Evening VIP Archives

Dinner With Joseph Stiglitz

The great thing about interviewing Joseph Stiglitz over dinner is that you don't have to ask any questions. You just turn him on and he spits out one zinger after another. And he does this in a kibitzing, wizened, grandfatherly manner like one would expect from a character that just walked off the set of Fiddler on the Roof.

The unfortunate thing is that you also don't get to eat. The Columbia University professor and former World Bank Chief Economist animatedly talked the entire time, and I was too busy feverishly taking notes to ingest a single crouton.

Stiglitz argued that for 30 years after the end of the Great Depression there was no financial crisis because a newly empowered SEC was on the beat, and everything worked. A deregulation trend that started under Reagan began stripping away those protections, with the eventual disastrous repeal of Glass-Steagle in 1999. The philosophical justification adopted by many economists, including Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, was that unfettered markets always lead to efficient outcomes.

This belief was based on simplistic models assuming that markets were always perfect, always open, and that everyone had perfect information. Stiglitz's own work on 'information asymmetry,' which earned him a Nobel Prize in economics in 2001, pulled the rug out from under this theory, because it showed that one party to a transaction always has more information than the other, often the seller.

The banks used this window to introduce super leveraged derivatives that had never been regulated, studied, or even understood. They then clawed open accounting loopholes that were so imaginative that not only were shareholders and regulators deceived about how much risk was involved, senior management was clueless as well. Instead of managing risk, they created risk.

A 2006 GDP that was 80% derived from real estate transactions and a savings rate that fell to zero meant that a severe crash was a sure thing. President Bush's response was to unleash an extreme form of 'trickledown economics,' with the banks given $700 billion with no conditions attached. Intended to recapitalize the banks so they could resume lending to the mainstream economy, much of the money ended up being paid out in bonuses and dividends. Of the $180 billion used to rescue AIG, $13 billion went to Goldman Sachs, and much of the rest went to German and French banks. No wonder Main Street feels cheated.

The financial system is now more distorted than ever, with major institutions wards of the state, and smaller banks that actually lend to consumers and small businesses going under in record numbers, because the playing field is so uneven. There are too many structural conflicts of interest. The 'once in a 100 year tsunami' argument is merely a justification for changing nothing. Banks would rather maintain the fiction that the loans on their books are good, than make adjustments, meaning there will be more foreclosures in 2012 than in 2011 or 2010. No financial system has ever wasted assets on this scale, and the end result will be a national debt many trillions of dollars larger.

The $787 billion stimulus package was too small, and should have been at least $1.2 trillion, but there was no way Obama was going to get more out of this Senate. The 40% of the stimulus that was tax cuts was saved or put into Treasury bonds and created no immediate beneficial effects on the economy. More money should have gone to the states, which unable to deficit spend, are now a huge drag on the economy. But even this meager package was able to prevent the unemployment rate from rising from 10% to 12%, as it was set to do. Any major spending cuts will produce 'Hoover' outcomes.
The outlook for the economy is bleak, at best.

Well, I don't get to chat at length with a Nobel Prize winner every day, so I thought I'd give you the full blast, even though I had to leave a lot out. For a dinner that I could actually eat, I walked next door for a Big Mac meal and supersized the fries.

February 8, 2012/by DougD

Lunch With the Treasury Secretary

Evening VIP

When I wake up at 4:30 am each morning to check the overnight markets and review the opening salvo of incoming emails, I often have trouble focusing in my groggy state. So I had to blink twice when the first message in my inbox politely inquired if I had time to meet the Secretary of the Treasury in Palo Alto for lunch that day, apologizing for the short notice.

Tim Geithner was in San Francisco for a day to meet with a small group of venture capitalists and other business leaders. I can?t say who else was invited. Suffice it to say that I was the only one without an NYSE or NASDAQ listing.

When I greeted lithe, athletic, but diminutive Treasury Secretary, I could see the six secret service agents in the room visibly tense up. At 6?4? I towered over him, but he shook my hand firmly. I knew he was an avid surfer, and asked if he had stowed his board on Air Force One so he could shoot ?Steamer Lane? in nearby Santa Cruz after the meeting. He laughed, confessing that he rode the waves in a less than adequate fashion.
Geithner succinctly laid out the administration?s position on a wide range of financial and economic issues. The economy is now healing, has been growing for 20 months, but conditions were still very tough, especially if you were in construction, real estate, or small banks. Private sector investment grew of 20% in H1, but then slowed down to 10% in H2. Exports are strong.

The economy is undergoing some difficult, but necessary changes. The crisis was caused by excessive debt levels, the adjustment of which is now mostly behind us. The savings rate has soared from below 0% before the crisis to 4%-6% today. The debt burden is falling. Still, further measures are required.

Geithner thrilled his audience by proposing a permanent investment tax credit for domestic R & D. On top of that, he wants to add a one year tax credit for capital investment. It was music to the ears of those present, who were primarily engaged in the business of starting new companies. He would also eliminate tax preferences that encouraged companies to build plants overseas. At the very least, the playing field should be level.

Stepped up spending on infrastructure is a big priority, which has suffered from decades of neglect and under investment. The US is not a country with unlimited resources, and this is where the taxpayer gets the highest return on money spent. He also highlighted the urgency to extend tax cuts for the bottom 98% of the working population. The country entered the crisis with an unsustainable fiscal situation, and this would help address that.

Geithner says that the US would not engage in a debasement of its currency.? It is very important that our counterparties believe that we will fulfill our long term obligations. The US benefits from the dollar being used as a reserve currency, and there will be no non dollar reserve currency in our lifetimes.

The Dodd-Frank bill was an essential reform, as a huge financial industry had grown up outside the existing rules. Banks needed bigger shock absorbers. Governments do a very bad job at picking industries to protect, which only supports the weak at the expense of consumers.

