Jim Grant

Jim Grant

Postby winston » Wed Sep 23, 2009 6:53 am

Over the past 25 years, this guy always have something to worry about...

Top investor rips legendary bear Jim Grant ; From The Big Picture:

In the following Wall Street Journal commentary, "From Bear to Bull," a long-time critic of the excesses and wayward policies that brought this country to its knees suggests the outlook for the economy is brighter than many people, especially the pessimists, believe:

James Grant argues the latest gloomy forecasts ignore an important lesson of history: The deeper the slump, the zippier the recovery...

Unfortunately, his rationale is weak, if not totally wrong. For the most part, his argument rests on the premise that, historically at least, strong recoveries have followed severe contractions.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/09/ji ... t-the-top/
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Gold, Silver & Other Precious Metals 3 (Aug 09 - Dec 09)

Postby winston » Fri Oct 30, 2009 7:57 am

What the "Man Who Made Too Much" Says About Gold

By Chris Mayer

The U.S. dollar is a sort of monetary brand.

And like any other brand, it can fall out of favor. Even iconic brands can rapidly lose their "must-have" cachet. Sometimes, a brand can disappear entirely, as did Pan American Airways or "Members Only" jackets. But there is always something else waiting to take its place. So it is with the U.S. dollar, a brand making lows in the financial markets.

The dollar has been the "Coca-Cola of monetary brands," says James Grant, editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer. But even the best of brands can be lousy investments. Grant uses the analogy of the New York Times. It was the greatest name in newspapers. In 2002, the stock sold for $53 per share – an all-time high, as it turned out. Today, the "Gray Lady" fetches only $8 per share.

"What happened?" Grant asked. The World Wide Web happened, he says. "The Times has hundreds of reporters, but this is a story they seem to have missed." As if the lowly stock price was not evidence enough of its decline, the NY Times got another reminder when it borrowed $225 million against its headquarters building.

The cost of such borrowing, Grant reports, was 14%. The august Times today borrows at rates no better than a working-class stiff at a pawnshop. The U.S. Treasury should take note. The government seems as intent on creating dollars as prolifically as bunnies create other bunnies.

Here we get to John Paulson, a presenter at the Grant's Fall Investment Conference and undoubtedly the richest man in the room. Portfolio magazine dubbed him "The Man Who Made Too Much" after he made $3.7 billion by betting against mortgage-backed securities (MBS). He is one of the greatest hedge-fund managers ever.

Gold is his favorite today. As to why, Paulson presented a simple, but compelling case. First, the monetary base has exploded in a way we've never seen before. The monetary base is essentially the Federal Reserve Bank's currency and reserves. The Fed, by buying up securities in this crisis, has pumped a lot of money into the economy.

You've probably seen this chart, or some variation of it. Still, there haven't been noticeable signs of inflation as a result of that big spike – not yet.

As Paulson explained, that's because this base money has not yet been lent out and multiplied throughout the economy. Yet the monetary base and money supply are highly correlated, "almost 1-to-1 between the two," Paulson said.

That means that as the monetary base expands, the money supply surely follows, though there is a lag. (Money supply is a broader measure of money than just the monetary base, as it includes personal deposits and more. The monetary base is like a kind of monetary yeast. It makes money supply rise.)

If money supply grows faster than the economy, that will create inflation, says Paulson. As it is impossible for the economy to grow anywhere near that vertical spike in the monetary base, Paulson contends inflation is coming.

The U.S. is not alone in its money-printing exercise. The supply of most currencies is expanding rapidly – even the normally tame Swiss franc. In the race of paper currencies, they are all dogs. Hence Paulson's interest in gold, which no government can make on a whim.

Therefore, in the content of the exploding monetary base, gold seems relatively cheap. In other words, as the money supply rises, so does the price of gold, eventually. As a result, says Paulson, "gold has been a perfect hedge against inflation."

There is some slippage over time. The gold price can change faster or slower than the money supply. But when the market gets worried about inflation, the gold price usually changes much faster – as happened in the 1970s. In 1973 – to pick a typical year – inflation was 9% and gold rose 67%. That was a pattern common in the 1970s.

The potential for inflation this time around is greater than it was in the 1970s, given that the growth in the monetary base is so much greater than it was in the 1970s. Gold could do much better this time around, reaching "$3,000 or $4,000, or $5,000 per ounce" as Paulson said.

