By: GZ on Venerdì 13 Giugno 2003 14:01
Sempre per completare la carrellata dei ricchissimi gestori e speculatori di borsa che arrivati a 70 anni vedono il "sistema" come marcio o comunque in crisi
Con diverse intonazioni e gradazioni ci sono: George Soros, Warren Buffett, il famoso "Profeta Barbuto dell'Apocalisse" di cui parlavano sia Morgan Stanley che Douk Kass su TheStreetInsight questo mese e che ho fatto ricopiare qui nel Topic a fianco...
ed ecco qui l'intervista di sabato scorso a Seth Glickenhaus, 89 anni, uno dei gestori di maggiore successo del dopoguerra che vede ora gli Stati Uniti finire come lo (o peggio dello) Zimbabwe, perchè i ricchi diventano sempre più ricchi e i poveri sempre più poveri...
(dato che a volte ho l'impressione che per pigrizia o per risparmiare i 49 dollari annuali dell'abbonamento annuale qualcuno non legga ^Barron's#A:www.barrons.com^ ogni sabato lo ricopiamo qui)
La cosa che colpisce è che questa è gente (e altri di intonazione diversa come Jim Rogers, l'ex-socio di Soros che ^ha appena terminato un viaggo di due anni in auto attraverso tutti cinque continenti e ne ha scritto un libro#www.jimrogers.com^) che parte per la tangente, che fa previsioni e ha idee molto nette e di larga portata. In italia è una fauna che non esiste, tutti molto cauti e attenti e dare un colpo al cerchio e uno alla botte ( della serie: "...le cose possono migliorare, ma d'altra parte possono anche peggiorare....consigliamo ai nostri clienti di stare molto attenti e scegliere solo i titoli validi...")
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He's an Optimist?
Octogenarian money manager sees the U.S. becoming another Zimbabwe, or maybe Japan.
By SANDRA WARD
An Interview With Seth Glickenhaus -- After causing a stir last summer with his straight talk in these pages1 about what a mess the economy was in -- he dared to utter that deflation was a distinct possibility -- investment manager Glickenhaus is still making waves. At age 89, the founder and head of the $1 billion Manhattan-based firm that bears his name is as inciteful as he is insightful. He's also often right. He's delivered returns of 17% a year, on average, to his clients since 1981. That's why we enjoy talking with him, even when he insists on asking us the questions.
Barron's: Do you still think we're at risk of a depression?
Glickenhaus: There are some risks of a depression, though I would say the only difference between a recession and depression is that a depression is an extended recession. For the past 16 weeks, unemployment claims grew as people continued to be laid off. This is a continuing trend, and it is a new trend in the United States. New not for the last couple of years, perhaps, but compared with the past decade. Businesses expanded in a mindless fashion during the 'Nineties. Many marginal employees were employed. The unions grew in strength.
Q: They did?
A: Not numerically, but in their bargaining power. Companies needed employees and they were making so much money, they settled on absurd terms. The auto industry, the steel industry, the airline industry and the telephone industry set the pattern. Wall Street isn't unionized, but it became pervasive to raise salaries on Wall Street. It's become difficult to lower salaries. It was one of the excesses of the period. A boom is not bad; it is only bad in the excesses it creates. Now we're paying the piper because underneath everything there is a business cycle. Overexpansion and other excesses always creates a recession. This particular recession has been obscured and diminished sharply by extensions of credit and by historically unheard-of low interest rates. That, in turn, has cannibalized future growth in the auto industry and home building, and will continue to do so. Technically, from an economist's point of view, this may not be considered a recession, but tell that to the average person being laid off, or the person seeing other people being laid off or to those people approaching the limits of their credit capacity.
Q: So we're not out of the woods.
A: You know the expression "You should live so long?" After a 16-year cycle of boom, it is unreasonable to expect the readjustment to take less than 16 years. We are in for a very long period where the economy will not grow very much. This is intensified on a world basis by the deteriorating caliber of our political leaders. Bush has no fiscal sense whatsoever and is radical in his approach. The Republicans live solely to make the rich richer. The Democrats have no leaders or leadership and are barely conscious of the major issues of the day, which include growing unemployment, lack of affordable housing for the poor and the low end of the middle class, lack of health insurance, deterioration of our infrastructure -- our bridges, roads and sewer systems -- growing water shortages, drugs and crime. Just to name a few of the major issues. One of the major things they overlook is that we are currently spending $350 billion for military purposes. Meanwhile, Russia spends something on the order of $40 billion and China spends $20 billion. We spend more than all other countries together. At the same time, we are spending no more than $20 billion or so for children's health and correspondingly very small sums for education. Congress also spends all its time debating whether we should spend billions on anti-ballistic missiles, which any knowledgeable scientist would tell you cannot possibly work. The public, on the other hand, doesn't feel that extra submarines and needless new fighter planes really increase their standard of living. I am not a pacifist, and I want us to be strong, but we could easily save $200 billion a year by rationalizing the Pentagon and still be far and away the strongest nation in the world.
"After a 16-year boom, it is unreasonable to expect the readjustment to take less than 16 years."
