Code Red: How to Protect Your Savings From the Coming Crisis

I'll start off by saying that I am a big fan of John Mauldin. I read his weekly letter, Thoughts from the Fontline, religiously. You should too!John's writing is always brilliant, and Code Red is no exception. He is a master of global macroeconomics, but he can also explain the esoterica so that most can understand. That is not to say that Code Red is fluffy. It will hurt your head at times. But this is an important book that people should read. Buy a copy for your favorite Congressman. Seriously!!One area that deserves a bit of elaboration is the apparent conflict between his guidance to buy stocks when the price is low and his guidance against trying to time the market. He identifies good characteristics of companies that can best survive the coming inflation and correctly points out that your overall return will be better if you can buy the stock when it is at a low point.Mauldin also cites studies that show retail investors typically fail when it comes to trying to time the market and suggests Harry Browne's "Permanent Portfolio" as a potential solution: 25% each in Stocks, Bonds, Gold, and Cash. But if you are trying to pick stocks when they are undervalued, isn't that market timing?A strategy that more dedicated individual investors might employ is to anticipate a market downturn and scale back the stock allocation, moving some of the stock money into the cash bucket. In my book,  Fiscal Cliff Investing - Strategies for Investment Protection , I suggest some of the signals that show that "the big one" might be coming and other strategies to protect your investments.Whether it comes from the next debt ceiling discussion, from a PIIGS bank crisis, or when Japan finally hits the windshield, the next crisis will come. While the Permanent Portfolio did fairly well over the last decades, the coming years will require a little more diligence (and timing) to achieve success.Thanks for the great book, John.Your honored to be a fellow `JM' reviewer,John Marsland

In this excellent book, John Mauldin and Jonathan Tepper follow the theme of their last book " Endgame: The End of the Debt Supercycle and How It Changes Everything " but explore in greater depth the subject of central bank QE (quantitive easing) - printing money to you and me.Essentially it's a story about government budgets where expenditure exceeds revenue and borrowing covers the shortfall.The focus is on Japan and the US and they show that each country arrived at the same place by different routes. The Japanese followed standard Keynesian policy after the collapse of their property boom in 1989 by trying to replace lost demand and jump start their economy but it's still not working 20 years later. The US simply had legislatures that persistently overspent their budget from the early 1970's until the present with a current revenue shortfall of 40 %, not to mention impossible future commitments.The authors show that Japan and the US meet their budget shortfalls in different ways. The Japanese who are big savers have mostly funded the deficit themselves (eg Japanese Post Bank savings) but Americans who are not big savers have mostly borrowed the money from abroad (e.g. from the Chinese and Japanese).The point of the book is that both sources of funding are no longer working. Japan has an ageing population that wants to tap its pension savings and the Chinese and Japanese have had second thoughts about buying US bonds, so both Japan and the US are obliged to buy their own bonds (issue money to do it) since their deficits are so large that any real world tax increases or spending cuts aren't going to fix the problem.This is QE and the authors note that it serves a dual purpose in keeping interest rates low (reducing the governments interest payments bill) and removing money from savings accounts where the artificially low interest rate is below the rate of inflation. A quick check of the Economist Magazine's statistics page (Dec. 2013) shows that the US and the United Kingdom have QE interest rates of about 2.7% on 10 year bonds whereas countries with similar trade and budget deficits (as a percentage of GDP) like Brazil and India pay around 10% on a 10 year bond - not directly comparable, but this is still a 7% gap.Mauldin and Tepper could have stepped outside economics to look at the Counter Culture Problem which seems to have been at the root of the growing US deficits from the early 1970's. Instead of meeting the post war challenges of reconstructed industrial competitors like Germany, Japan and China, the US embarked on a counter-cultural revolution targeting the institutions that had generated its wealth and stability in the past. "The Man", "Squares" and "Anglo traditions" were tossed out along with sound finance, the Constitution and anything else "bourgeois" to be replaced with leftism, multiculturalism, anti-nationalism and a general liberal personal freedom in all things. This divided house is where the US is now and it seems to be getting worse with a gridlocked legislature and Anglo traditionalists moving to Red states and leftist liberals moving to Blue states ( see Bishop & Cushing's " The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart "). No national unity here.Equally they could have looked at the new way that modern technology is producing automatic deficits as new factories employ many fewer workers for the same output with the new variant that professional work is also bring automated. This is a qualitatively different sort of technological change that produces big profits but low employment (see Martin Ford's interesting book, " The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future ") suggesting that profits need to bear a greater share of taxation, when in fact the opposite is happening.However, sticking to the main theme, the authors currently see " A Beautiful Deleveraging" (Ray Dalio's phrase) in the US as sufficient liquidity is created to balance deflationary forces and produce positive growth with a gradual eating away at debt through mild inflation (price increases ahead of the interest rate) and they finally ask if it isn't time to wind down QE.They support their argument with the clear evidence of a US recovery that can be seen in housing, manufacturing, greater productivity, auto sales at a normal rate and the new fracking based oil and gas boom. They highlight the serious inflationary risk posed by enormous bank reserves waiting to be turned into loans. To use their terminology the vast reserves of "ice" could turn straight into the "vapour" of inflation without passing through the water stage.This raises some questions about the FED and they are very dismissive of central bankers in general and Alan Greenspan in particular. They view Greenspan and Bernanke as incompetent with major failures being Greenspan's inability to recognize a property bubble when it is staring him in the face , and his full approval of the scrapping of the Glass-Steagall Act and enabling bank 30x leverage.A simpler explanation (that the authors don't consider) is that they weren't incompetent at all, they were/are just playing on a different team.The removal of the Glass-Steagall Act gave Team Wall St. access to non-speculative high street bank deposits and combined with new 30x leverage allowed them much larger profits, with Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Deputy Secretary Larry Summers pushing hard to repeal of the Act and face off critical regulators. The same team went on to organize their own Bailout at public expense such that AIG got full dollar for their semi-worthless paper, bankers got their bonuses and no one went of jail despite breaking dozens of laws.So probably a more relevant question is, "What will Team Wall St do with QE to again maximise its profits?"The authors could already be looking at the first stage of the answer. They puzzle over the extent of continuing FED QE in the face of an economic recovery and wonder why Team Wall St. is building this time bomb.If they took the view that this is a pure money game that has nothing to do with the interests of the American public then they could consider the following profit maximising sequence:1- The present bubble (2013) funded to the maximum (with cosmetic tapering) until it collapses.2- A large scale sell off that surprisingly includes stocks, bonds and the dollar. Team Wall St is fully exiting the dollar, probably for the euro.3- More QE but with an add-on of direct payments to all government employees (no need for a transmission mechanism + we need to be more aggressive).4- A fast recovery with higher employment but accelerating inflation.5- The public finally realizes that their savings are at risk and the "ice" reserve base quickly "vaporizes" into hyperinflation.6- The critical point here is that the FED feeds the fire by holding down the interest rate which is rationalized as, supporting employment, lowering government debts and interest payments, avoiding another crash, the poor don't have any savings to lose and the bond holders who are getting wiped out are foreigners anyway (Chinese and Japanese)7- At the height of the chaos when all financial assets are viewed as worthless, Team Wall St can return to the US with hard currency to buy up Berkshire Hathaway etc.at fire sale prices (for a prequel see the German hyperinflation of 1922 where Mercedes Benz could have been bought for the price of 190 of their cars) and finally clear out middle American ownership.8- The FED can then "discover" its error and Yellen can save the day by introducing some kind of asset backed hard dollar (1 gold eagle = 1.000.000 greenbacks?), becoming a champion of financial probity and Team Wall St.gets to keep its winnings (again).Nothing is certain, but Ray Dalio does allow the 3rd option of a self-reinforcing upward inflationary spiral.If this script comes into play then it may be time to look again at Fritz Lang's 1922 film " Dr Mabuse the Gambler " and check Simplicissimus magazine covers from 1918 to 1924 (see simplicissimus.com and Bernd Widdig's excellent book " Culture and Inflation in Weimar Germany (Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism) ").UPDATE 10th May 2016 Stan Druckenmiller's opinion is that Team Wall St. is about to exit around now. Google "Druckenmiller Endgame" for a summary, with the proviso that a number policy makers do have an endgame (while he says they don't).