Geithner said that by any measure, the Chinese Yuan was undervalued, and that was unfair to all of the country?s trading partners. Although this was enabling China to reap short term benefits, long term it meant that the US was setting its monetary policy. A flexible exchange rate would give China economic independence and soften the impact of imported inflation. When asked what exchange rate he would be happy with, he would only say ?HIGHER?.

The 49 year old Geithner has devoted much of his life to public service. He spent his childhood abroad while his father was a micro finance administrator for the Ford Foundation, growing up in Zimbabwe, Indonesia, and India, and finally graduating from high school in Bangkok. He did his undergrad at Dartmouth, and obtained a master?s in Asian studies at Johns Hopkins, where he gained fluency in Chinese and Japanese. I first met Tim myself two decades ago, when he was a low level Treasury attach? at the Tokyo embassy who spoke the local language flawlessly. After that, his rise was meteoric, from Undersecretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, to President of the New York Fed, to his current gig.

Geithner put on quite the performance. No matter what the question, he was able to caste it in the context of its historical background, the lead up over the past two decades, the current policy response, and parallels with other major and minor countries. We jumped from the Japanese stagnation, to the Swedish banking crisis in the early nineties, to Indonesia?s explosion of hyperinflation in the sixties, to the Mexican debt crisis, all within a minute. His canned answers to standard question rolled effortlessly off his tongue, while original problems delivered an intensity of thought one rarely sees.

Before he left, I pulled out all the cash in my wallet and pointed out to Geithner that while I had bills signed by previous Treasury Secretaries Larry Summers, Paul O?Neil, and Robert Rubin, I lacked one with his illegible scrawl. Did he have any which he could exchange with me? He sheepishly admitted that while such bills existed, they we being held back from circulation until the Treasury?s existing stockpile of Hank Paulson bills ran out, in order to deliver taxpayers good value for money. I would only see his bills once the economy recovers and the growth of M1 starts to accelerate. That is truly an answer one would expect from the 75th Treasury Secretary.

December 28, 2011/by DougD

An Evening With the Chinese Intelligence Service

Evening VIP

I normally avoid the diplomatic circuit, as the few non committal comments and soggy appetizers I get aren?t worth the investment of time. But I jumped at the chance to celebrate the 61st anniversary of the founding of the People?s Republic of China with San Francisco consul general Gao Zhansheng.

Happy Birthday China!

When I casually mention that I survived the Cultural Revolution and interviewed major political figures like premier Deng Xiaoping, who launched the Middle Kingdom into the modern era, and his predecessor, Zhou Enlai, modern day Chinese are enthralled. It?s like going to a Fourth of July party and letting drop that I palled around with Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.

Five minutes into the great hall, and I ran into my old friend Wen, who started out her career with the Chinese Intelligence Service, and had made the jump to the Foreign Ministry, as all their best people did. She was passing through town with a visiting trade mission.

When I was touring China in the seventies as the guest of the Bank of China, Wen was assigned as my guide and translator, and we kept in touch over the years. I was assigned a bodyguard who doubled as the driver of a tank like Russian sedan. The Cultural Revolution was on, and while the major cities were safe, we ran the risk of running into a renegade band of xenophobic Red Guards, with potentially fatal consequences.

I asked Wen when China was going to float the Yuan? She explained that this is something China knew it had to do, but it wasn?t going to be rushed into by some opportunistic foreign politicians. If it moves too soon, millions will lose jobs, creating political instability, something the central government wants to avoid at all costs. Many of the largest scale employers were only marginally profitable, and a hike in the renminbi of only a few percent would force them out of business. I pointed out that that was exactly what was happening in the US.

Worth More Than Meets the Eye

I warned that if the Middle Kingdom waited too long, Washington would force them into an appreciation through punitive import duties and anti dumping actions, as we did with Japan 40 years ago. It was Nixon?s surprise ban on textile imports in 1971 that finally persuaded Japan to float the yen, then at ?360. If that didn?t convince the Chinese, then imported inflation would. The longer China delays, the bigger the pop when their currency is finally set free.

Wen then went on the offensive, claiming that Chinese workers were being exploited by American companies keeping wages low. The product that China made for $1, and sold for $2, was then sold by Wal-Mart (WMT) for $20, which kept all the profits. She pointed out that the Walton family had a combined net worth of $100 billion, more than the total worth of the lower 40% of the US population. This could never happen in China.? I told her that by selling the product at $20, Wal-Mart wiped out another US company that used to make that product domestically and sold it for $40, throwing those people out of work.

Modern Times in China

I then asked Wen what were her country?s plans for its massive foreign exchange reserves, now at $2.5 trillion? She agreed that this was a problem because the reserves were pouring in so fast, at an embarrassingly high rate of $10 billion a month, and that it was the most rapid accumulation of wealth in history (click here for the data at http://www.chinability.com/Reserves.htm ). While it had more than enough Treasury bonds, any attempt to sell might cause their value to collapse and freeze relations with the US. I suggested China should start hedging its gigantic holdings without selling them, or some managers would be facing a firing squad in the future.

China has therefore begun directing new reserve inflows into other instruments, like gold, Japanese government bonds, and PIIGS bonds in Europe. While the Europeans were more than happy to take the money, the Japanese were complaining that China?s modest purchases were driving up the yen, further depressing their own economy. We all know what has happened to gold.

China tried to recycle its surpluses by buying foreign companies that produce the natural resources it desperately needs. But takeover attempts were fought tooth and nail as a foreign invasion, or on national security grounds, such as the attempt to buy California?s Unocal in 2005 and Australia?s Oz Minerals last year. It was now using a strategy of buying low profile minority stakes in foreign resource companies. China took a big stake in the recent Petrobras (PBR) secondary equity offering, and Wen would not be surprised if they took a run at Potash (POT), now that it is on the table.

Check Out This tasty Little Morsel

I asked her about the real estate bubble in China that was causing so many foreign investors to lose sleep. She said it was true that sales were slow at some luxury buildings in Beijing and Shanghai, but the great majority of developments were aimed at working people, and were filling up as soon as they came on the market. The 40% down payment demanded by the People?s Bank of China headed off the rampant speculation that brought the American financial system down.

