I am president and a registered representative of Millennium Wave Securities, LLC, member NASD.)

And for those of you in the US who are on your way to becoming accredited investors (but not there yet), my friends at CMG have a platform of alternative managers that can be tailored to your specific needs. You really owe it to yourself to see the managers on their platform. The link to their form is http://www.cmgfunds.net/public/mauldin_questionnaire.asp. And now, let's jump into the letter.

Europe on the Brink

Globalization is a two-edged sword. On balance, it has brought prosperity to those who have embraced it, with rising lifestyles, better health, longer lives, and more. The more we need each other, the less likely it is that we'll shoot each other. Shooting your customers is not a good business strategy. And while the growth has not been even or smooth, only a Luddite would want to return to the early 1800s or 1900s, or even 1975.

The other edge of that sword? We are connected in so very many ways, far more than most of the world suspected. Who thought that insane lending policies at US mortgage banks would bring the world financial system to its knees, increasing unemployment and leading to a global recession? World trade is down 20% or more. US railroad shipments are down more than 20% year-over-year. Chinese (and Asian) factories have seen their orders drop, as US consumers have gone on strike. The US trade deficit was just $25 billion last month; and while our exports are still dropping, our imports are dropping more. Oil is becoming a bigger and bigger share of imports, and that does not come from Asian exporters.

The US is far and away the country with the largest gross domestic product (GDP). California would be the 7^th largest country, but few think of California in such terms. For this letter, at least, I would like to think of Europe as a whole rather than as 27 countries. From that perspective, Europe is as economically important to the world as the US. What happens in Europe makes a difference in the US.

Last week we looked at the precarious position of Japan, the second largest economy (or third if you think of Europe as a whole). It was a sobering letter. When you realize the extent to which Japan has funded Asian expansion, what is happening there cannot be good for the world.

But Europe's banks have been much more aggressive in funding emerging-market expansion than US or Japanese banks. Western European banks have lent $4.5 trillion to various emerging-market countries, businesses, and consumers. Many Eastern European businesses borrowed in low-interest-rate euros. New homeowners in Hungary and the rest of Eastern Europe borrowed in Swiss francs and euros, and as their currencies have collapsed they now find they owe more on their homes than they're worth.

And here's the problem. Europe's banking system is in far worse shape than the US system. The losses may be bigger, and their capital to meet those losses is certainly less. Let's look at some charts. Remove sharp objects or pour another adult beverage.

As I noted last week, one of the real benefits of writing this letter is that I get to see a lot of really interesting information from readers and meet with very savvy investment professionals. I recently had the privilege of sitting with a team of analysts from Hayman Capital here in Dallas. Hayman runs a global macro hedge fund, so they spend a lot of time thinking about how all the different aspects of the global markets fit together. This week we again look at some of their analysis. There was a lot of work (as in months) done here; and Kyle Bass, the founder of the firm, graciously allowed me to share some of it with you (and kudos to Wes Swank, who pulled this together). The graphs are theirs, and my discussion about them is certainly informed by our meeting; but I am using the material as a launching point, so they are not responsible for my conclusions and interpretations.

And Then There Was Leverage

In the first few years of the G.W. Bush administration, the banking authorities decided it would be OK to allow five banks to increase their leverage from 12:1 up to 30:1. Which five banks, you ask? Bear Stearns, Lehman, Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs. How did that work out, just five years later? Three are gone and two survived with large dollops of taxpayer money.

(Sidebar: Is it really any surprise that Goldman and JPMorgan are making record profits on the underwriting and trading side of the business? Hell, if I could eliminate 50% of my competition, my profits would grow too! JPMorgan's consumer credit, credit card, and other business groups are losing money big-time.)

Thirty times leverage means that if you lose 3.3%, you wipe out all your capital. And we watched as banks too big to fail were bailed out with taxpayer dollars. Slowly, banks are buying time, writing down assets. Remember, this month is the second anniversary of the onset of the credit crisis. I wrote back then that the strategy would be to stretch this out as long as possible. Time heals a lot of bad debts, especially at a 0% Fed Funds rate.

Banks that are reporting so far this quarter seem to be saying that the write-offs will start to level off in about two quarters, although banking expert Chris Whalen says that the level may stay higher than we think for longer than we think. There are a lot of assets to write off, and they are just now getting to the commercial real estate problems. This is going to take time. (For an interesting interview on CNBC with Maine fishing buddy Chris Whalen, click here: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/07/christopher-whalen-banking/.)

The point, before we get to Europe, is that here there was a central bank and a government that not only could step in but was willing to. I know former Treasury Secretary Paulson had his critics, but I am not one of them. Did he do some things that in hindsight he might like to take a "mulligan" on? Sure. But he dealt with the problems in the best manner he could. The time to have taken action was when we were making liar and no-doc loans and calling then AAA, or allowing banks to go to 30:1 leverage. Paulson had to deal with eggs that were already broken. That the system did not crater is to his credit. Securitizing what he and everyone else should have known would be garbage while he was head of Goldman Sachs is not to his credit. But I digress.

I am going to give you four charts showing the leverage of banks in the US, the United Kingdom, the Eurozone, and Switzerland. The bottom, blue portion is assets to common and preferred stock; the red is assets to common equity, which can include good will; and the purple is assets to tangible common equity.

Tangible common equity is all the rage, and that is what the recent "stress tests" measured, as opposed to tier 1 capital, which includes preferred stock (which would basically be the blue portion.) TCE only includes common shares. Now, let's start with the US. These graphs show leverage. The average leverage of tier 1 capital of the five largest banks is in the range of 12:1, and is actually down from ten years ago. (By the way, a very good and simple explanation of all this can be found at http://baselinescenario.com/2009/02/24/tangible-common-equity-for-beginners/.)

