Comments on: Why I am an Optimist

By: I-Man

I-Man — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:56:58 +0000

I-Man loves John Mauldin.

By: insaneclownposse

insaneclownposse — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 18:53:59 +0000

I agree completely. The future will be better than today, if only because today is absolutely horrible and things can’t stay this bleak forever. Hey, things are better in Germany today than they were in the early 1920s. Sadly for all of us, many unfortunate events took place there during the interim.
Anyway, if you want to make money it’s always best to stay positive because markets generally spend a lot more time in bull phases than bear phases.

Something I want to take issue with is your contention that the world is now negatively correlated with the dollar. It was for the past year or so but I think cracks are now showing in the thesis. As soon as U.S. equity markets opened November 27, the dollar got absolutely pounded. In my opinion, if the big dogs are unwilling or unable to run the dollar up even with this Dubai “crisis” panicking the shorts, then the negative correlation is getting pretty old in the tooth. I think trumpeting the dollar safety issue gives folks a false sense of security when they should be living on pins and needles praying the dollar doesn’t implode. Just my two cents……

By: How the Common Man Sees It

How the Common Man Sees It — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:12:27 +0000

I don’t think it is so much that the gloomers see things going bad in a linear way. I see it more as a huge funnel effect. There is this small hole that the relative few talented are going to get through and there is a huge crowd heading for that hole right now. A lot of jobs are going to disappear as the internet eliminates the need for many of them. Mainly in the information production arena. For those that produce the content things should go along about the same, though they will have a lot more, sharper competition. For those on who the content used to be produced, paper, television, printed reports, auditoriums. Those people might not have the same good go at it.

This will get interesting. Maybe the drop in prices will outpace the drop in income and all will be well. If more things become virtually free then a pauper’s wage is all some of us will need anyway and the last enemy will be boredom.

By the way, as I counted the ‘psychic income’ of my life path (assuming it all worked out the way I wanted it to) I always considered boredom to be the last enemy

By: M.G. in Progress

M.G. in Progress — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 07:51:54 +0000

Excellent read.
“But in any event, one of the lessons to be learned is that investors should pay attention to where the leverage is. Unsustainable debt trends end in tears. They always do. Spain, Greece, Italy, the UK, and Japan will all have to face major restructuring in the next decade due to leverage. And we in the US will also find that we cannot grow debt at our current levels”.
http://mgiannini.blogspot.com/2009/11/rich-countries-bond-defaults-or-debt.html

By: bostonwealthmanagement

bostonwealthmanagement — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 07:13:13 +0000

Let’s dig a little deeper as to why this Dubia vis a vis Abu Dhabi financial crises is a non issue.
Guess what. The French.. yes the French are opening a French military base in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

And guess what.. the Emirate nation is going to have to pay for 60 Rafale jets in a deal worth 8-11 billion to France. The UAE is scared shitless that Iran will try to soon take over that country… heck before the Gulf War Iran just one day claimed sovereignty over two large unihabited Kuwaiti island; Bubayan and Failaka becuase they feared that Kuwait was going to hand the islands over to Iraq to help by building a military base.

So all the GCC council states (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, etc.) are worried about Iran. So to protect itself from Iran, the UAE is going to have to broker the deal with France to pay for the jets.. ya think that UAE is going to leave the country in such a perilous situation with Dubai that France will say WTF and we can’t trust you to buy our planes on loan because you default! Heck no! UAE is smarter than that! They will get their house and finances in order to be able to defend themselves with those planes and buy them!
They ain’t waiting around for that I am a nutjob to attack them.
You have to look at the political backdrop and the geopolitical implications to understand why the UAE has to come clean on the Dubai fiasco.

By: bostonwealthmanagement

bostonwealthmanagement — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 02:23:42 +0000

Ho hum! The Dubai story right now is a non-event. If history is any indication for the region, this is not the first time that the United Arab Emirates was in trouble. In Aug. 1982 we had the crash of the Souk al-Manakh, in Kuwait, which started specializing in the trade of highly speculative “unregulated non-Kuwaiti companies,” such as those incorporated in the United Arab Emirates among others. More than $90 billion in debts was outstanding when the wildly speculative market collapsed. Much more than the Dubai story today!

Heck at its peak, its market capitalization was the third highest in the world, behind only the U.S. and Japan, and ahead of the U.K. and France. Souk Al-Manakh’s 1982 stock market crash of Kuwait’s unofficial stock market with all its market capitalization ended up being a non market event over here!

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0%2C9171%2C926384-1%2C00.html

By: shopa

shopa — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 22:21:14 +0000

Hello John,

I agree with all of the reasons to be optimistic, but I believe that climate change will be a terrible problem much sooner than people think.

The news media does not report on the drought problems around the world. A lot of people rely on rainfall to grow crops and the rains are not coming. Farmers are committing suicide in Australia because their farms have turned to dust.

Please read the following blog to get the kind of information that the world needs to see:

http://www.waterconserve.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=143711

Thanks for your emails.

By: investorinpa

investorinpa — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:37:28 +0000

This was a GREAT GREAT GREAT read….it blended terrific storytelling and reasons to sit up straight and plow ahead with life rather than let the weight of the world cause your shoulders to sag. I have saved Mr. Mauldin’s piece and will go back to it whenever times are tough for me financially and personally.