Rooms With Views

Wen then complained about the aggressive military stance the US was taking towards China, ringing it in with the Seventh Fleet. Holding a knife so close to the country?s foreign supply line jugular vein made them nervous. China was basically indefensible. All it would take was the sinking of a few grain ships, and 100 million would starve within a year. President Bush was rattling his saber as soon as he moved into office, until 9/11 diverted his attention to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Wen told me there is a school of thought in Beijing that as the country?s economic power grows- it is passing Japan to become second in GDP this year-- that the US will increasingly perceive it as a military threat. That would lead America to mete out the same hostile treatment to China as it did Russia during the cold war.

Walking Softly, But Carrying a Big Stick

I assured her that the Seventh Fleet was there to watch and listen, but to do nothing. It was really in position to provide a security blanket for allies, like Japan and South Korea, but nothing more. China wasn?t engaging in the belligerent behavior that Russia was at the height of the cold war, like blockading Berlin, basing missiles in Cuba, stationing fast attack nuclear submarines off our coasts, and invading Afghanistan.

I argued that if China truly has no expansionary intentions, the more we know about you, the better. It is always prudent for a potential adversary to conclude you are not a threat, and that no action is needed. The more you help the US do that, the better. China is decades behind the US in military technology, and you really have nothing we want. Little more than 200 nuclear weapons without an ICMB or submarine delivery systems were hardly viewed as a major threat.

Wen seemed perturbed that I was aware of her country?s nuclear stockpiles, and asked how I knew this. I said CIA director Leon Panetta told me. She said ?Oh.? I asked what was that test downing of a satellite in space about, anyway? She didn?t answer.

In any case, with our military fully committed fighting two wars in the Middle East, we lacked the resources for an Asian offensive if we were so inclined, even against a piddling, mismanaged, rogue state like North Korea. But looking at the world for the next 30 years, who is the Pentagon going to model and war game against, but China, with its 2.5 million man army?

Wen countered that the People?s Liberation Army was purely a defensive force. With a 12,000 mile land border, an 11,000 mile coastline, and dubious neighbors like Russia, Iran, and India, they have no other choice. Its ability to project force over great distances, as the US can, is virtually nonexistent. Its 1979 invasion of Vietnam was about reclaiming ten miles of lost territory. China got involved in Korea only after general Douglas MacArthur threatened to rain atomic bombs on the mainland, losing 2 million men, including Chairman Mao?s son. China could have done a lot more in the Vietnam War, but didn?t, limiting its participation to a supply, logistical, and advisory role.

That?s a Lot of Border to Defend

I then warned that if you really are worried about the Pentagon, you should stop hacking into our computers. She replied that the US started this by emptying out Chinese mainframes many times, and they were only responding in kind. I said yes, but that China was targeting private companies, like Google (GOOG), Hewlett Packard (HPQ), and Oracle (ORCL), that without military grade software, were unable to defend themselves. The Chinese agencies involved then used the data to their own commercial advantage.

What Did You Say the Password Was Again?

By the time Wen married, China had already adopted its one child policy. As much as she wanted more children, she understood the government?s need to adopt such a drastic policy. Without it, the population today would be 1.6 billion, not 1.2 billion, and all of the money that went into buying capital goods would have been spent on food imports instead. The country would have stagnated at its 1980 per capita income of $100/year. There would have been no Chinese economic miracle. She was very proud of her one son, who was a software engineer at Microsoft (MSFT) in Beijing.

Her husband, a mid level official at the Ministry of Commerce, fared less well, dying of lung cancer at a relatively early age. The US and Europe had exported their worst polluting industries to China to take advantage of lax environmental controls, turning the air in Beijing into a choking haze. Sometimes her son would come home from school coughing and wheezing so badly that he couldn?t play outside. The two packs of cigarettes a day her husband smoked didn?t help either.

Imported From the USA

I asked if she recalled our first trip together and a dark cloud came over her face. We were touring a section of Fuzhou when three policemen marched up. They started shouting at Wen that we were in a restricted section of the city where foreigners were not allowed. They started mercilessly beating her with clubs.

I was about to intercede when my wife, Kyoko, let go with a blood curdling tirade in Japanese that froze them in their tracks. I saw from the fear in their faces that she had ignited their wartime fear of Japanese authority, and they beat a hasty retreat. To this day, I?m not exactly sure what Kyoko said. We took Wen back to our hotel room and bandaged her up, putting ice on the giant goose egg on her head. When I left, I gave her my copy of HG Well?s A Short History of the World, which she treasured, as the book was then banned in China.

Wen mentioned that she was approaching the mandatory retirement age of 60, and soon would be leaving the Foreign Service. I suggested she move to San Francisco, which offered a thriving Chinese community and home prices that had recently dropped by half. She laughed. No matter how much prices had fallen, she could never afford anything here on a Chinese civil servant?s salary.

Wen told me that China was grateful for the billions of dollars that foreigners had poured into her country as a result of my writings. I replied that I was simply trying to show my readers where to make some money, nothing more. One of my recommendations, for Chinese search engine Baidu (BIDU), was up nearly tenfold in less than two years. Did she happen to know about any more future Baidu?s? Wen said that she wasn?t that close to the stock market, but that she would get back to me.

I asked Wen if she still had the book I gave her nearly four decades ago. She said it had become a family heirloom, and was being passed down through the generations. As she smiled, I notice the faint scar on her eyebrow from that unpleasantness so long ago.

In view of Wen?s comments, I think you have to include China in any long term portfolio. But as long as they are raising interest rates and tightening up bank reserve resquirements to fight inflation, I will admire it from the sidelines. As soon as they stop, you better revisit my stock picks in the area, including Baidu (BIDU), China Mobile (CHL), Build Your Dreams (BYDDF), and China Telecom (CHA).

