The Runway

Is reducing risk always worth the price?

Dear Ben: I don’t know if you read ZH. I bet you do. It would be disappointing to learn that you didn’t read some of the leading edge financial blogs. But if not, I bet at least one of your staffers does. If you’re any kind of manager, they won’t be afraid to bring this to your attention. Or perhaps Ron Paul’s staffers can shoot a copy over to your office. It’s a simple petition, really, in the traditional sense. I hope you will consider it. I understand the conclusion you came to in 2008 and early 2009 after a career spent studying the Great Depression, and I also understand that you feel justified in using whatever channels are available to you as proxy helicopters to drop cash. And it works. You’ve essentially manipulated the US and world markets as though they were remote control funny-cars, bent to whatever short-term route you desire, though we have yet to see what the second and third-order effects are. I mean, beyond food riots, destabilization of the Middle East, gas prices that American citizens won’t ultimately be able to afford, agriculture prices that will play havoc with corporate margins and retail food prices, the US dollar losing its reserve-currency status… things like that.

The basic problem is that nobody cares. Cotton, the grains, and oil all go up for the short term. But the long term impact of the Egyptian blow up on the global economy is minimal. But expect volatility to start trending upward from here. There are black swans out there gathering.

China is not a black swan, because a black swan is a rare, significant, and unpredictable event. However, the consequences of what is transpiring in China and Japan are for the most part predictable (especially if I am writing about it). We don’t know when they will play out, but they are predictable.

 I have not written articles in a few months, except for the one I wrote for the July issue of Institutional Investor magazine, on Japan (I’ll post a link once the magazine comes out)..  I am sure Freud, after spending a few minutes in my subconscious, would provide some disturbing explanations.  But as Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.  I've just been enjoying summer with my family.