Market Currents
A revision to the mean type of guy for most of his career, Jeremy Grantham continues a...
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Wednesday, August 1, 2012, 8:18 AM ETA revision to the mean type of guy for most of his career, Jeremy Grantham continues a Malthusian turn in his old age, warning of decades of food shortages (last year's warning focused on metals, but all of a sudden the world seems oversupplied with those). Being a breadbasket, the U.S. will not be affected too badly, but poorer importers will see trouble.
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Metals may be in surplus at this moment on account of delevering across the globe, banks not readily lending teetering on bankruptcy, remaining solvent only at 0% interest rates from the Central Banks in government bailouts, large unemployment, lack-luster sales, and in an economy where 70% of its growth stems from consumer spending, we face economies across the globe at their worst, making the demand for metals at this juncture low.
Watch out when in the best-case scenario things very slowly return to normal and talk about the oversupply of metals in four or five years. We'll listen as their price skyrockets while investors attempt to find refuge from the devastating inflation if historical data is to unfold once again. Too many dollars chasing dwindling numbers of goods will prove your assessment today wrong. It works this way every time. Ask Volcker.
It's not a Bush Depression, it's a "full faith and credit" print and spend depression, aggravated by bailouts and stubborn adherence to failed economic policies continued by all administrations regardless of the person or the party in office. It's not a Bush Depression it's a LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, GHWBush, Clinton, GW Bush, Obama overspend sustained and aggravated one administration at a time with expanded government programs to the tune of $16 Trillion and $55 Trillion aggregate deficits.
It's time to delever everything, including government departments and employees. It's not too late to overhaul income tax schemes to ensure everyone, not just the top 20% of the people, pays a fair share, poor and rich alike. It's preposterous that 60% of the people don't pay any income taxes and yet clamor for tax increases on those already paying 100% of the government revenues.
It's more than timely to revise excise taxes as percentages of the cost of products instead of flat amounts to stop additional inflation that hurts us all, but more so the poor.
The government doesn't produce anything but red ink. It inhibits progress. It spends to remain in power and to expand itself endlessly while at every step, it obliterates our ability to live free. It's time for individuals to become entrepreneurs, finding a way to become self-employed instead of relying on others to pay them a salary.
This country is the most successful experiment of capitalism. We've lost our way because it's not that capitalism has failed; it's because government meddling has allowed crooks and banksters to act without ethics with impunity at the expense of the people who end up holding the losses while the criminals keep their ill-gotten loot because they're politically connected and skirt the laws.
We may currently experience different weather patterns, some call it global warming as a political term, but it's only part of the cycles Earth has experienced for Eons. We simply need to adapt or perish along with the dinosaurs and the wooly mammoths.