December 25, 2011/by DougD

Tea With Secretary of State George Schultz

Evening VIP

Having spent time as an economics professor at MIT, Dean of the University of Chicago business school, Treasury Secretary, and Secretary of State, George Schultz has certainly covered all the bases. Now 89, he is the senior statesman and eminence gris of San Francisco, as well as a major philanthropist.

When I read his bio, I feel like my own life in comparison has been wasted watching Archie Bunker on TV in All in the Family. I first ran into George in the seventies as the CEO of Bechtel, and pursued him while in the White House Press Corp. I have since occupied the box next to his in the San Francisco Opera, and joined him in several Marine Corps charities.

George said that America?s health care headache started in WWII, when wages and costs were controlled, but not benefits. So companies competed for labor by offering increasingly generous, tax free benefits programs. And when something is free, you lose a lot of it, driving total costs through the roof. The end result is large misallocations of resources that you don?t see in other businesses.

Private American companies have made possible tremendous medical advances for a profit, and this system should be allowed to continue. But we need to incentivize future advances with cost containment. We need a universal, subsidized plan that heads off intergenerational conflict by not allowing healthy young people to escape obligations, nor denying older people with preexisting conditions.

Allowing consumers to buy private insurance across state lines, which is now impossible, would be a start. Today your average 65 year old lives for 20 years, compared to 13 years in 1965, and two years in 1900. An equitable system would enable those who wish to continue working after 65, without burdening employers with health care costs, adding $1 trillion to GDP that will help us pay for this all.

October 25, 2011/by madhedgefundtrader@yahoo.com

July 13, 2011 - An Evening with Jack Welch

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Featured Trades: (A NIGHT WITH JACK WELCH), (GE)

3) An Evening with Jack Welch. I met Jack Welch recently, the legendary retired CEO of General Electric (GE). 'Neutron' Jack gets the credit for boosting the market cap of GE from $13 billion to $400 billion in 20 years, turning it into a Wall Street darling in the process.

The 'hedge fund that makes light bulbs' is the last big industrial finance company standing, and it will make a fortune, because there is no competition left. Jack is currently on the board of a private equity firm, several Internet media startups, and is advising me on the startup of this newsletter.

He gives Obama an 'A' for leadership and communication, but believes his economic policies are seriously flawed. They are based on a 4% annual growth assumption for the next decade, versus my own forecast of 2.0%-2.5%. We never managed to achieve that rate during the go-go days of the eighties and nineties, let alone attempt it during a new age fraught with downsizing, deleveraging and frugality. If we get only 2.5% instead, the deficit will explode from $13 trillion to $30 trillion, at which point 'we will be cooked.' Who knew Jack was a closet gold bug, dollar bear, and inflation hawk?

Jack was passing through San Francisco at the end of a national tour promoting his wife Suzy's new book '10-10-10', which is about how to create a 'values driven life.' In his heyday, Jack was considered the best Fortune 500 manager in the country. Never one to mince words, he is an absolute terror now that shareholder feelings are no longer a consideration.

July 13, 2011/by Mad Hedge Fund Trader

May 10, 2011 - Lunch With Leslie Hinton of Dow Jones

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Featured Trades: (LUNCH WITH DOW JONES)

1) Lunch With Leslie Hinton of Dow Jones. I managed to catch a lunch with Leslie Hinton, the CEO of Dow, Jones, Inc. as he swung through San Francisco to meet with major advertisers. Hinton was installed in the top job by Rupert Murdoch after his $5 billion takeover of the family owned paper on the eve of the financial crash in 2007. The deal was a controversial one, as some 123 journalists have since left the Journal, populating competitors far and wide.

A 40 year veteran of News Corp, Les dates back to a long passed era of London's Fleet Street, back when papers were staffed with enormous teams of intrepid journalists, were printed with cold rolled type, and the Times was called the 'Thunderer' because its presses ran so loud. I might point out that I am another such dinosaur. Chatting with Les was a visit to a previous lifetime for me. During the seventies, when I was based in Tokyo, I was a regular contributor to the Asian Wall Street Journal, and occasionally, the mainland edition would pick up my pieces.

Hinton has much to be happy about these days. With a daily circulation of 2.1 million, the Wall Street Journal is now the top newspaper in the US, surpassing USA Today at 1.8 million and the New York Times at 900,000. While many of the paper's big ticket advertisers fled or went bankrupt during the Great Recession of 2008, much of the loss was offset by great strides made with new online products.

Les has a great perch from which he can watch the increasingly accelerating changes going on in the media. Not only does he have at hand the massive research resources of the Dow Jones organization, he has the firm's own halting, trial and error forays in the online world to learn from.

Les has the opinion that the Internet is throwing up information faster than we can digest it. Last year, more information was posted online than was accumulated during the previous 100 centuries of human history. If you printed out all of this on paper it would amount to a staggering 40 tonnes for every person on the planet.

While the personal computer opened the door to the web, the tablet is taking us further down the road. Mobile is changing everything, and some believe that by 2015, more will be accessing the Internet through their hand held telephones than by computers. However, Les disagreed with me that the online juggernaut is so unstoppable that it will wipe out print newspapers within five years.

Les listened intently while I detailed The Diary of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader's own online strategy. In two years, I took a second hand PC that I bought at a garage sale for $10, and used it to build a site that is now drawing 30,000 visitors? a day. My total investment in this business has only been $500 for hosting fees. I spent nothing for advertising, and did all the website development myself. Here, the business model is 'the gross is the net'.

For me, the challenge was to see how much I could build out of nothing. Apparently, the answer is quite a lot. Do a Google search on Mad Hedge Fund Trader in China, and you get two million hits. Les admitted that blogs terrified him, as everyone has such a low cost entry. Les has to cut down a forest to print a single issue. I just click a mouse and send out a few trillion bytes for free. He was somewhat amazed by my numbers, and responded with a 'good for you.'

