Can Turtles Fly?

Here are two radically contrarian views. Of course, as always, what is contrarian depends on the crowd you hang out with. I measure it against the mainstream masses (i.e. institutional investors and Wall Street as a whole.) The views I present below aren't that new to me but they go against the Street. US$ To Remain Dominant This is a very long-term call so it's not really actionable for most of us (unless you are willing to invest for 20 years and not touch your money.) Ambrose-Evans Pritchard, a journalist at The Telegraph, makes a widly bullish call on the US$ : The dollar will still be the world’s dominant reserve currency in 2030, sharing a degree of leadership in uneasy condominium with the Chinese yuan. It will then regain much of its hegemonic status as the 21st century unfolds. It may indeed end the century even stronger than it was at the start. Why, you might wonder, could someone say the US$ would be stronger in 20 years: The aging crisis in Asia — and indeed the o...

Here are some articles, interviews, and commentaries that I found interesting over the last couple of weeks. I don't know if it's a coincidence that quite a number of articles are about China; or am I subconsciously thinking about issues surrounding China? hmm... Overview of China (The Globe & Mail): A nice, detailed, recap of the situation in China. Seth Klarman Harvard interview (Harvard Business School): Forget where I got the original link from but here is a brief interview of Seth Klarman. It mainly deals with his life and his thoughts on life. Changing winds of capitalism (The New York Times): David Leonhardt's essay chronicles the changes that are occuring in economic thought. He suggests how Adam Smith was far less of a laissez-faire capitalist than generally suggested. Marc Faber audio interview with financialtube.com (Financialtube.com; Marc Faber Report, original mention by Alex Garcia at GuruFocus): The usual stuff... didn't find anything th...

One of my rules in investing is to be skeptical of economists' predictions. Economists generally don't consider valuations when making proclamations. They also tend to be influenced by peers and have a habit for looking backwards quite often. Nevertheless, since I am macro-oriented, I do think it's worth paying attention to the general picture that is put forth by an economist. One of the economists I was influenced by in the past was Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley. He was a bear for a long period of time. So much so that he was "promoted" and sent off to head their Asian operations. You never heard much from him after that, of course. Another bear at Morgan Stanley, Andy Xie, who I think is too extremist and is often wrong, was fired around the same time period a few years ago for claiming that a big chunk of Singapore wealth comes from the Chinese and Indonesian organized criminals, corrupt politicians, and other nefarious sources. Xie was very bearish on Chi...