Crippling debts. A seeming inability to stop spending like the profligate son. Total irresponsibility in financial management. Grotesque failures of judgement repeated time after time after time. Licentious toe-sucking.
You think I’m talking about Greece and its debt crisis, right?
Well, I’m not. I’m talking about another ludicrous situation: Sarah Ferguson and her recent calamitous decision to try to sell to an undercover reporter access to her ex-husband – Prince Andrew – for 500,000 British pounds. Oh Fergie, when will you stop disappointing us so?
I say that sincerely, because she was the princess I always liked. Diana seemed like a wicked witch to me, but Fergie always seemed cheery, down-to-earth, fun, fresh. The Best of British. But, like the fetid air that came out of my garbage can (full of used diapers and roasting in the sun for a week) this morning when I moved it to the alley and accidentally knocked the lid off, Fergie’s sudden appearance amidst scandal made me gag.
But fortunately – and this is where I’m going with this post – many of my other old friends are re-appearing in the press, and they make me cheerier. MARC FABER – COME ON DOWN!!!!!! I’ve seen the Hong Kong-based investing guru in at least six interviews in the past two weeks. JIM ROGERS – COME ON DOWN!!!!!!!! Ditto with the commodity investing god. ROBERT PRECHTER – COME ON DOWN!!!!!!!! The Elliott Wave analysis expert, normally treated like a crank by the mainstream business press, has been allowed back in in the past few weeks. DAVID TICE – COME ON DOWN!!!!!!!!!!! The advisor of the Prudent Bear Fund is getting a chance to talk on the airwaves again.
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A few weeks ago I was wondering why all these analysts had seemingly disappeared from my radar screen, because they’re among my favorites and had been generally and widely available from the mid-2000s onwards. But for some reason all of them seemed to be hard to find in recent months. And that, I suppose, makes sense, because they’re all market bears in the present context and what they were saying – which seemed so right in late 2008 – has seemed to some to be all wrong for the past 14 months of stock market rallies in North America, Europe and most of the world. Producers and editors were probably hearing that no one wanted to hear the doom-laden prognostications of Faber, Rogers, Prechter and Tice, among other bears, so they were only sought sporadically, I suppose.
Anyone who reads my blatherings here knows that I’m a long term stock market bear but unsure of the outlook for commodities, which could be either bullish or bearish. Commodities should continue to be bullish for years to come if we’re living through an era like the 1970s in which stocks are weak but demand is strong enough to keep people buying food, fuel and other raw goods. That’s the world Jim Rogers thinks we’re in. Or commodities could be bearish if we’re living through something like the 1930s, when economic conditions are so badly mangled that demand shrivels up and commodities join stocks in the bottom of a dried-up pond. That’s what Prechter and Tice think is coming. So in a commodity context, my appreciation of these analysts isn’t as dark and dismal as if I wrote about stocks. I’m still giving about a 50 percent likelihood of a 1970s situation becoming obvious as the situation we’re actually in, and if any of you remember, the 1970s were a good time in rural Western Canada. (I give the 1930s situation a 49 percent chance of coming true and a one percent chance for a new bull market in stocks and general economic conditions to arise.)
But what’s probably the most interesting aspect of the sudden reappearance of Faber et al in the media spotlight (Faber was the first guru Bloomberg TV brought on in its end-of-trading-day talk show on the day of the “Flash Crash” a couple of weeks ago, when the market seemed to jump into a hellbound handbasket) is what it reveals about the shift in investor mood out there. There’s no longer – at least amongst editors and producers of biz news – an aversion to talking about the bearish potential. That scenario, which had seemed out-of-touch until Greece went bad, now doesn’t seem so absurd.
So is it a negative turn in sentiment that will bring a stock market correction and then a resumption of cheery feelings and better times? Or is it the beginning of a leg down? That’s what I’m waiting to see.
But happily for those of us who live and wriggle around in the entrails of the ag commodity markets, bad stock market times don’t necessarily mean bad crop or livestock prices unless things go really sour in the equity markets, and we may well enjoy a summer of better prices than we’re getting now. This plunge in world stock markets may once more remind us that for stock markets, “Sell in May and go away!” But in ag markets let’s hope it means the resumption of the rising market in hog prices, which have recently settled back, and proof that crop prices have indeed been bottoming and are set for a solid few months of rise.
That’d stink less than that garbage can in my backyard, and certainly be less gagging than Fergie’s unfortunate escapades.