While the TCE has obviously been rising and taking total leverage to rather lofty levels in the mid-40s, banks are raising capital, and over time leverage will come back down. It helps if you can borrow money at almost nothing and lend it out at much higher rates. Now, let's turn to the United Kingdom. This is uglier.

Regulators in the UK allowed 20:1 leverage on a regular basis. It is now almost 40: and with TCE is around 55. The assets of UK banks are about five times as large as UK GDP. By comparison, for the US the ratio is barely 2:1.

Think about that for a second. The UK has banking assets which are five times as large as the annual domestic output of the country. They also had a housing bubble. They have their own bailouts to deal with, which are massive and will potentially get much larger. But at least they have a central bank and government that can try to fix the problems.

But as the commercial says, "But wait, there's more!" Let's look at the Eurozone.

Leverage is now 35:1 and with TCE is almost 55. How did 35:1 work out for the US? Given the massive credit problems that Eurozone banks have with emerging markets (plus Spain's housing bubble, which is every bit as bad as that of the US), will this not end up in wailing and weeping?

Too Big To Save

And here's the real issue. They have no Paulson and Bernanke. Now some of my Austrian-economist friends will say, "Good, they should all be allowed to die;" but that is a very cavalier attitude when you start talking about actually increasing the unemployment rate to something like 20%. I agree that management should be changed (as well as the regulators: 35:1 to 1 - really? What were they thinking?) and shareholders wiped out, but I do not want the system to collapse. And this is a global risk, not just localized to Ireland or Spain or Austria. Sure, the pain might be worse in the local region, but we will all feel it.

The European Central Bank, at least as of now, cannot step in and start saving individual banks. How do you save a Spanish bank and not an Austrian bank? Austria's banks have made large loans to Eastern Europe, in euros and Swiss francs, and are going to have large losses, far more than 3%, which would wipe out their capital. But bank assets in Austria are 4 times GDP. What we have are banks that are too big to save for relatively small Austria. And for Italy, Spain, Greece, et al. More on this below. For now, let's turn our eyes to Switzerland.

Those Wild and Crazy Swiss

We think of Switzerland as a stodgy, by-the-numbers, clockwork type of banking country. I have done business with Swiss private bankers, and they are conservative. But somewhere, somehow, UBS and Credit Suisse ran up a little leverage. Before the crisis, they were over 40:1. And now they're nearly at a nosebleed-high 70!

As an aside, I was in Switzerland about two years ago, meeting with some very well-known Swiss, let's call them dignitaries. In a very off-the-record conversation, they told me UBS was technically bankrupt. As it turns out, there were a lot of banks around the world that were technically bankrupt.

Now, the next graph underscores the problem of "too big to save." Let's say the US will eventually pump $1 trillion into the banking system (in taxpayer losses). That is about 7% of US GDP. We may not like it, but it doesn't stop the game. US bank assets are only twice US GDP. Switzerland and Ireland are over 7 times, the UK is over 5, and the Eurozone is at 4 times. And so it goes.

Eurozone banks are already reeling from losses from US subprime-related problems. They are now getting ready to deal with even deeper losses from their own lending portfolios. If the losses were just 5% of the portfolio (an optimistic assumption), it would be 20% of Eurozone GDP. But each country is responsible for its own banks. While it is thought Germany will be able to handle its problems, the prognostication for Austria and Italy is not so sanguine. Italy is already running a massive deficit, and has no central bank to monetize its debt. The same goes for Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Ireland. 5% loan losses in Ireland would be 40% of GDP, the equivalent for my fellow US citizens of about $5 trillion. Where does Europe find a few trillion dollars?

I was writing in late 2006 that the subprime lending market would end in tears. And I think the European banking crisis that is on the horizon has the potential to be every bit as big a problem as subprime loans. The world depended on Europeans banks for much of the lending that allowed for growth and development. Like their counterparts in the US, they are going to have to reduce their loan portfolios. Deleveraging is not fun.

It takes time to build up a banking infrastructure that can raise the capital necessary to make and process loans. A lot of time. Europe is a big customer of the US and Asia. Their businesses are going to be hit hard by the lack of capital, which is of course no good for employment, etc. We are all connected. What happens in Rome no longer stays in Rome.

Let me reprint a graph from last week. Burn it into your mind. The world is going to need to find $5 trillion to finance government debt issuance. And we need to fund private business and consumer debt. Where is all this money going to come from? "If you lend me $5 trillion today, I will gladly repay you Tuesday."

A Positive Third Quarter?

Those who are calling for the end of the recession are shouting that the third quarter may be positive in terms of GDP. And that is possible. But only for statistical and not for fundamental reasons. For instance, lower imports are a net positive for GDP. But lower imports mean a weaker economy. Government spending adds to GDP. Normally, if the government spends too much, then we get inflation, which is subtracted from nominal GDP to give us real (after-inflation) GDP. But inflation is low and getting lower, so there is not going to be much to subtract from nominal GDP. Are government spending and massive deficits a sign of fundamental strength?

It is quite usual for there to be a positive quarter in the middle of a recession. Watch the fundamentals: industrial production, unemployment, capacity utilization, tax receipts, etc. When those turn up, or at least level off, the recession is over. Then we get to the long recovery.

Quick point. As I have noted, unemployment is at 9.5% and going to 11% and hopefully no higher. Average hours worked per week is at an all-time low. The number of people working part-time but wanting full-time work is another 7%! And that part-time number is rising very rapidly.