We spent the rest of our time together reminiscing about old friends, the many who died, either from incoming artillery rounds or chronic alcoholism. The early days at the Australian, the 1981 London Times strike, the challenges of filing with teletype tape, and our late mutual friend, Murray Sayle, all came up (click here for my obituary of the great man).

When the discussion came to modern day ethics in journalism, or the lack thereof, Less revealed a decision he once agonized over. As the editor of another paper he had to decide whether to run a photo of Lady Diana Spencer in the back seat of her Mercedes after her fatal car crash in Paris. If she were dying it would have been appropriate to run the picture, but if she were already dead it would have violated taboos. Since it wasn't clear what state she was in, he spiked it.

I pointed out that while Murdoch paid $5 billion for Dow Jones and achieved a Google rank of eight, my $500 investment earned me a ranking of six. That means that in terms of online presence, my investment was 100,000 times more profitable than Rupert's and has no overhead. Less laughed. Welcome to the world of Internet economics.

Dow Jones Has Much to be Happy About These Days

May 10, 2011/by Mad Hedge Fund Trader

May 4, 2011 - Breakfast With Fed Governor Bob McTeer

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Featured Trades: (BREAKFAST WITH FED GOVERNOR BOB McTEER)

2) Breakfast With Fed Governor Bob McTeer. No one can explain the most complex economic and monetary issues in a simpler, more homespun fashion than former governor of the Federal Reserve, Bob McTeer. He is known for carrying around two yard sticks, one slightly longer than the other, to demonstrate to your average guy the monthly changes in employment.

Bob argues that the Fed is getting a bad rap today. Ben Bernanke's quantitative easing is neither inflationary, nor causing the collapse of the dollar. This 'money printing effort' is not actually printing any money. The $1.7 trillion QE1 was designed to buy mortgage backed securities to bring liquidity back to the market place. QE2 enabled the purchase of a further $600 billion in Treasury securities to prevent a double dip recession. On top of this, the Treasury piled the $700 billion TARP to recapitalize the major banks. All three of these programs were wildly successful.

As a result, the Fed balance sheet has grown from a pre-crash $800 billion to $2.8 trillion. Normally this would be inflationary, but it is not this time, as all of the extra money is being tied up with excess reserves at the banks. The proof of this is that the money supply, M2, is growing at a very modest 5%, barely enough to accommodate the population growth. Without the Fed programs the monetary base would have fallen off a cliff.

The challenge going forward is for the Fed to unwind its balance sheet at the same rate that the banks start paring back excess reserve through more aggressive lending. Too slow, and the Fed risks inflation. Too fast, and it risks falling back into recession. After the end of QE2, the Fed is likely to maintain a neutral stance, rolling over maturing debt instead of paying it down. Call it QE2.5.

Although it appears that the dollar is in a free fall in the foreign exchange markets, it is in fact at the same level as it was before the financial crisis. All it has really done is given back its flight to safety bid. The dollar is really a function of our international balance of payments and global interest rate differentials.? Bob feels that the next big move in the greenback is down. I couldn't agree more.

McTeer points out that the Fed has been a huge cash cow for the Treasury, and ultimately, the taxpayer. QE1 and QE2 took in $120 billion in profits over the last two years. The TARP funds paid a 5% preferred dividend and brought in tens of billions of dollars in profits from the banks, General Motors, and AIG.

Bob views Obama's $900 billion stimulus package as 'an attempt to shoot a hog with a shotgun.' The big problem is that businesses view such programs as temporary and act accordingly. Permanent changes to government policies get you more bang for the buck.

Bob, 70, was probably one of the last people in Texas to use a functioning outhouse. He grew up in rural Ranger, Georgia, the son of a truck stop operator, and his first brush with the real economy was pumping gas and picking cotton. Somehow, he scored an economics degree from the University of Georgia, and went on to work at the Federal Reserve. He was named president of the Dallas Fed in 1991, and went on to pioneer the analysis of the impact of technology on the macro economy. Bob is simple, but he is no lightweight. Today, he serves as a chancellor of Texas A&M University, with 100,000 students.

May 4, 2011/by Mad Hedge Fund Trader

May 3, 2011 - A Day With Harry S. Dent

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Featured Trades: (A DAY WITH HARRY S. DENT), (STOCKS), (SPX), (QQQ), (EEM), (BONDS), (TLT), (JNK), (TBT), (DOLLAR), (UUP), (FXE), (OIL), (USO), (DIG), (PRECIOUS METALS), (GLD), (SLV), (DENT)

1) A Day With Harry S. Dent. I listen to Harry S. Dent, not because he is an iconoclast, one of the few original thinkers out there, and a complete wild man, although these are all admirable qualities to be found in a global strategist. I listen to him because he has been right.

Go no further than the titles of his books. They include The Great Boom Ahead (1993) (click here for the link),? The Roaring 2000's (1999) (click here for the link),? and The Great Depression Ahead (2008) (click here for the link) .

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His unique blend of demographic research, identification of global consumer spending patterns, and long term cycle analysis, really makes Harry one of a kind. Foreign governments, major hedge funds, financial advisors, and individuals are all just wild about Harry. They have found his advice indispensible when navigating the sticky shoals of international finance.

So when an opportunity arose to spend a day with him sorting through the tea leaves, working through alternative scenarios for the future of disparate asset classes, and testing each other's' theories, I was on the next plane. It was nothing less than a Vulcan mind meld. And the late night Jack Daniels and 15 year old Macallan made sure we were both on a different planet.

Harry argues passionately that we are witnessing the end of the third great bubble in debt, hot on the heels of earlier forays into madness in technology stocks and real estate. Add public and private debt from all sources, and it totals $130 trillion, the greatest accumulation of IOU's in history. The Federal Reserve is now manipulating all markets, and the exercise is certain to end in tears. The only way out from this will be to suffer an economic and financial crisis worse than we have seen to date.

