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Writing about the future of investing in the current global economic climate is an easy way to get depressed. After all, Europe seems on the verge of disintegration; China risks a hard crash-landing; Japan’s debt-bubble could burst at any moment, and emerging economies are too closely linked to China’s fate. Meanwhile in the U.S., GDP […]
Conditions for investors around the world are getting worse. Let’s start with Europe, the world’s second-largest economy. The European Union is a collection of states that are vastly different from one another. They are separated by culture, language (which impedes labor mobility, resulting in semipermanent labor productivity disparity between countries — think Greece and Germany), […]
The Great Recession may be over, but eight years later we can still see the deep scars and unhealed wounds it left on the global economy. In an attempt to prevent an unpleasant revisit to the Stone Age, global governments have bailed out banks and the private sector. These bailouts and subsequent stimuli swelled global […]
The election is over. I am left with two very contradictory feelings. First is one of appreciation — every four years we peacefully replace our government. I remember my parents in the late 1970s discussing Soviet politics at our house with their close friend. Their friend said something anti-Soviet. I vividly recall the fear in […]
A few years back I wrote an article comparing buy-one-suit-get-three-free sales by Jos. A. Bank to the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program. Then Jos. A. Bank’s management did something absolutely brilliant: In March 2014 it sold the company for $1.8 billion to Men’s Wearhouse, its closest competitor (and twice its outfit’s size). Earlier this month […]
The article was in the works for over a year. I sat down to write it several times, and every time, until the last time, I walked away with just an incomplete paragraph or two. Just like any article about today’s global economy, it is an open-ended article. When I shared a draft with my […]
Five years ago, almost to the day, I was interviewed by David Galland, who worked at Casey Research at the time. This interview covered three topics: the Chinese overcapacity bubble, the Japanese debt bubble, and my sideways markets thesis. Five years is a long time, but with the exception of updating some statistics I really would not change anything.
Putin’s World: Why Russia’s Showdown with the West Will Worsen I grew up hating America. I lived in the Soviet Union and was a child of the cold war. That hate went away in 1989, though, when the Berlin Wall fell and the cold war ended. By the time I left Russia in 1991, the […]
While in Omaha for the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting a couple of weeks ago, I participated in an investment panel hosted by a local chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organization. I had the privilege of sharing the stage with such industry giants as Tom Russo, a partner of Gardner Russo & Gardner (famous for knowing […]
It is hard for me to see a full-blown war between Russia and Ukraine. There are so few cultural differences between these two countries. Ukraine has its own language, but almost everyone (outside of small villages) speaks flawless Russian. If there is a war between these two countries, it will be a civil war. Ukraine […]