When the recovery actually does begin to manifest itself, and it eventually will as we find the New Normal, what do you think employers are going to do? Hire new workers? Or give their current employees more hours? The latter, of course. This is going to be a long, slow, painful, jobless recovery. Unemployment is going to remain stubbornly high.

And this Congress wants to raise taxes on small business. 75% of the "rich" are small businesses. How do you expand your business in California or New York, where taxes will be over 60% by the time you add in local taxes? We will talk about this next week; but as a preview, from an economic viewpoint, massively raising taxes in the middle of a recession is about as dumb as you can get. But it looks like we are headed there. Green shoots, my foot.

New York and Maine

I'll head to Maine in early August with youngest son Trey to fish with my friends and talk economics. Meanwhile, # 2 daughter Melissa will soon have to have her gall bladder removed. Amanda gets married next month. Two more grandchildren (in addition to the one I had last month) in the next five months. Watching #2 son struggle with a budding family, and getting fewer hours as even the health-care business slows down. UPS is giving #1 son fewer hours than he needs. Life is always interesting with seven kids.

I can remember really struggling as a young entrepreneur in my 20s and 30s. There were many nights I couldn't sleep as I worried about payroll or a bill coming due. No one gave me a course in basic business. I had to learn it "on –the –job," as they say. It wasn't always pretty. It was a struggle starting out in the '70s, but you got up every morning and did your best. It was not easy. And now, I watch my kids do the same thing. It is a struggle for them, too. It is a reminder how just lucky I am. I truly feel I am one of the most blessed of men.

Have a great week, and remember that the world will not come to an end. It is important to find the good in life and enjoy it, even in the midst of the fight. Somehow, we will all figure out how to Muddle Through together.

Your ready to find some wine analyst,

John Mauldin

The Geography of Recession

JohnMauldin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:16:46 GMT

Dear Friends:

One of the first things you learn about analyzing a company is how to dissect a balance sheet. What assets and liabilities can be deployed by a company to create equity over time? I've enclosed a fascinating variant on this process. Take a look at how STRATFOR has analyzed the "geographic balance sheets" of the US, Russia, China, and Europe to understand why different countries' economies have suffered to varying degrees from the current economic crisis.

As investors, it's precisely this type of outside-the-box thinking that can provide us profitable opportunities, and it's precisely this type of outside-the-box thinking that makes STRATFOR such an important part of my investment decision making. The key to investment profits is thinking differently and thinking earlier than the next guy. STRATFOR's work exemplifies both these traits.

I've arranged for a special deal on a STRATFOR Membership for my readers, which you can click here to take advantage of. Many of you are invested in alternative strategies, but I want to make sure that you also employ alternative thinking strategies. So take a look at these different "country balance sheets" as you formulate your plans.

Your Mapping It Out Analyst,

John Mauldin

The Geography of Recession

By Peter Zeihan

The United States and the Free Market

The most important aspect of the United States is not simply its sheer size, but the size of its usable land. Russia and China may both be similar-sized in absolute terms, but the vast majority of Russian and Chinese land is useless for agriculture, habitation or development. In contrast, courtesy of the Midwest, the United States boasts the world's largest contiguous mass of arable land — and that mass does not include the hardly inconsequential chunks of usable territory on both the West and East coasts.

Second is the American maritime transport system. The Mississippi River, linked as it is to the Red, Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee rivers, comprises the largest interconnected network of navigable rivers in the world. In the San Francisco Bay, Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound/New York Bay, the United States has three of the world's largest and best natural harbors. The series of barrier islands a few miles off the shores of Texas and the East Coast form a water-based highway — an Intercoastal Waterway — that shields American coastal shipping from all but the worst that the elements can throw at ships and ports.

The real beauty is that the two overlap with near perfect symmetry. The Intercoastal Waterway and most of the bays link up with agricultural regions and their own local river systems (such as the series of rivers that descend from the Appalachians to the East Coast), while the Greater Mississippi river network is the circulatory system of the Midwest. Even without the addition of canals, it is possible for ships to reach nearly any part of the Midwest from nearly any part of the Gulf or East coasts. The result is not just a massive ability to grow a massive amount of crops — and not just the ability to easily and cheaply move the crops to local, regional and global markets — but also the ability to use that same transport network for any other economic purpose without having to worry about food supplies.

The implications of such a confluence are deep and sustained. Where most countries need to scrape together capital to build roads and rail to establish the very foundation of an economy, transport capability, geography granted the United States a near-perfect system at no cost. That frees up U.S. capital for other pursuits and almost condemns the United States to be capital-rich. Any additional infrastructure the United States constructs is icing on the cake. (The cake itself is free — and, incidentally, the United States had so much free capital that it was able to go on to build one of the best road-and-rail networks anyway, resulting in even greater economic advantages over competitors.)

Third, geography has also ensured that the United States has very little local competition. To the north, Canada is both much colder and much more mountainous than the United States. Canada's only navigable maritime network — the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway —is shared with the United States, and most of its usable land is hard by the American border. Often this makes it more economically advantageous for Canadian provinces to integrate with their neighbor to the south than with their co-nationals to the east and west.

Similarly, Mexico has only small chunks of land, separated by deserts and mountains, that are useful for much more than subsistence agriculture; most of Mexican territory is either too dry, too tropical or too mountainous. And Mexico completely lacks any meaningful river system for maritime transport. Add in a largely desert border, and Mexico as a country is not a meaningful threat to American security (which hardly means that there are not serious and ongoing concerns in the American-Mexican relationship).