I found Code Red a fascinating read. It describes a financial history of the world, with a natural emphasis on US, during the 20th century, including the numerous bubbles and busts in various markets. In the first chapter, it explores the numerous mistakes of governments and central banks in managing the financial health of their countries and demonstrates the huge gap between various economic theories and reality. In the second chapter, it provides practical recommendations for investors, large and small, on how to maintain and grow their portfolios during the turbulent times of the second decade of the 21st century and beyond.I agree with most of the book's conclusions and recommendations, but have one comment. When comparing Japan and US, I agree with the authors' statement that the Japanese economic situation is worse than ours, which is partly due to their aging population and traditional closely-knit society, while US has been relatively open to the "fresh blood" of new immigrants. I am unsure, however, whether the same is applied to the comparison of the national debts. Though the Japanese debt-to-GDP appears to be much larger than ours, it is already inclusive of their pension liabilities, while ours is exclusive of medical and pension benefits payable by the federal, state and local governments over the next several decades. I have seen valuations of our real (all-inclusive) national debt vary from $ 50T to $ 200T.I strongly recommend this book to anybody interested to learn about macro-economics and financial history.

On of the most well balanced views of what caused the 2008 financial crises and the mess we are in now. No hype, just the facts, which I like. This is the book I would give to others to read.

livre intéressant surtout pour les anglo saxons qui à la différence des français investissent beaucoup en bourse.Les conseils donnés me semblent pertinents , et doivent un peu reproduire les stratégies des fonds de pension qui choisissentdes actions patrimoniales: donc bien pour les investisseurs qui choisissent le long terme plutôt que les "spéculateurs" qui essayent de faire des coups pour revendre rapidement

Fokussiert auf die Politik und Strategie der Nationalen Zentralbanken im Einflussbereich der Regierungen. Sehr gute Erklärung der finanziellen und politischen Zusammenhänge in der Krise (Zinsen, Inflation, Wachstum). Ebenfalls sehr gute Anlageratschläge um die Krise durchzustehen.

This book is very very good easy to understand and makes you really think. It gives you such a good out look and as I said it's very easy reading a book you need to put post it notes to remind you of quotes etc. It's a very difficult book to put down as it keeps you interested.

Il libro decifra con competenza la situazione economica mondiale.Consigliato a tutti i risparmiatori i cerca di bussola per uscire il meno ammaccati possibile dalle turbolenze in vista