Future historians will look back at the present day and see clearly how this unfolded. They will see the litany of news items that pointed to the dollar losing its top perch: China and Brazil are settling are up trade in their own currencies. The Russians and others are openly calling for a new monetary standard. Even mainstream outlets are discussing alternatives to a dollar-based standard, a province once solely occupied by cranks and gold bugs. Not a week goes by without these kinds of stories.

As for a replacement waiting in the wings, Grant offers up gold. Indeed, a kind of "de facto gold standard" seems to be taking shape. The SPDR Gold Trust, the largest gold-backed security in the world, is now the sixth largest holder of the metal in the world. Anybody with a brokerage account can easily buy gold today through the trust, which trades on the NYSE under the ticker GLD.

It's still early. Most people still own no or very little gold. As it becomes clearer what's happening, they will buy more gold, especially as it is now easy to do so.

The gold supply, too, is limited against the vast pool of dollars. As Paulson points out, global money supply is 72 times the value of gold. I'm betting that gap will narrow. It only has to narrow a smidgen and the gold price flies.

As Grant eloquently put it: "Gold is a speculation. But it is a speculation on a certainty: the debasement of the currency." Gold stocks, too, are a speculation. But they are a speculation on an inevitably higher gold price.

Source: Daily Wealth
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Re: Jim Grant

Postby winston » Tue Dec 08, 2009 8:04 am

This article discusses the long, slow demise of the dollar, how America lost the gold standard and lost its way, and the only solution that will truly fix our broken economy.

Requiem for the Dollar

The thing to do, I say, is to restore the nets to the tennis courts of money and finance. Collateralize the dollar—make it exchangeable into something of genuine value.

Get the Fed out of the price-fixing business. Replace Ben Bernanke with a latter-day Thomson Hankey. Find—cultivate—battalions of latter-day Hellmans and set them to running free-market banks.

There's one more thing: Return to the statute books Section 19 of the 1792 Coinage Act, but substitute life behind bars for the death penalty. It's the 21st century, you know.


James Grant, Editor, Grant's Interest Rate Observer
Author, "Mr. Market Miscalculates" (Axios Press).
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Re: Jim Grant

Postby winston » Wed Dec 30, 2009 8:01 pm

Another perma-bull turning bullish ...

Let the Good Times Roll

Might the recovery be more robust than widely expected? Wall Street's most respected pessimist thinks so.

By Hugo Lindgren

One year ago, we turned bullish on tradable bank debt, certain toxic mortgages, junk bonds and other such unwanted debris, he says.

In March, we turned bullish on bank stocks. And now we are bullish on the economy.

Grant's optimism is built on two pillars. The first is his analysis of cyclical trends. Like a rubber ball thrown against pavement, the U.S. economy has historically bounced back with a force roughly approximate to that with which it fell.

So the tepid recoveries of the early nineties and early aughts, the ones that preoccupy many analysts today because job growth was so torturously slow in both cases, were just the predictable aftermath of what Grant describes as “toy recessions.

A better model for our present circumstances, he says, is the early eighties, when the economy was in shambles (double-digit unemployment then, too) and then suddenly, to the shock of learned people everywhere, staged a stupendous recovery.

Yes, there are seemingly unique impediments to such a recovery this time around the indebtedness of U.S. consumers, to name one but there are always such seemingly unique impediments, and the U.S. economy has repeatedly demonstrated the power to adapt.

Sourcve: NY Magazine

http://nymag.com/news/businessfinance/d ... und/62878/
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Re: Jim Grant

Postby winston » Fri Jul 16, 2010 7:08 am

Jim Grant Is Confident QE 2.0 Is Just Around The Corner by Tyler Durden

Jim Grant, one of the most respected voices in the financial industry, joins Zero Hedge and others, who see that the only choice the Federal Reserve has now that the temporary and shallow reprieve from the clutches of the deflationary depression is over, is to print more money in the form of another iteration of QE.

Whether this will be another $2.5 trillion, like last time, which was the price of an 18 month delay of the inevitable, or a $5 trillion concerted global effort, as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard believes, is irrelevant: the only option the central printers, pardon, bankers, have left is to flood the market with yet more worthless paper (keep an eye out on the doubling in the price of gold the second QE2 is publicly announced, which will also double as the obituary for all fiat paper).

In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Grant says that the first order of business tomorrow when the Fed's new additions officially join their new groupthink perpetuating employer will be "to try once more to print enough dollars to make something happen in the U.S. economy.”