The triggering factor will be the continued collapse of the residential real estate market. Continued shrinking home equity means that there will be ever fewer buyers in this market. That makes a laughing stock of current bank valuations, which have yet to be marked to market, and still obscure massive losses from the last crash. Have you enjoyed Uncle Ben's wealth effect through rising stock prices? The movie run in reverse makes Freddie Kruger look like a cream puff, and the outcome will be ugly.

A key part of Harry's work revolves around generational spending patterns. Americans see spending peak when they reach the ages of 46-50, and bleed off from there. He blends this perspective in with historical data on demographics and some traditional Eliot Wave Analysis to produce one of the most refined long term views in the marketplace.

The big problem is that we have 90 million baby boomers followed by only 70 million 'echo boomers'. Falling family sizes from the1940's onward are going to come back to haunt us. Adjust for the falling earnings of the next generation, and their net consumer spending could drop by half. As I am fond of telling those who attend my strategy lunches, don't plan on selling your house to your kids, especially if they are still living in the basement.

Stocks.? (SPX), (QQQ), (EEM). Stock markets on crack are about to join Lindsey Lohan and Charlie Sheen in rehab. Harry didn't bat an eyelash when he looked me straight in the eye and told me that the Dow was going to 3,300 by 2014. The only unknown is weather the crash starts now, or whether liquidity manufactured by the Federal Reserve can keep the party going for another six months. Put a gun to Harry's head, and he'll tell you that the peak isn't coming until August. But the smart money is getting out, with the put/call ratio, great leading indicator, rocketing to 1.9 in February.

There will be no place to hide, as this will be a global event, and that reallocation towards more defensive sectors will be a waste of time. The Australian stock market will vaporize from 6,000 to 1,000, while Hong Kong will get pared back from 24,000 to 8,000. China is the greatest bubble and could take the biggest hit. The rising middle class will not take their first ever big recession lightly, and coming political turmoil is a given. Canada, with a great resource base behind it, a new government, and rising interest rates, will hold up better than most.

Bonds. While hard times for equities are ahead, bonds are about to enjoy the second coming. The traditional flight to safety bid is about to come back with a vengeance. The wholesale destruction of vast quantities of debt through default is having the unintended consequence that it is creating a bond shortage. Here we are, over two years into this recovery and the ten year Treasury bond is yielding 3.26%? Conditions for bonds are about to dramatically improve, and a 2% yield for this paper is potentially on the menu.

The Dollar. (FEX), (UUP) Just as we are going to see a return of the Treasury bond, the dollar will enjoy a renaissance as well. Harry argues that the collapse of the plethora of asset bubbles we now see will bring a multiyear bull market for the greenback that could take us up 40% from here. That could take the Euro (FXE) down to its foundation level around $0.90. Debt defaults not only create bond shortages, they foster dollar shortages as well.

Oil. (USO), (DIG). If there is one commodity not expecting another Great Recession, it is crude oil. Slow the economy more than traders expect, and Texas tea drops in value by half. Strip out the monetary demand from those seeking a dollar alternative, and it halves again. Settle down the Middle East, and it halves a third time. Yes, Harry Dent is predicting that crude will fall from $115 a barrel today (and $128 for Brent), down to $15 by 2015. Yikes!

Precious Metals. (GLD), (SLV) If oil is wearing a toe tag, will gold be far behind? Coming deflation will cut the inflationistas off at the knees. A strong dollar sends those looking for alternatives into the Looney Bin. Take these frills away, and the barbarous relic becomes just a heavy rock that will take it from $1,550 an ounce, down to $250-$400. Gold bugs are about to get doused with insecticide. As for silver? How about a move from $50 to $4-$8?

To prove that Harry is willing to put his money where his mouth is, he is advising the Dent Tactical ETF (DENT) which mirrors and executes on his views. The fund is up 20% in the past 12 months.

Harry was originally a 'good ole boy' from South Carolina, who like Federal Reserve governor Ben Bernanke, improbably went off to Harvard where he got his MBA. His career then took him to the top notch management consulting firm, Bain & Co. After years of consulting with Fortune 100 companies, he found gaping holes in their understanding of the global economy. That spurred him to take off and create his own research boutique to address these grievous shortfalls in understanding.

To learn more about Harry S. Dent, please go to his website at http://www.meetharrydent.com/

May 3, 2011/by Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Lunch With the CIA

Diary, Evening VIP

Lunch with the Central Intelligence Agency is always interesting, although five gorillas built like brick shithouses staring at me intently didn't help my digestion.

Obama's pick of Leon Panetta as the agency's new director was controversial because he didn't come from an intelligence background- upsetting the career spooks at Langley to no end. But the President thought a resume that included 16 years as the Democratic congressman from Monterey, California, and stints as Clinton's Chief of Staff and OMB Director, was good enough. So when Panetta passed through town on his way home to heavenly Carmel Valley for the holidays, I thought I'd pull a few strings in Washington to catch a private briefing.

The long term outlook for supplies of food, natural resources, and energy is becoming so severe that the CIA is now viewing it as a national security threat. Some one third of emerging market urban populations are poor, or about 1.5 billion souls, and when they get hungry, angry, and politically or religiously inspired, Americans have to worry. This will be music to the ears of the hedge funds that have been stampeding into food, commodities, and energy since March. It is also welcome news to George Soros, who has quietly bought up enough agricultural land in Argentina to create his own medium sized country.

Panetta then went on to say that the current monstrous levels of borrowing by the Federal government abroad is also a security issue, especially if foreigners decide to turn the spigot off and put us on a crash diet. I was flabbergasted, not because this is true, but that it is finally understood at the top levels of the administration and is of interest to the intelligence agencies. Toss another hunk of red meat to my legions of carnivorous traders in the TBT, the leveraged ETF that profits from falling Treasury bond prices!

Job one is to defeat Al Qaida, and the agency has had success in taking out several terrorist leaders in the tribal areas of Pakistan with satellite directed predator drones. The CIA could well win the war in Afghanistan covertly, as they did the last war there in the eighties, with their stinger missiles supplied to the Taliban for use against the Russians. The next goal is to prevent Al Qaida from retreating to other failed states like Yemen and Somalia. The Agency is also basking in the glow of its discovery of a second uranium processing plant in Iran, sparking international outrage, and finally bringing Europeans to our side with sanctions against Iran.