With geography empowering the United States and hindering Canada and Mexico, the United States does not need to maintain a large standing military force to counter either. The Canadian border is almost completely unguarded, and the Mexican border is no more than a fence in most locations — a far cry from the sort of military standoffs that have marked more adversarial borders in human history. Not only are Canada and Mexico not major threats, but the U.S. transport network allows the United States the luxury of being able to quickly move a smaller force to deal with occasional problems rather than requiring it to station large static forces on its borders.

Like the transport network, this also helps the U.S. focus its resources on other things.

Taken together, the integrated transport network, large tracts of usable land and lack of a need for a standing military have one critical implication: The U.S. government tends to take a hands-off approach to economic management, because geography has not cursed the United States with any endemic problems. This may mean that the United States — and especially its government — comes across as disorganized, but it shifts massive amounts of labor and capital to the private sector, which for the most part allows resources to flow to wherever they will achieve the most efficient and productive results.

Laissez-faire capitalism has its flaws. Inequality and social stress are just two of many less-than-desirable side effects. The side effects most relevant to the current situation are, of course, the speculative bubbles that cause recessions when they pop. But in terms of long-term economic efficiency and growth, a free capital system is unrivaled. For the United States, the end result has proved clear: The United States has exited each decade since post-Civil War Reconstruction more powerful than it was when it entered it. While there are many forces in the modern world that threaten various aspects of U.S. economic standing, there is not one that actually threatens the U.S. base geographic advantages.

Is the United States in recession? Of course. Will it be forever? Of course not. So long as U.S. geographic advantages remain intact, it takes no small amount of paranoia and pessimism to envision anything but long-term economic expansion for such a chunk of territory. In fact, there are a number of factors hinting that the United States may even be on the cusp of recovery.

Russia and the State

If in economic terms the United States has everything going for it geographically, then Russia is just the opposite. The Russian steppe lies deep in the interior of the Eurasian landmass, and as such is subject to climatic conditions much more hostile to human habitation and agriculture than is the American Midwest. Even in those blessed good years when crops are abundant in Russia, it has no river network to allow for easy transport of products.

Russia has no good warm-water ports to facilitate international trade (and has spent much of its history seeking access to one). Russia does have long rivers, but they are not interconnected as the Mississippi is with its tributaries, instead flowing north to the Arctic Ocean, which can support no more than a token population. The one exception is the Volga, which is critical to Western Russian commerce but flows to the Caspian, a storm-wracked and landlocked sea whose delta freezes in the winter (along with the entire Volga itself). Developing such unforgiving lands requires a massive outlay of funds simply to build the road and rail networks necessary to achieve the most basic of economic development. The cost is so extreme that Russia's first ever intercontinental road was not completed until the 21st century, and it is little more than a two-lane path for much of its length. Between the lack of ports and the relatively low population densities, little of Russia's transport system beyond the St. Petersburg/Moscow corridor approaches anything that hints of economic rationality.

Russia also has no meaningful external borders. It sits on the eastern end of the North European Plain, which stretches all the way to Normandy, France, and Russia's connections to the Asian steppe flow deep into China. Because Russia lacks a decent internal transport network that can rapidly move armies from place to place, geography forces Russia to defend itself following two strategies. First, it requires massive standing armies on all of its borders. Second, it dictates that Russia continually push its boundaries outward to buffer its core against external threats.

Both strategies compromise Russian economic development even further. The large standing armies are a continual drain on state coffers and the country's labor pool; their cost was a critical economic factor in the Soviet fall. The expansionist strategy not only absorbs large populations that do not wish to be part of the Russian state and so must constantly be policed — the core rationale for Russia's robust security services — but also inflates Russia's infrastructure development costs by increasing the amount of relatively useless territory Moscow is responsible for.

Russia's labor and capital resources are woefully inadequate to overcome the state's needs and vulnerabilities, which are legion. These endemic problems force Russia toward central planning; the full harnessing of all economic resources available is required if Russia is to achieve even a modicum of security and stability. One of the many results of this is severe economic inefficiency and a general dearth of an internal consumer market. Because capital and other resources can be flung forcefully at problems, however, active management can achieve specific national goals more readily than a hands-off, American-style model. This often gives the impression of significant progress in areas the Kremlin chooses to highlight.

But such achievements are largely limited to wherever the state happens to be directing its attention. In all other sectors, the lack of attention results in atrophy or criminalization. This is particularly true in modern Russia, where the ruling elite comprises just a handful of people, starkly limiting the amount of planning and oversight possible. And unless management is perfect in perception and execution, any mistakes are quickly magnified into national catastrophes. It is therefore no surprise to STRATFOR that the Russian economy has now fallen the furthest of any major economy during the current recession.

China and Separatism

China also faces significant hurdles, albeit none as daunting as Russia's challenges. China's core is the farmland of the Yellow River basin in the north of the country, a river that is not readily navigable and is remarkably flood prone. Simply avoiding periodic starvation requires a high level of state planning and coordination. (Wrestling a large river is not the easiest thing one can do.) Additionally, the southern half of the country has a subtropical climate, riddling it with diseases that the southerners are resistant to but the northerners are not. This compromises the north's political control of the south.

Central control is also threatened by China's maritime geography. China boasts two other rivers, but they do not link to each other or the Yellow naturally. And China's best ports are at the mouths of these two rivers: Shanghai at the mouth of the Yangtze and Hong Kong/Macau/Guangzhou at the mouth of the Pearl. The Yellow boasts no significant ocean port. The end result is that other regional centers can and do develop economic means independent of Beijing.

With geography complicating northern rule and supporting southern economic independence, Beijing's age-old problem has been trying to keep China in one piece. Beijing has to underwrite massive (and expensive) development programs to stitch the country together with a common infrastructure, the most visible of which is the Grand Canal that links the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. The cost of such linkages instantly guarantees that while China may have a shot at being unified, it will always be capital-poor.