Q: What are your thoughts on Iraq?
A: We all wanted to get rid of Hussein, who is a very evil man. However, the price that is being paid in human lives and properties and the chaos that is inevitably ensuing in Iraq was far too great a price to pay for this war. It is totally unjustified. If we were to take on every evil man who runs a country, we would have at least 15 or 20 wars on our hands.
Q: Are you worried that we'll invade Iran or Syria?
A: The public thinks we won the war and that it is over. They don't realize we are going to keep more troops in Iraq than we thought. The deficit will grow. We are not going to win the peace. Iraq is so divided internally it makes Afghanistan look like one unified group. Do you think soldiers know how to straighten out a country? They know how to make war. Do you think the State Department has the people and the training to help the country rebuild? Do you think we have anything like that? No, of course not. Another evil that exists today, and one that is going to prolong our recession and one we could do something about, is the situation of the municipalities and the states, which in the boom period built up tremendous costs and activities and now don't have enough revenues and are, as a group, facing a shortfall of $70 billion a year. This will entail substantial contractions in many important areas of public employment, even after the tax-cut bill, which gets them about $20 billion.
Q: We have elections coming up next year. If the downturn persists, won't people vote their pocketbook?
A: In elections, 60% of the people don't vote. The 40% who do vote are people who are beholden to one political party or the other. What is in the public's interest is not represented in the electoral part of our so-called democracy.
Q: Isn't it when times are tough that people finally get interested in the issues?
A: Well, you are young, and you have optimism. I don't have it anymore. I lost it. I tried awfully hard to kindle interest in these things. I supported them. I've worked for them, and I've failed. The public seems indifferent to what could be a very severe collapse of the economy and political system. The United States may go under. Look at Zimbabwe. In Zimbabwe, people don't have water. There is a 300% or so inflation rate per annum, transportation is broken down, people cannot get to their jobs, 65% of their industry is shut down and the black market in food is soaring. Although this is an extreme case, the Congo and other African countries are similarly situated. The tax-cut bill will ultimately have negative effects on the our economy, because it increases the disparity of income and wealth between the wealthy and poor.
Q: You can't be suggesting that we'll end up like Zimbabwe?
A: I'm suggesting we may end up like Zimbabwe. Or Japan. When you consider that some major iconic industries in this country -- the automobile business, the steel business, the telephone business -- are lost or have at least suffered enormously.
Table: Glickenhaus' Picks2
Q: But isn't this part of a long cyclical trend? Manufacturing has been moving offshore for some time. Won't these industries be replaced with new "icons?"
A: Technology is a replacement, to some degree, but even there we are beginning to get very strong competition from abroad. We are becoming like England. We are becoming less important. The dollar is depreciating, and it is just beginning its descent because of our perpetual trade deficits and federal budget deficits. Foreigners will not only not invest in our bond and stock markets but will be pulling money out.
Q: Except that raises the question of where are they going to put it?
A: Gold. Perhaps diamonds. Old Master paintings.
Q: What's your solution?
A: Spend money for the infrastructure, reduce government, cut military spending by $200 billion, repair and build housing for the poor and middle class.
Q: Are you concerned about deflation?
A: Don't you think it is deflationary when municipalities fire people? Don't you think it is deflationary when week in and week out our businesses are letting more people go? France has the highest unemployment rate it has ever had, around 10% or 11%. Germany has a 12% rate. And our 6% rate is up from 4.5% and it is going to go much higher. We talk to companies every day. All of them are trying to reduce their capital expenditures, not increase them. And there are going to be fewer consumers. Greenspan has created a demand with these low interest rates that is abnormally high. The economy today is much stronger than it is going to be in the future because we are borrowing from the future. In the stock market you had technology stocks lose 75%-80% of their value from the top. The stock market has been way ahead on this because the stock market is very mistrustful of the economy. Now people are sitting on their tails and not buying stocks. Pension-fund money is still coming in because the funds have assigned a greater percentage of their portfolios to stocks and that keeps blue chips in demand. But those stocks often sell at very high multiples. Outside of blue chips, the corrections have been so severe that with a poor economy lasting probably into 2012 or longer, the market will be in a trading range for at least a decade. I think that the Dow is going to vibrate between 7000 and 10,000. People will have to study companies, find those that can do abnormally well and distinguish them from those that will have average performance and those that will have sub-average performance. They are going to have to buy on declines and sell on strength. There will be opportunities, but we are not making new highs until at least the second decade of this century.
Q: People seem to feel that Europe is much more at risk than the U.S.
A: They face the same risks we do.
Q: But at least we are pulling out all the stops.
A: What are we doing? Giving the rich a tax cut and the poor a very tiny one -- is that pulling out the stops? Have you seen a program to build public housing? Have you seen a program to fight drugs intelligently?
Q: What about the monetary stimulus? The low interest rates?
A: That cannibalizes the future.
Q: You don't think any of that is useful?
A: We would have had a real recession sooner but it might have been over already if Greenspan hadn't lowered interest rates. The best thing that can happen is a good fat recession because that produces the changes that we are hoping for but that are not yet happening
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