Juggling Dynamite

A good summary of reasons to be over-hauling the financial sector:

I have heard a few right-wing rants now from people saying the Wall Street protestors are anti-business. Some have said it is hypocritical for them to mourn the loss of Steve Jobs while protesting the excess, greed and fraud of the financial sector. I am not sure of what the Occupy Wall Street people want specifically–not sure if they know themselves. But I do not think one has to be anti-business to loath the reckless greed and parasitic practices of the financial sector. Let us make no mistake, financial firms are supposed to be in service of the real economy. They are supposed to help small business access capital and grow into larger business. They are meant to support reasonable, repayable, credit for consumers.

What went wrong in the past 20 years is that the financial sector stopped being a utility in support of the larger economy and started taking over the economy. 40% of the S&P 500 earnings at the cycle peak in 2007 came from the financial sector itself! This was the add leverage and stir crowd. The more leverage they added, the bigger their bonuses, the more they lobbied for higher leverage, reduced regulation and control, and the more they got their way. They served themselves at the peril of the rest of the economy. The financial firm leaders began to believe that they were the innovators. They became full of their own greed and self-confidence and they played a leading role in blowing up the real economy. The parasite killed the host. It was inevitable that our credit orgy would end up just as devastating as every other credit orgy in human history. And it has.

Wise leaders could have avoided this if we had just remembered what previous generations had already repeatedly learned the hard way. Instead we threw out all reasonable standards, and let the credit monster run wild. We will be paying for this clean up for many years and there will be real pain in the process for most of the world. We have made the bed and now we will lie in it.

I have been an entrepreneur since I was a little kid and have started and managed several successful businesses. I have been self-employed most of my adult life. I am very pro-business. I liked Steve Jobs because he invented revolutionary technology. He figured out how to make a genius line of products for a relatively low-cost that was therefore accessible by the masses. He did use Wall Street to access capital and sell parts of his company to the public. But he did not hire legions of lobbyists to buy unfair favour with politicians. He did not come looking for bailouts when times got tough. He managed his business risk and got on with building his creative vision.

Praising Jobs while calling for desperately needed controls and reform of the finance sector is in no way hypocritical or anti-business.

More bullish cheers this morning as France and Germany offer another round of reassurance–long on promises short on substance.  We have been down this road so many times in the past 12 months, that classic movie Groundhog Day comes to mind.  For more on today’s Euro news see Pimco’s Balls on European Bank Capital Plan. And for a good over-view of the inability of finance types to see downturns coming, see the NYT:   A recession forecast that ‘s been right before.

Perhaps this next leg of risk rally could last a few weeks even into year-end. The EU is trying to extend investor belief along to the G20 summit November 3-4, but then magical solutions are likely to evade them once more. In the meantime, the main feature–the incoming global recession will continue to advance with disappointing economic data over the next several months.

Demographic trends continue to favour risk aversion, de-leveraging and lower spending. I agree with Harry Dent, founder of economic advisory firm HS Dent on these themes. See Author on Outlook for “The Great Crash Ahead.”  And yes the good news is that we could actually get to a major bottom and opportunity of our generation in the stock market within the next 3 years, maybe sooner.  In the meantime, the focus must be on capital protection, liquidity, and on going risk measurements.

On an entertaining note, I recently saw Moneyball, and enjoyed it immensely.  The story about the business of baseball has many parallels with my own experience in the money business.   Last week author Michael Lewis  spoke with Charlie Rose on the movie and his book ‘Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World’.  Watch the video here.