October 25, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal "Experts discern a pattern: a louder-than-usual howl against elites in countries where democracy is a source of disappointment, corruption is seen as brazen, and a tiny political class lives large while the younger generation struggles to get by." - Declan [...]Read More >

October 18, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “If we pay attention to cycles, we can come out ahead. If we study past cycles, understand their origins and import, and keep alert for the next one, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel in order to understand every investment environment anew. And we have [...]Read More >

October 11, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “I believe that we are on a classic journey that we haven’t seen in our lifetimes but has happened many times before, most recently in the late 1930’s. It is being driven by the same big forces that drove the dynamics in the late 1930’s. In particular, now, [...]Read More >

October 4, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “ There's a way to do it better - find it."    - Thomas Edison " It's kind of fun to do the impossible."   - Walt Disney Fresh signs of a global economic slowdown have driven equity markets lower this week and driven expectations for a Fed rate cut higher.  [...]Read More >

September 27, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “When I look at markets, I first start to create a long-term big picture. I look at structural trends in economics, in demographics, in politics, etc. etc. And then I try to analyze the business cycle and were we sit in the cycle.” – Felix [...]Read More >

September 20, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “I’m not saying that the past is prologue in an identical way. What I am saying that the basic cause/effect relationships are analogous: a) approaching the ends of the short-term and long-term debt cycles, while b) the internal politics is driven by large [...]Read More >

September 13, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “…nothing is new under the sun. Almost everything we see happened before at some point in human history, though of course with different details and magnitude. So we can’t throw out precedent completely. Well, except for negative interest rates. That really [...]Read More >

September 6, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “To refer to a personal taste of mine, I’m going to buy hamburgers the rest of my life. When hamburgers go down in price, we sing the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ in the Buffett household. When hamburgers go up in price, we weep. For most people, it’s the same with [...]Read More >

August 30, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “We advise the U.S. side not to underestimate the Chinese side’s ability to safeguard its development rights and interests. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!” – Commentary in the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China May 29, [...]Read More >

August 23, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “When real yields are low or negative, investors’ returns are not commensurate with risk, so investment falls along with productivity gains and growth prospects.” – Lacy Hunt, Ph.D. and Van Hoisington, Hoisington Investment Management Company I begin this [...]Read More >

August 16, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “The experience of the Great Recession and its aftermath revealed that a lower bound on interest rates can be a serious obstacle for fighting recessions. However, the zero lower bound is not a law of nature; it is a policy choice. The central message of this [...]Read More >

August 9, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal Foreign exchange volatility is not new in modern finance, though relatively speaking it has been reasonably muted in recent decades compared to preceding ones.  Uncertainty around foreign exchange suppresses business investment in that the ability to repay [...]Read More >

August 2, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal Like the pine trees linin' the windin' road I've got a name, I've got a name Like the singin' bird and the croakin' toad I've got a name, I've got a name And I carry it with me like my daddy did But I'm living the dream that he kept hid Movin' me down the [...]Read More >

July 26, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough.” – Mario Draghi, President, European Central Bank (July 26, 2012) Still reeling from the financial crisis, central bankers were scrambling to [...]Read More >

July 19, 2019 By Steve Blumenthal “I think now is a good time 1) to look at past paradigms and paradigm shifts and 2) to focus on the paradigm that we are in and how it might shift because we are late in the current one and likely approaching a shift.” – Ray Dalio, “Paradigm Shifts” (July 17, [...]Read More >