Beijing also has to provide its autonomy-minded regions with an economic incentive to remain part of Greater China, and "simple" infrastructure will not cut it. Modern China has turned to a state-centered finance model for this. Under the model, all of the scarce capital that is available is funneled to the state, which divvies it out via a handful of large state banks. These state banks then grant loans to various firms and local governments at below the cost of raising the capital. This provides a powerful economic stimulus that achieves maximum employment and growth — think of what you could do with a near-endless supply of loans at below 0 percent interest — but comes at the cost of encouraging projects that are loss-making, as no one is ever called to account for failures. (They can just get a new loan.) The resultant growth is rapid, but it is also unsustainable. It is no wonder, then, that the central government has chosen to keep its $2 trillion of currency reserves in dollar-based assets; the rate of return is greater, the value holds over a long period, and Beijing doesn't have to worry about the United States seceding.

Because the domestic market is considerably limited by the poor-capital nature of the country, most producers choose to tap export markets to generate income. In times of plenty this works fairly well, but when Chinese goods are not needed, the entire Chinese system can seize up. Lack of exports reduces capital availability, which constrains loan availability. This in turn not only damages the ability of firms to employ China's legions of citizens, but it also removes the primary reason the disparate Chinese regions pay homage to Beijing. China's geography hardwires in a series of economic challenges that weaken the coherence of the state and make China dependent upon uninterrupted access to foreign markets to maintain state unity. As a result, China has not been a unified entity for the vast majority of its history, but instead a cauldron of competing regions that cleave along many different fault lines: coastal versus interior, Han versus minority, north versus south.

China's survival technique for the current recession is simple. Because exports, which account for roughly half of China's economic activity, have sunk by half, Beijing is throwing the equivalent of the financial kitchen sink at the problem. China has force-fed more loans through the banks in the first four months of 2009 than it did in the entirety of 2008. The long-term result could well bury China beneath a mountain of bad loans — a similar strategy resulted in Japan's 1991 crash, from which Tokyo has yet to recover. But for now it is holding the country together. The bottom line remains, however: China's recovery is completely dependent upon external demand for its production, and the most it can do on its own is tread water.

Discordant Europe

Europe faces an imbroglio somewhat similar to China's.

Europe has a number of rivers that are easily navigable, providing a wealth of trade and development opportunities. But none of them interlinks with the others, retarding political unification. Europe has even more good harbors than the United States, but they are not evenly spread throughout the Continent, making some states capital-rich and others capital-poor. Europe boasts one huge piece of arable land on the North European Plain, but it is long and thin, and so occupied by no fewer than seven distinct ethnic groups.

These groups have constantly struggled — as have the various groups up and down Europe's seemingly endless list of river valleys — but none has been able to emerge dominant, due to the webwork of mountains and peninsulas that make it nigh impossible to fully root out any particular group. And Europe's wealth of islands close to the Continent, with Great Britain being only the most obvious, guarantee constant intervention to ensure that mainland Europe never unifies under a single power.

Every part of Europe has a radically different geography than the other parts, and thus the economic models the Europeans have adopted have little in common. The United Kingdom, with few immediate security threats and decent rivers and ports, has an almost American-style laissez-faire system. France, with three unconnected rivers lying wholly in its own territory, is a somewhat self-contained world, making economic nationalism its credo. Not only do the rivers in Germany not connect, but Berlin has to share them with other states. The Jutland Peninsula interrupts the coastline of Germany, which finds its sea access limited by the Danes, the Swedes and the British. Germany must plan in great detail to maximize its resource use to build an infrastructure that can compensate for its geographic deficiencies and link together its good — but disparate — geographic blessings. The result is a state that somewhat favors free enterprise, but within the limits framed by national needs.

And the list of differences goes on: Spain has long coasts and is arid; Austria is landlocked and quite wet; most of Greece is almost too mountainous to build on; it doesn't get flatter than the Netherlands; tiny Estonia faces frozen seas in the winter; mammoth Italy has never even seen an icebreaker. Even if there were a supranational authority in Europe that could tax or regulate the banking sector or plan transnational responses, the propriety of any singular policy would be questionable at best.

Such stark regional differences give rise to such variant policies that many European states have a severe (and understandable) trust deficit when it comes to any hint of anything supranational. We are not simply taking about the European Union here, but rather a general distrust of anything cross-border in nature. One of the many outcomes of this is a preference for using local banks rather than stock exchanges for raising capital. After all, local banks tend to use local capital and are subject to local regulations, while stock exchanges tend to be internationalized in all respects. Spain, Italy, Sweden, Greece and Austria get more than 90 percent of their financing from banks, the United Kingdom 84 percent and Germany 76 percent — while for the United States it is only 40 percent.

And this has proved unfortunate in the extreme for today's Europe. The current recession has its roots in a financial crisis that has most dramatically impacted banks, and European banks have proved far from immune. Until Europe's banks recover, Europe will remain mired in recession. And since there cannot be a Pan-European solution, Europe's recession could well prove to be the worst of all this time around.

The End of America's Financial Independence?

GaryHalbert — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:59:44 GMT

IN THIS ISSUE:

Obama Endorses Global Regulation For U.S.
Quotes From G-20 Communiqué
This Just Cannot Be True, You Conclude
FSB Will Be a Giant Bureaucracy - How Will They Fund It?
Is There Any Reason To Think It Won't Happen?
Conclusions – Could This Really Happen?

