I said on Monday that Marc Faber was, by and large, in favour of keeping his money in his pocket, and a quick Google News trawl shows that his mind hasn't changed:
Stocks, Real Estate and Oil Are Overvalued, Marc Faber Says
Why rising inflation will trigger a bond market rout
Cambodia Starts to Beckon Private Equity
For investors, Cambodia could be the next Vietnam
The last is interesting. I have suspected for some time that Dr Faber lives in northern Thailand, not simply to hide in Shangri-La but to be nearer to the places where real bargains may be found, and so that his hunches can be informed by personal networking and under-the-radar experience. Quirky and fast-moving, he would not be the man to manage a large institutional fund: I think his lightning ex-ski champ reflexes demand more challenge.
An after-thought: if you do think cash is best, there's still the question of which currency.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Is it OK to have principles?
Shadow Home Secretary David Davis resigns his Parliamentary seat to fight a by-election on the issue of civil liberty in Britain, and Michael White in the Guardian plays the sneering curmudgeon; parti pris?
UPDATE
Someone put the text of Mr Davis' speech as a comment to Michael White's piece. Here are a couple of extracts:
This Counter Terrorism Bill will in all likelihood be rejected by the House of Lords... But because the impetus behind it is political, the government will be tempted to use the Parliament Act...
It has no democratic mandate to do this...
... I am just a piece in this chess game.
Folly? Vanity? My eye (and Betty Martin).
UPDATE
Someone put the text of Mr Davis' speech as a comment to Michael White's piece. Here are a couple of extracts:
This Counter Terrorism Bill will in all likelihood be rejected by the House of Lords... But because the impetus behind it is political, the government will be tempted to use the Parliament Act...
It has no democratic mandate to do this...
... I am just a piece in this chess game.
Folly? Vanity? My eye (and Betty Martin).
Are free trade and small government the answer?
Liberal economists argue consistently for free trade, libertarians argue constantly for smaller government. We can easily see the faults of over-regulation and the centralisation of power.
But what would happen to the poorest if we really did move towards laissez-faire capitalism? I don't mean the poor in India and China, who are currently benefiting from open markets; I mean the poorest in the USA and UK. Would things really sort themselves out to the good of all?
Or would we find that we'd leapt from the frying pan into the fire?
But what would happen to the poorest if we really did move towards laissez-faire capitalism? I don't mean the poor in India and China, who are currently benefiting from open markets; I mean the poorest in the USA and UK. Would things really sort themselves out to the good of all?
Or would we find that we'd leapt from the frying pan into the fire?
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
An appetite for investment risk?
How does the quote from Jonathan Wilmot in the previous post sit with the new Risk Appetite Investable Index fund his firm launched last month?
Just curious.
Just curious.
Monday, June 09, 2008
Cashhhhhhh... don't tell anybody
"There is now the distinct possibility of a simultaneous sell-off in global bonds, equities and commodities," said Jonathan Wilmot from Credit Suisse.
... reports Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph (I must start to read the big-words papers). Anyhow, this is what Marc Faber said months ago. Short-term, I have a feeling DE is still on for the 'flation hors d'oeuvre, with IN as the entree.
By the way, are any managers of collective investment funds actually saying the type of thing Wilmot is saying, to their clients (not the big, favoured ones, the others, the Moms 'n' Pops)?
(htp: Karl Denninger)
... reports Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph (I must start to read the big-words papers). Anyhow, this is what Marc Faber said months ago. Short-term, I have a feeling DE is still on for the 'flation hors d'oeuvre, with IN as the entree.
By the way, are any managers of collective investment funds actually saying the type of thing Wilmot is saying, to their clients (not the big, favoured ones, the others, the Moms 'n' Pops)?
(htp: Karl Denninger)
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Please read this man
David Parsley writes in today's Sunday Express, a piece titled "Homes Panic Is A Bank Ploy" (not yet available on the Net for free, but look for it again soon). The content is self-evident, but please, read and believe him. Spread the word. Find more such pieces by optimistic counter-contrarians, and publicise them. Blow away all that negative thinking.
That way, I may have more time to sell my house at current ridiculous market prices, which for personal reasons I can't yet.
That way, I may have more time to sell my house at current ridiculous market prices, which for personal reasons I can't yet.
Does State expenditure inflate the market?
Charles Moore comments on Jonathan Ross' £18m 3-year deal with the BBC:
... even if it is a wonderful idea to pay Mr Ross roughly 30 times more (annualised) than the Prime Minister and 20 times more than the Governor of the Bank of England out of what is, after all, tax, it is obvious rubbish that this does not push up the market. If the BBC were not competing in this field, Mr Ross’s price to commercial channels would plummet.
