Update: Cramer responds; Julian Robertson on the inflation risk: ‘it’s almost Armageddon if China & Japan don’t buy our debt’
Update: MiM rants, scroll down.
Update: Cramer responds to Robertson’s calls, he agrees and says Pelosi Waxman Rangel are anti business and anti shareholder and business profits:
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When Julian Robertson speaks, investors listen. To say that Wall Street respects the Tiger Management founder and chairman would be an understatement. So much so that Cramer urged anyone who disagreed with Robertson to “recalibrate” his position. “Because he is that good,” Cramer said.
One of the silver sages is Robertson. And he agrees with the high high risk of our humble forecast of HYPERinflation…
The US is too dependent on Japan and China buying up the country’s debt and could face severe economic problems if that stops, Tiger Management founder and chairman Julian Robertson told CNBC.
“It’s almost Armageddon if the Japanese and Chinese don’t buy our debt,” Robertson said in an interview. “I don’t know where we could get the money. I think we’ve let ourselves get in a terrible situation and I think we ought to try and get out of it.”Robertson said inflation is a big risk if foreign countries were to stop buying bonds.
“If the Chinese and Japanese stop buying our bonds, we could easily see [inflation] go to 15 to 20 percent,” he said. “It’s not a question of the economy. It’s a question of who will lend us the money if they don’t. Imagine us getting ourselves in a situation where we’re totally dependent on those two countries. It’s crazy.”
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Robertson said while he doesn’t think the Chinese will stop buying US bonds, the Japanese may eventually be forced to sell some of their long-term bonds.“That’s much worse than not buying,” he said. “The other thing is, they’re buying almost exclusively short-term debt. And that’s what we are offering, because we can’t sell the long-term debt. And you know, the history has been that people who borrow short term really get burned.”
And what is the solution? GROWTH!!!!!!!
The only way to avoid the problem, he said, is to “grow and save our way out of it.”“The U.S. has to quit spending, cut back, start saving, and scale backward,” Robertson said. “Until that happens, I don’t think we’re anywhere near out of the woods.”
Robertson is not very optimistic about the short-term. “We’re in for some real rough sledding,” he said. “ I really do think the recession is at least temporarily over. But we haven’t addressed so many of our problems and we are borrowing so much money that we can’t possibly pay it back, unless the Chinese and Japanese buy our bonds.”
Update: Where have we heard similar sentiments to those expressed here by eminence grise Julian Robertson? Oh yes, I know at the Tea Parties !!!Where regular (ie beneath the considerations of the elite gentrified media and politicians who think they know better than we what we need) Americans are expressing the same concerns about the out of control spending and rising debt. Main St IS already doing what Robertson is suggesting NEEDS to happen, we are SAVING, we are NOT CONSUMING, we are suffering massive pain in job losses and asset deflation but our productivity is up. The American People are not afraid of a little pain and sacrifice. Our leaders OTOH will not suck it up and tell their their labor supporters that CUTS need to be made, government salaries need to come down, labor salaries need to come down, it is an environment of MASSIVE job loss, ALL SALARIES should be coming down if we are in a free market….
MiM Tax Day Tea Party Sign
We are telling Congress to Stop Spending (literally, here is my sign from April 15th) ! We are doing what needs to be done but our idiotic Congressional Leadership (and unlike Cramer I DO blame the Executive Branch, it is top down and we all know it) is shoving down our throats a bigger and bigger expansion of government and regulation and an actual active DISCOURAGEMENT for capital investment!
All in an environment in which they are taxing everything that moves and now we have the pleasure of being taxed on BREATHING essentially in the health care bill, a poll tax like the ones the British revolted against, uhmmm Richard II?
Anyway, it is our politicians that will be METAPHORICALLY dragged kicking screaming out of office since they seem to be CONSTITUTIONALLY (pardon the pun) incapable of CLOSING the People’s Wallet. Sarah Palin totally GETS THIS BTW. See here for her recent speech. That is why so many of us like Sarah. She RESPECTS us, something the Dear Elites currently in office so clearly do not.
While Main St is instinctively doing the right things to get through this, Congress and Team TOTUS with the assistance of the rah rah cheerleading media are doing the precise opposite of what any rational observer, or financial genius like Robertson (people able to separate themselves from their political inclinations which IMO Krugman et al are unable to do) see needs to be done.
STOP SPENDING, SAVE AND BUCKLE DOWN FOR A FEW YEARS. DISCIPLINE AND FRUGALITY. THE AMERICAN WORK ETHIC IS DEEP IN OUR BONES. WE CAN DO THIS IF CONGRESS WILL ONLY GET OUT OF OUR WAY!!!
2010 elections cannot come soon enough. It would appear that despite millions of Americans expressing their desire for the spending to stop all summer long, they are willfully blind. It seems that only a massive turnover in Congress in 2010 will effectively teach the Critters that the American people will not tolerate being totally removed from the equation when decisions are made that will impact all of us for generations. ESPECIALLY when we KNOW in our guts they are the wrong decisions.
I mean let’s be honest, why the hexx should the entire country have to carry the load of an enormous new entitlement and debt at a time of recessionary growth and massive deficits with surging existing entitlement costs? Because Obama wants a win in his column and EVERYONE KNOWS IT, EVERY POLL SHOWS THERE IS NO FRAKKIN HEALTH CARE EMERGENCY!! EMTALA laws on the books guarantee ER treatment for ANYONE , a frakkin YETI could show up and get TRIAGE!! /rant off
*Def Leppard courtesy of choppothegreat
Happy Valentines Day!!!
2010 Updates: THR Livefeed has ‘Lost’ Valentines …
The Victorian Valentines are so beautiful, read more about the holiday here
Cindy Adams dishes on traditional Valentine’s lore:
In Ancient Rome, St. Valentine performed marriages for the soldiers of Emperor Claudius, who’d banned the rite because he did not want emotional ties that could make his troops less bold in battle.
In the Middle Ages, folk of young ages drew names from a bowl to see who their Valentines might be. Those names were then pinned on their cuffs for a week. The forerunner of the phrase “wearing your heart on your sleeve.”
Wedding rings grew out of the custom of locking a bride in irons with the best man assigned to guard her prior to the ceremony.
Per the Times of London, every Valentine’s Day morning some unknown writes a note saying, “Are you there, Moriarty?” — addressed to Mr. Sherlock Holmes — and plops it through the letterbox of the Abbey National branch that now stands at 221B Baker Street. I don’t know why. They don’t even know why.
Old wives’ tale: Feb. 14 is the date centuries ago when migratory birds returned to England to mate.
More old wives’ tales: The first feathered friend a single maiden sees on Valentine’s Day will foretell her future mate. A bluebird is a sign he’ll be happy but poor. A crossbill means cranky and quarrelsome. Sparrow? The guy’s a farmer. Robin? He’s a sailor. Blackbird? A clergyman. And if she sees a woodpecker, the old broad will stay an old-broad spinster….
Moderate in the Middle 