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/jim-gr ... und-corner
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Re: Jim Grant

Postby winston » Fri Oct 15, 2010 6:55 am

Jim Grant: The World Is Abandoning the US Dollar by Forrest Jones

The United States has piled on so much debt that world is going to abandon the dollar, says Jim Grant, founder and editor of "Grant's Interest Rate Observer."

By the numbers, we are more encumbered now than we have ever collectively been, Grant tells the Business Insider.

The United States debt has soared to the point where people can expect to see the dollar get the same reaction as in the 1970s, Grant tells the Business Insider. He said that European hoteliers in the Carter years would ask American tourists if they could pay in anything but greenbacks.

The world has expressed preference for currencies not called the dollar. It's happened, he told the Business Insider.

Economists often grab headlines disagreeing with one another about the fate of the U.S. economy, with some experts such as Paul Krugman arguing for more stimulus to kick-start a recovery while others, such as Niall Ferguson, arguing debt is already out of hand.

For Grant, nobody knows what is going to happen.

My perspective is that people in this business may be experts on up to what has happened up until this minute, but we and the cab driver are all equally ignorant about what will happen, he says.

Nobody knows anything.

The only thing for sure is that the world will avoid the dollar.

If the world continues to invest in dollars given U.S. debt levels, cash injections and low interest rates, they would be an unusual set of creditors.

The dollar has fallen recently, including hitting a 15-year low against the yen after sluggish unemployment figures increased expectations that the government will inject cash into the economy, which weakens the currency.

The market is in a state of anxiety over what's likely to come from the Fed, Lee Hardman, a foreign-exchange strategist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ in London, tells Bloomberg.

Source: Money News

http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Jim ... /id/373716
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Re: Jim Grant

Postby winston » Sat May 21, 2011 7:20 am

Once bullish, famed contrarian Jim Grant sees trouble in rising markets.

His advice: Hold cash

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Once-bull ... 01620.html
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Re: Jim Grant

Postby winston » Fri Mar 09, 2012 7:32 am

Jim Grant Must Watch: "Capitalism Is An Alternative For What We Have Now" by Tyler Durden

Jim Grant is simply brilliant in this must watch interview with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo, which we won't spoil with commentary, suffice to provide the following pearl of an exchange:

Maria Bartiromo: "What are the alternatives?"

Jim Grant: "Capitalism is an alternative for what we have now. I highly recommend it."

Maria: "We all do."

Grant: "No we don't."

Maria: "The Federal Reserve may not."

Grant: "We ought to be discussing an intelligent move to a sound currency by which i mean a currency that is based on a standard and not at the whim and the discretion of a bunch of mandarins sitting around Washington D.C."

In other news, Joseph Stalin has never been happier in his grave that Ben Bernanke has decided to shoulder the legacy of central planning and is firmly committed to proving that where Vissarionovich failed, the ChairSatan will succeed. At any cost.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/jim-grant ... e-have-now
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Re: Jim Grant

Postby winston » Sat Mar 31, 2012 6:20 am

Must Read: Jim Grant Crucifies The Fed; Explains Why A Gold Standard Is The Best Option by Tyler Durden

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has invited some of its public critics to visit the bank to unburden themselves of their criticisms.

On March 12, it was Jim Grant's turn. The text of his remarks follows. (highlights ours)


http://www.zerohedge.com/news/must-read ... est-option
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Re: Jim Grant

Postby winston » Sat Sep 22, 2012 7:20 am

Jim Grant: We Are Now All Labrats Of Bernanke And The Fourth Branch Of Government by Tyler Durden

You put Jim Grant on TV and someone mentions the Fed and the result every single time is the equivalent of waving a red curtain in front of a rabid bull.

This time was no different, as the Interest Rate Observer once again let Bernanke, with whom he clarified is no longer on speaking terms, have it.

"We are all living in a land of speculation and manipulation" is Grant's summary of the current predicament of anyone who wishes to trade these "markets" and it may as well be the best synopsis of the New (ab)normal.

And aside from an odd detour into Government Motors, Grant once again hones in on the only true antidote to central planner idiocy, gold: "the best thing about gold is that it's got no P/E multiple.

Gold is a speculation on an anticipated macroeconomic outcome, the systematic debasement of currencies by central banks. Why wouldn't they do QE4? What intellectual argument do they have against doing it again, and again, and again." Well...none.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/jim-grant ... government
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