Introduction

President Barack Obama recently set the wheels in motion to render the ultimate control of our large financial institutions, large insurance companies, large hedge funds and quite possibly our financial markets as well, to a foreign entity. A new international regulatory agency was created at the recent G-20 Summit in London, and all G-20 countries signed onto it. Sadly, you probably have not heard a word about it until now.

Prepare to be outraged as you read what follows. And I will tell you how to confirm it on your own. Every freedom-loving American - whether conservative, moderate or liberal – needs to be aware of the information in this week's E-Letter. Please read it carefully and consider forwarding it on to those who would want to know.

Obama Endorses Global Regulation For U.S.

On April 2 at the recent G-20 summit in London, President Barack Obama endorsed handing over the regulation of all major US financial companies, including large insurance companies and large hedge funds, to the newly created international “Financial Stability Board” (FSB) which is headquartered in Europe. The FSB's predecessor organization was the Financial Stability Forum which primarily included the central banks of the G-8 countries.

At the April 2 Summit, the Financial Stability Board was expanded to all of the G-20 nations, plus Spain and the European Commission, and all member countries will be subject to the FSB's rules, regulations and enforcement.

The FSB will be allowed to regulate and enforce its will on all financial entities (and financial markets if need be) that are deemed to have “systemic risks,” meaning that they are so large that their failure could pose a threat to the world financial markets and/or global credit flows.

The Financial Stability Board's powers can supersede those of our own regulatory agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, FINRA (formerly the National Association of Securities Dealers), the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and all other US securities regulators, and even the Federal Reserve if it is successful.

Yet it gets even worse. The FSB will also have the power to set executive compensation at financial institutions and any other entities and companies deemed to have systemic risk. The FSB has the power to regulate the “corporate social responsibility of all firms.”

What – you didn't hear about this? Other than a brief mention on FOX News, Bloomberg online and a piece by Newsmax.com, I have not seen any other mainstream media outlet touch this story. If you are suddenly feeling outraged, you should be! Why on Earth would Obama do this? One commentator noted that perhaps Obama feels so guilty for the US role in triggering the international credit crisis that he felt obliged to agree to put our financial industry under the FSB's control.

It is not as if the agreement to form the Financial Stability Board was a tightly kept secret. It was announced publicly in the official G-20 Communiqué which summarized and concluded the London summit on April 2. But the mainstream media has, with the exception of FOX, failed to bring this issue to the attention of the American people.

What follows are verbatim excerpts from the G-20 Communiqué that pertain to the new Financial Stability Board (be sure to read the bullet points below).

Gary D. Halbert, ProFutures, Inc. and Halbert Wealth Management, Inc.
are not affiliated with nor do they endorse, sponsor or recommend the following product or service.

QUOTE

Major failures in the financial sector and in financial regulation and supervision were fundamental causes of the crisis. Confidence will not be restored until we rebuild trust in our financial system. We will take action to build a stronger, more globally consistent, supervisory and regulatory framework for the future financial sector, which will support sustainable global growth and serve the needs of business and citizens.

We each agree to ensure our domestic regulatory systems are strong. But we also agree to establish the much greater consistency and systematic cooperation between countries, and the framework of internationally agreed high standards, that a global financial system requires. Strengthened regulation and supervision must promote propriety, integrity and transparency; guard against risk across the financial system; dampen rather than amplify the financial and economic cycle; reduce reliance on inappropriately risky sources of financing; and discourage excessive risk-taking. Regulators and supervisors must protect consumers and investors, support market discipline, avoid adverse impacts on other countries, reduce the scope for regulatory arbitrage, support competition and dynamism, and keep pace with innovation in the marketplace.

To this end we are implementing the Action Plan agreed at our last meeting, as set out in the attached progress report. We have today also issued a Declaration, Strengthening the Financial System. In particular we agree:

to establish a new Financial Stability Board (FSB) with a strengthened mandate, as a successor to the Financial Stability Forum (FSF), including all G20 countries, FSF members, Spain, and the European Commission;

that the FSB should collaborate with the IMF to provide early warning of macroeconomic and financial risks and the actions needed to address them;

to reshape our regulatory systems so that our authorities are able to identify and take account of macro-prudential risks;

to extend regulation and oversight to all systemically important financial institutions, instruments and markets. This will include, for the first time, systemically important hedge funds; [emphasis added]

to endorse and implement the FSF's tough new principles on pay and compensation and to support sustainable compensation schemes and the corporate social responsibility of all firms; [emphasis added]

to take action, once recovery is assured, to improve the quality, quantity, and international consistency of capital in the banking system. In future, regulation must prevent excessive leverage and require buffers of resources to be built up in good times;

to take action against non-cooperative jurisdictions, including tax havens. We stand ready to deploy sanctions to protect our public finances and financial systems. The era of banking secrecy is over. We note that the OECD has today published a list of countries assessed by the Global Forum against the international standard for exchange of tax information;

to call on the accounting standard setters to work urgently with supervisors and regulators to improve standards on valuation and provisioning and achieve a single set of high-quality global accounting standards; and

to extend regulatory oversight and registration to Credit Rating Agencies to ensure they meet the international code of good practice, particularly to prevent unacceptable conflicts of interest.

We instruct our Finance Ministers to complete the implementation of these decisions in line with the timetable set out in the Action Plan. We have asked the FSB and the IMF to monitor progress, working with the Financial Action Taskforce and other relevant bodies, and to provide a report to the next meeting of our Finance Ministers in Scotland in November.