Deplorably, Mr Ross is unbelievably coarse, which sends a message to his (relatively) young audience. Peter Hitchens suspects that this crassness is a cynically avaricious pretence:
Ross talks on TV in an arrogant sort of loutspeak.
I wonder if he talks like that when he’s dealing with his lawyers and his accountants.
Now that would be a fly-on-the-wall documentary to screen next to Ross' show.
So, celeb wages inflated and manners undermined by spendthrift public services.
Meanwhile, Liz Jones takes a very laudable interest in the young, especially those rotting away in the complex trap of social security benefits. And again, a market may be distorted by public money:
Her room is damp, sparsely furnished, has a stinking, threadbare carpet, and Paris mostly sits on her bed, terrified to walk to the shared bathroom in case one of the boys who slouches around outside harasses her.
Drugs are dealt openly in the corridors. Each week, ‘the council’ (I’ve never heard her use the words ‘government’, ‘Labour’ or ‘Gordon Brown’) pays the £330 rent (yes, that is £1,430 a month, more than my mortgage repayments) for her box room direct to the private landlord; on top of that, Paris is given £47 a week to live on.
That is, she was, until the council got wind she had got off her backside and found a job, just three days a week, in a clothes shop in Oxford Street (she would have loved, she told me once, to have been a fashion designer).
Although her pay is less than her rent, she has been bombarded with letters and forms, too complicated for anyone, let alone someone with dyslexia, to fill in, demanding six months’ back rent.
She is now being threatened with eviction.
The negative reinforcement is too obvious to summarise, but look at this young girl's rent as a proportion of her total "income": 87.5%!
Compare that with this, from the Guardian in December 2007:
The CML said a typical first-time buyer paid 20.6% of their income to service their mortgage in October, up from 20.4% in September, while for those moving house it rose to 17.6% from 17.5%. The figures are the highest recorded since 1991 and 1992.
There are now very many people (about 4 million) on some form of housing benefit. Is it not possible that rents, and consequently housing valuations, have been grossly distorted by such interventions? Isn't there some other way to house people without creating opportunities for modern Rachman types?
... even if it is a wonderful idea to pay Mr Ross roughly 30 times more (annualised) than the Prime Minister and 20 times more than the Governor of the Bank of England out of what is, after all, tax, it is obvious rubbish that this does not push up the market. If the BBC were not competing in this field, Mr Ross’s price to commercial channels would plummet.
Deplorably, Mr Ross is unbelievably coarse, which sends a message to his (relatively) young audience. Peter Hitchens suspects that this crassness is a cynically avaricious pretence:
Ross talks on TV in an arrogant sort of loutspeak.
I wonder if he talks like that when he’s dealing with his lawyers and his accountants.
Now that would be a fly-on-the-wall documentary to screen next to Ross' show.
So, celeb wages inflated and manners undermined by spendthrift public services.
Meanwhile, Liz Jones takes a very laudable interest in the young, especially those rotting away in the complex trap of social security benefits. And again, a market may be distorted by public money:
Her room is damp, sparsely furnished, has a stinking, threadbare carpet, and Paris mostly sits on her bed, terrified to walk to the shared bathroom in case one of the boys who slouches around outside harasses her.
Drugs are dealt openly in the corridors. Each week, ‘the council’ (I’ve never heard her use the words ‘government’, ‘Labour’ or ‘Gordon Brown’) pays the £330 rent (yes, that is £1,430 a month, more than my mortgage repayments) for her box room direct to the private landlord; on top of that, Paris is given £47 a week to live on.
That is, she was, until the council got wind she had got off her backside and found a job, just three days a week, in a clothes shop in Oxford Street (she would have loved, she told me once, to have been a fashion designer).
Although her pay is less than her rent, she has been bombarded with letters and forms, too complicated for anyone, let alone someone with dyslexia, to fill in, demanding six months’ back rent.
She is now being threatened with eviction.
The negative reinforcement is too obvious to summarise, but look at this young girl's rent as a proportion of her total "income": 87.5%!
Compare that with this, from the Guardian in December 2007:
The CML said a typical first-time buyer paid 20.6% of their income to service their mortgage in October, up from 20.4% in September, while for those moving house it rose to 17.6% from 17.5%. The figures are the highest recorded since 1991 and 1992.
There are now very many people (about 4 million) on some form of housing benefit. Is it not possible that rents, and consequently housing valuations, have been grossly distorted by such interventions? Isn't there some other way to house people without creating opportunities for modern Rachman types?
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