Cyber warfare is a huge new battlefront. Some 100 countries now have this capability, and they have stolen over $50 billion worth of intellectual property from the US in the past year. As much as I tried to pin Panetta down on who the culprits were, he wouldn't name names, but indirectly hinted that the main hacker-in-chief was China. This comes on the heels of General Wesley Clark's admission that the Chinese cleaned out the web connected mainframes at both the Pentagon and the State Department in 2007. The Bush administration kept the greatest security breach in US history secret to duck a hit in the opinion polls.

I thought Panetta was incredibly frank, telling me as much as he could without those gorillas having to kill me afterwards. I have long been envious of the massive budget that the CIA deploys to research the same global markets that I have for most of my life, believed to amount to $70 billion, but even those figures are top secret. If I could only manage their pension fund with their information with a 2%/20% deal! I might even skip the management fee and go for just the bonus. The possibilities boggle the mind!

Panetta's final piece of advice: don't even think about making a cell phone call in Pakistan. I immediately deleted the high risk numbers from my cell phone address book.

I have been pounding the table with these guys for four decades to focus more on the resource issue, but they only seemed interested in missiles, planes, tanks, subs, and satellites. What a long strange trip it's been. Better take another look at the Market Vectors agricultural ETF (DBA), their agribusiness ETF (MOO), as well as my favorite ag stocks, Monsanto (MON), Mosaic (MOS), and Agrium (AGU). Accidents are about to happen in their favor.

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December 6, 2010/by Mad Hedge Fund Trader

September 28, 2010 - An Evening With the Chinese Intelligence Service

Evening VIP

(SPECIAL CHINA ISSUE)

Featured Trades: (FXI), (BIDU), (BYDDF), (CHA), (CHL)
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1) An Evening With the Chinese Intelligence Service. I normally avoid the diplomatic circuit, as the few non committal comments and soggy appetizers I get aren't worth the investment of time. But I jumped at the chance to celebrate the 61^st anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China with San Francisco consul general Gao Zhansheng.

Happy Birthday China!

When I casually mention that I survived the Cultural Revolution and interviewed major political figures like premier Deng Xiaoping, who launched the Middle Kingdom into the modern era, and his predecessor, Zhou Enlai, modern day Chinese are enthralled. It's like going to a Fourth of July party and letting drop that I palled around with Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.

ChinaInvite1.jpg picture by madhedge

Five minutes into the great hall, and I ran into my old friend Wen, who started out her career with the Chinese Intelligence Service, and had made the jump to the Foreign Ministry, as all their best people did. She was passing through town with a visiting trade mission.

When I was touring China in the seventies as the guest of the Bank of China, Wen was assigned as my guide and translator, and we kept in touch over the years. I was assigned a bodyguard who doubled as the driver of a tank like Russian sedan. The Cultural Revolution was on, and while the major cities were safe, we ran the risk of running into a renegade band of xenophobic Red Guards, with potentially fatal consequences.

I asked Wen when China was going to float the Yuan? She explained that this is something China knew it had to do, but it wasn't going to be rushed into by some opportunistic foreign politicians. If it moves too soon, millions will lose jobs, creating political instability, something the central government wants to avoid at all costs. Many of the largest scale employers were only marginally profitable, and a hike in the renminbi of only a few percent would force them out of business. I pointed out that that was exactly what was happening in the US.

Worth More Than Meets the Eye

I warned that if the Middle Kingdom waited too long, Washington would force them into an appreciation through punitive import duties and anti dumping actions, as we did with Japan 40 years ago. It was Nixon's surprise ban on textile imports in 1971 that finally persuaded Japan to float the yen, then at ?360. If that didn't convince the Chinese, then imported inflation would. The longer China delays, the bigger the pop when their currency is finally set free.

Wen then went on the offensive, claiming that Chinese workers were being exploited by American companies keeping wages low. The product that China made for $1, and sold for $2, was then sold by Wal-Mart (WMT) for $20, which kept all the profits. She pointed out that the Walton family had a combined net worth of $100 billion, more than the total worth of the lower 40% of the US population. This could never happen in China. I told her that by selling the product at $20, Wal-Mart wiped out another US company that used to make that product domestically and sold it for $40, throwing those people out of work.

Modern Times in China

I then asked Wen what were her country's plans for its massive foreign exchange reserves, now at $2.5 trillion? She agreed that this was a problem because the reserves were pouring in so fast, at an embarrassingly high rate of $10 billion a month, and that it was the most rapid accumulation of wealth in history (click here for the data). While it had more than enough Treasury bonds, any attempt to sell might cause their value to collapse and freeze relations with the US. I suggested China should start hedging its gigantic holdings without selling them, or some managers would be facing a firing squad in the future.

China has therefore begun directing new reserve inflows into other instruments, like gold, Japanese government bonds, and PIIGS bonds in Europe. While the Europeans were more than happy to take the money, the Japanese were complaining that China's modest purchases were driving up the yen, further depressing their own economy. We all know what has happened to gold.

China tried to recycle its surpluses by buying foreign companies that produce the natural resources it desperately needs. But takeover attempts were fought tooth and nail as a foreign invasion, or on national security grounds, such as the attempt to buy California's Unocal in 2005 and Australia's Oz Minerals last year. It was now using a strategy of buying low profile minority stakes in foreign resource companies. China took a big stake in the recent Petrobras (PBR) secondary equity offering, and Wen would not be surprised if they took a run at Potash (POT), now that it is on the table (click here for 'BHP Billiton Develops an Appetite for Potash').

Check Out This tasty Little Morsel

I asked her about the real estate bubble in China that was causing so many foreign investors to lose sleep. She said it was true that sales were slow at some luxury buildings in Beijing and Shanghai, but the great majority of developments were aimed at working people, and were filling up as soon as they came on the market. The 40% down payment demanded by the People's Bank of China headed off the rampant speculation that brought the American financial system down.