END QUOTE

You noticed that I highlighted the key word “all” in the bullet points above from the G-20 Communiqué. If the FSB, in its international wisdom, considers a financial institution or company or a hedge fund “systemically important,” it may regulate and oversee it. This provision extends and internationalizes the recent proposals by Treasury Secretary Geithner and the Obama administration to regulate all firms that are deemed to be “too big to fail,” in whatever sectors of the economy they so choose.

You no doubt noticed the fifth bullet point above where the FSB says is will create and enforce “tough new principles on pay and compensation.” This means that the FSB will regulate how much executives are to be paid at financial firms – including US firms - that are deemed to have “systemic” risk.

The chairman of the new Financial Stability Board is Mario Draghi, Italy's central bank president. In a speech on Feb. 21, 2009, Draghi noted:

“The progress we have made in revising the global regulatory framework... would have been unthinkable just months ago… Every financial institution capable of creating systemic risk will be subject to supervision.”

“It is envisaged that, at international level, the governance of financial institutions, executive compensation, and the special duties of intermediaries to protect retail investors will be subject to explicit supervision.”

It is painfully obvious that these people lust for oversight and control of major US financial institutions and markets, and it appears that President Obama is willing to give it to them, sadly. Here is how Bloomberg described the FSB on April 3:

“Global leaders took their biggest steps yet toward a new world order that's less U.S.-centric with a more heavily regulated financial industry and a greater role for international institutions and emerging markets.

At the end of a summit in London, policy makers from the Group of 20 yesterday delivered a regulatory blueprint that French President Nicholas Sarkozy said turned the page on the Anglo-Saxon model of free markets by placing stricter limits on hedge funds and other financiers. The leaders also pledged to triple the resources of the International Monetary Fund and to hand China and other developing economies a greater say in the management of the world economy.”

This Just Cannot Be True, You Conclude

I'm quite sure many of you are thinking that this just cannot be true. Well, it is. Just Google the words “Financial Stability Board” and you'll find dozens and dozens of articles on this issue. Or you can go directly to the Financial Stability Forum's website at www.fsforum.org and find the information there, including the recent G-20 Communiqué, straight from the source.

Unfortunately, some of the articles you'll read online simply reprint the “talking points” that the G-20 put out there for public consumption, which all sound lofty and necessary, of course.

I'm sure many of you are also thinking that the President of the United States would never sign on to such a plan granting sovereignty over US financial firms and large hedge funds to a global regulatory agency dominated by European members – not even Barack Obama. But he did.

Some of you may be thinking that there's no way Congress would authorize such a dramatic shift in power that would subordinate our financial system and markets to a foreign body. I don't profess to know all the legalities that will be involved, but some analysts believe that President Obama may not have to gain congressional approval for this giant action; rather, that he will simply order our US financial regulators (SEC, FINRA, CFTC and others) to adopt the rules and regulations promulgated by the Financial Stability Board. This is really scary!

Finally, some of you may be thinking – in light of this terrible housing meltdown and credit crisis – that it's high time for some type of international agreement and standards for financial regulations. And I might agree. However, international rules and regulations could be agreed upon by the G20 members and put in place by each country's own regulators, not some foreign body dominated by Europeans. The same goes for regulating executive pay.

ENDORSED ADVERTISEMENT

FSB Will Be a Giant Bureaucracy - How Will They Fund It?

If the G-20 Financial Stability Board is going to regulate financial institutions (and markets if need be) pretty much around the world, it will have to be a massive organization. Let's take our own Securities and Exchange Commission as an example for comparison. The SEC reportedly has over 3,500 employees, and it is only responsible for overseeing the various US securities markets.

Just imagine how many employees the FSB will need to oversee, regulate and enforce its rules in the securities markets in 20+ countries. It would likely require offices, staff and enforcement personnel in each of the regulated member countries. The FSB could easily grow to an organization of 10,000-15,000 employees over the course of just a few years.

Likewise, we can only imagine how intricate and convoluted its regulations and enforcement proceedings would be to encompass so many different financial institutions and securities markets, especially since the FSB will be largely dominated by Europeans who have a socialist view of the markets and capital.

Then, of course, is the question of who will pay for it? The G-20 Communiqué was oddly (perhaps purposely) vague on the details of how this massive international regulatory agency will be funded. However, as best I can tell, it will be funded largely by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

At the G-20 Summit in early April, the members agreed to increase the IMF's capital base by apprx. US$1 trillion in a combination of US$750 billion in new contributions from the G-20 members, and another US$250 billion in new Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), all of which will have to be printed out of thin air. You can bet that the US will be the largest contributor by far.

This new Financial Stability Board is so alarming in so many ways, and there may be no way to stop it now that Obama has signed onto it. And the worst part is that virtually no Americans have any idea about it. This is unbelievable!

Bad News For Hedge Funds

If you ask large hedge fund managers what is their secret to success, most would respond with one word – privacy. They go to great lengths to keep their various positions in the markets secret and unavailable to their competitors, and even their own investors in most cases. They don't want to give anyone information that can be used to trade against them.

Yet if the FSB deems a large hedge fund to have “systemic risk,” they could force the fund manager to disclose all of its positions, which could be very detrimental to its performance. The FSB will have this authority over any large hedge funds domiciled in any of the G-20 countries.

It remains to be seen what the FSB can do with the thousands of offshore hedge funds that are domiciled in places like Bermuda, Turks and Caicos, the Caymans, etc. that are not G-20 members. However, it is clear in the G-20 Communiqué that the Financial Stability Board intends to crack down hard on these so-called “tax haven” countries.

As discussed above, the other big hammer the FSB will wield is the ability to regulate and limit executive pay in financial institutions and large hedge funds that are deemed to have systemic risk. Large hedge fund managers typically receive an annual management fee, usually 1% of assets, with most of their compensation coming in the form of “incentive fees.”

Incentive fee compensation is a percentage of any profits that the manager generates. Often, incentive fees run 15%-20%-25% of net profits. Thus, a really successful fund manager of a very large hedge fund can make hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Yet the FSB will have the authority to put an arbitrary ceiling on what large fund managers can make if they are deemed to have systemic risks.

My prediction is that if the Financial Stability Board grows into the powerful entity that is clearly envisioned, we will see many very successful hedge fund managers close their doors and send the money back to their investors. The really successful managers have made tons of money over the years, and would likely not stand for such potentially onerous regulation.

Is There Any Reason To Think It Won't Happen?

President Obama promised a new era of “transparency” in governance during the presidential campaign. Whether you are a liberal or a conservative, I think you must conclude that the transparency promise was just an empty campaign slogan, when in fact just the opposite has been true, especially in the case of the FSB.

That point aside, are there any reasons to think that the international Financial Stability Board won't come to fruition, or that it will fail? Well maybe. The first point may sound way too elementary to be made, but it is probably valid. Do we think an international body made up of more than 20 countries will really be able to agree on anything substantial?

Compounding the problem is the nature of the new members. Whereas the FSB predecessor, the Financial Stability Forum, was a smaller, mostly-Western club in years past, the new membership will include China, Argentina, Russia, India, and Mexico, among others. If the US and Germany have been unable to agree on stimulus for the sagging economy, chances are that the inclusion of these new members will only make it more difficult for the G-20 to agree on its over-arching global regulatory mandates.

I would venture, however, that the newly admitted G-20 nations will have little to no serious input on the Financial Stability Board's rules and regulations. In fact, a broad set of mandates and guidelines have already been drafted, including those highlighted above in the G-20 Communiqué excerpts. The drafters of the rules were reportedly instructed to have them in near-final form by the next meeting of the G-20 finance ministers in Scotland in November. This thing is moving fast.

Next, some analysts have concluded that while the FSB may prove to be a lively debating forum for central bankers, it is unlikely to move beyond that unless member states can somehow be legally bound to follow its mandates. It remains to be seen if the FSB can come up with such legally binding international authority, even if Obama has given it his blessing.

And lastly, at some point the Financial Stability Board's onerous, cross border powers will have to come into the public view. It remains to be seen what the public backlash will be, not only in America, but in each country that may be asked to surrender its financial sovereignty to a multi-national regulatory body. Maybe that's the point when the public gets outraged. I hope so!

Gary D. Halbert, ProFutures, Inc. and Halbert Wealth Management, Inc.
are not affiliated with nor do they endorse, sponsor or recommend the following product or service.

Conclusions – Could This Really Happen?

The current weakened state of the global economy and the ongoing credit crisis unfortunately make the chances better for the FSB to become a reality, and for US financial markets to come under its control. President Obama went to the G-20 meeting knowing that they expected some concessions on his part to “make up” for the perceived unilateral actions by the Bush administration over the years. I'd say he more than lived up to their expectations. No, I'd say he gave away the farm!

Say what you will about former President George W. Bush (I've certainly criticized him often in these pages), but I don't think the new Financial Stability Board would have had a snowball's chance of becoming a reality when he was in office, at least not with the US signing on.

Enter President Obama. Armed with blame for the financial crisis, stories of bank failures and collapsing economies, the G-20 members were able to browbeat Obama into making concessions that would open up our financial institutions and markets to international regulation.

While I could support well thought out guidelines for financial institutions that are agreed upon by an international body like the G-20, such rules and regulations should be implemented by our own regulatory agencies like the SEC and others. President Obama should have never relinquished control of our regulatory agencies to a foreign entity.

There are those who believe that Obama wants to set the US on a course of submission to a new global government and a move toward socialism. But many Obama supporters insist these claims are absolutely false. Yet with Obama signing onto the Financial Stability Board, which will put our financial institutions (and possibly our financial markets as well) under foreign control, what can these Obama supporters say now?

However the FSB issue plays out, I believe that it bears watching closely by all Americans – liberals, moderates and conservatives – this is not a purely political issue. We are talking about nothing less than the national sovereignty of our financial institutions and financial markets and possibly a whole lot more if this move toward socialism is allowed to happen.

Unfortunately, it is not entirely clear if we can stop it. Hopefully, it is not true that Obama can commit the US to the Financial Stability Board without congressional approval. To me, the FSB is in fact a binding international treaty that should at least require ratification by a two-thirds vote in the Senate. The debate over whether the FSB is a treaty, or not, is where the fight will take place.

Freedom loving Americans need to get in this fight now! First, if you have any questions about the credibility of the information I have provided this week, get on the Internet and confirm it yourself. Type in Financial Stability Board and you will find plenty of information. Second, let your representatives in Washington know: 1) surrendering our financial sovereignty to the FSB is outrageous; 2) that it IS a treaty that must be ratified by the Senate; and 3) they had better not vote for it.

Let's not give up control of our financial institutions and markets to a new international regulatory body dominated by European socialists! We should all be able to agree on that, even though I'm sure I'll get some nasty responses to this week's letter. So be it.

Lastly, feel free to forward this E-Letter widely.

Very best regards,

Gary D. Halbert

SPECIAL ARTICLES:

Moving Towards Europe – but Do Americans Want to Go?
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/04/28/moving_towards_europe_--_but_do_americans_want_to_go_96208.html

How to Spend $6.5 Trillion in 100 Days
http://aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.29769/pub_detail.asp

Obama: The Global Apologist In-Chief
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kirchick28-2009apr28,0,4218519.story