Rooms With Views

Wen then complained about the aggressive military stance the US was taking towards China, ringing it in with the Seventh Fleet. Holding a knife so close to the country's foreign supply line jugular vein made them nervous. China was basically indefensible. All it would take was the sinking of a few grain ships, and 100 million would starve within a year. President Bush was rattling his saber as soon as he moved into office, until 9/11 diverted his attention to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Wen told me there is a school of thought in Beijing that as the country's economic power grows- it is passing Japan to become second in GDP this year-- that the US will increasingly perceive it as a military threat. That would lead America to mete out the same hostile treatment to China as it did Russia during the cold war.

Walking Softly, But Carrying a Big Stick

I assured her that the Seventh Fleet was there to watch and listen, but to do nothing. It was really in position to provide a security blanket for allies, like Japan and South Korea, but nothing more. China wasn't engaging in the belligerent behavior that Russia was at the height of the cold war, like blockading Berlin, basing missiles in Cuba, stationing fast attack nuclear submarines off our coasts, and invading Afghanistan.

I argued that if China truly has no expansionary intentions, the more we know about you, the better. It is always prudent for a potential adversary to conclude you are not a threat, and that no action is needed. The more you help the US do that, the better. China is decades behind the US in military technology, and you really have nothing we want. Little more than 200 nuclear weapons without an ICMB or submarine delivery systems were hardly viewed as a major threat.

Wen seemed perturbed that I was aware of her country's nuclear stockpiles, and asked how I knew this. I said CIA director Leon Panetta told me (click here for 'Lunch With the CIA'). She said 'Oh.' I asked what was that test downing of a satellite in space about, anyway? She didn't answer.

In any case, with our military fully committed fighting two wars in the Middle East, we lacked the resources for an Asian offensive if we were so inclined, even against a piddling, mismanaged, rogue state like North Korea. But looking at the world for the next 30 years, who is the Pentagon going to model and war game against, but China, with its 2.5 million man army?

Wen countered that the People's Liberation Army was purely a defensive force. With a 12,000 mile land border, an 11,000 mile coastline, and dubious neighbors like Russia, Iran, and India, they have no other choice. Its ability to project force over great distances, as the US can, is virtually nonexistent. Its 1979 invasion of Vietnam was about reclaiming ten miles of lost territory. China got involved in Korea only after general Douglas MacArthur threatened to rain atomic bombs on the mainland, losing 2 million men, including Chairman Mao's son. China could have done a lot more in the Vietnam War, but didn't, limiting its participation to a supply, logistical, and advisory role.

That's a Lot of Border to Defend

I then warned that if you really are worried about the Pentagon, you should stop hacking into our computers. She replied that the US started this by emptying out Chinese mainframes many times, and they were only responding in kind. I said yes, but that China was targeting private companies, like Google (GOOG), Hewlett Packard (HPQ), and Oracle (ORCL), that without military grade software, were unable to defend themselves. The Chinese agencies involved then used the data to their own commercial advantage.

pentagon2.jpg picture by madhedge

What Did You Say the Password Was Again?

By the time Wen married, China had already adopted its one child policy. As much as she wanted more children, she understood the government's need to adopt such a drastic policy. Without it, the population today would be 1.6 billion, not 1.2 billion, and all of the money that went into buying capital goods would have been spent on food imports instead. The country would have stagnated at its 1980 per capita income of $100/year. There would have been no Chinese economic miracle. She was very proud of her one son, who was a software engineer at Microsoft (MSFT) in Beijing.

Her husband, a mid level official at the Ministry of Commerce, fared less well, dying of lung cancer at a relatively early age. The US and Europe had exported their worst polluting industries to China to take advantage of lax environmental controls, turning the air in Beijing into a choking haze. Sometimes her son would come home from school coughing and wheezing so badly that he couldn't play outside. The two packs of cigarettes a day her husband smoked didn't help either.

Imported From the USA

I asked if she recalled our first trip together and a dark cloud came over her face. We were touring a section of Fuzhou when three policemen marched up. They started shouting at Wen that we were in a restricted section of the city where foreigners were not allowed. They started mercilessly beating her with clubs.

I was about to intercede when my wife, Kyoko, let go with a blood curdling tirade in Japanese that froze them in their tracks. I saw from the fear in their faces that she had ignited their wartime fear of Japanese authority, and they beat a hasty retreat. To this day, I'm not exactly sure what Kyoko said. We took Wen back to our hotel room and bandaged her up, putting ice on the giant goose egg on her head. When I left, I gave her my copy of HG Well's A Short History of the World, which she treasured, as the book was then banned in China.

Wen mentioned that she was approaching the mandatory retirement age of 60, and soon would be leaving the Foreign Service. I suggested she move to San Francisco, which offered a thriving Chinese community and home prices that had recently dropped by half. She laughed. No matter how much prices had fallen, she could never afford anything here on a Chinese civil servant's salary.

Wen told me that China was grateful for the billions of dollars that foreigners had poured into her country as a result of my writings. I replied that I was simply trying to show my readers where to make some money, nothing more. One of my recommendations, for Chinese search engine Baidu (BIDU), was up nearly tenfold in less than two years, (click here for the call). Did she happen to know about any more future Baidu's? Wen said that she wasn't that close to the stock market, but that she would get back to me.

I asked Wen if she still had the book I gave her nearly four decades ago. She said it had become a family heirloom, and was being passed down through the generations. As she smiled, I notice the faint scar on her eyebrow from that unpleasantness so long ago.

In view of Wen's comments, I think you have got to buy the Chinese ETF here (FXI), which is the principle lagging emerging stock market this year. You also better revisit my stock picks in the area, including Baidu, China Mobile (CHL), Build Your Dreams (BYDDF), and China Telecom (CHA).

September 28, 2010/by Mad Hedge Fund Trader

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