{"id":863,"date":"2011-07-06T13:49:27","date_gmt":"2011-07-06T11:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/blog\/?p=863"},"modified":"2011-07-06T13:49:27","modified_gmt":"2011-07-06T11:49:27","slug":"predicciones-de-john-mauldin-para-el-segundo-semestre-de-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/predicciones-de-john-mauldin-para-el-segundo-semestre-de-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"John Mauldin's predictions for the second half of 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is clear that, in the current climate, predicting what will happen in the second half of the year is risky, to say the least. But despite this, it remains our duty as wealth advisers \u2013 and, ultimately, as a family office. Reading or listening to the macroeconomic views of people such as John Mauldin<\/a> o Ray Dalio<\/a>, undoubtedly shed light on this sea of financial darkness. His experience and the fact that he has already fought in almost every bullring also lend weight to his interpretation of the past, present and future of the world of finance and investment.<\/p>\n

The first questions Mauldin raises are as follows: What will the end of QE2 mean? What can we expect to happen in Europe? Is the commodities bubble about to burst? Or, indeed, is it really a bubble at all?<\/p>\n

It is unlikely that employment in the US will grow steadily with growth rates below 2%, particularly as the boost from the property sector has been absent for many years. What is more, if year-on-year US GDP growth falls below 2%, history shows that this has always been followed by a period of recession. As you can see from the chart below, it currently stands at 2.3:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Obviously, if the recovery of the developed economies depended solely on that of the US, everything would be much simpler. But that is not the case, and the financial tsunami that could be triggered by the bankruptcy of various Eurozone countries could blow apart the precarious balance that the US economy is currently managing to maintain.<\/p>\n

\"\"The staggering figures set to be swallowed up by the bottomless pit of the European periphery over the coming months are fuelling growing discontent amongst the public in the more financially sound countries. This is demonstrated by opinion polls in Germany, Finland, the Netherlands and Slovakia. How much longer will Merkel be able to keep her coalition together in the face of mounting public criticism? Because the problem is not Greece, but the inexorable domino effect affecting Portugal, Ireland, Spain\u2026 After Greece, the next two in line are the list of the 10 young black players whom the market has already turned its back on<\/a> These are, in fact, Ireland and Portugal, with the latter having overcome the former\u2019s mistrust in recent months. Moody\u2019s has delivered the final blow by downgrading Portuguese debt to junk bond status. This rating simply calls a spade a spade, for once, and does not set a precedent for the habitual prostitution to which credit rating agencies have been lending themselves.<\/p>\n

But the following graph is the most alarming. And not because it is unexpected, but because of the scale of its cascading consequences. It shows nothing less than the flight of deposits from Greek banks. A flight that irrevocably undermines the stability of the banks\u2019 precarious balance sheets and plunges them into sudden bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But the worst thing is not the downward trend in the red line of the forecast for the coming half-years, but the knock-on effect on savers in Spain, Portugal, Ireland and even Italy or Belgium. In the case of the PIGS, even a slight withdrawal of funds from their respective banking systems would dash the hopes of most banks of continuing their struggle for survival. Because banks need to be able to inspire confidence. They cannot survive without the image of affluence and solvency that most savers still hold in their memories, rooted in the pre-subprime crash era. That is the great paradox of our time: our banking sector is dying with a smile on its face and a veneer of prosperity. They cannot even complain about their pain and focus on curing their illness and subsequent recovery. Either they feign normality and opulence and flex their muscles, or they die irretrievably. And this charade is becoming increasingly sordid and surreal. Thank goodness (or perhaps not) that most of its customers are short-sighted and small-time investors.<\/p>\n

As soon as that drain on funds \u2013 which is already bleeding Greek banks dry \u2013 begins to take hold in Spain too, events will unfold at an irreversible pace. In other words, we may see a crisis in the banking systems of the PIGS, even before further defaults and\/or sovereign bailouts occur. As Mauldin rightly points out, the longer we delay taking the bull by the horns when it comes to sovereign debt restructuring (defaults or \u00abpartial\u00bb or \u00abcontrolled\u00bb credit events), the harder Greek, Portuguese and Spanish banks will have it. Because the Spanish property bubble is killing our banking system. And it is only still alive thanks to the \u2018induced coma\u2019 created by tolerating inflated property valuations far above their real value, or the last-minute refinancing arrangements being carried out to cover up unsustainable defaults.<\/p>\n

Bridgewater<\/a> It is one of the world\u2019s leading and most forward-thinking asset management firms, headed by the guru Ray Dalio. And the analysis of the Eurozone crisis carried out by its analysts from across the pond hits the nail on the head: \u201cWhilst the focus is currently on the issue of meeting Greece\u2019s immediate funding needs, it is important not to lose sight of the bigger picture, which is that indebtedness is not the periphery\u2019s only problem, and is in many ways merely a symptom of the structural imbalances (an extremely negative current account and budget deficit) that plague it. No amount of funding will alter the fact that the periphery remains extremely uncompetitive; that in order to become competitive, it needs to become much cheaper; and that as long as it remains a member of the euro, the only way to achieve this is through sustained wage cuts and deflation that would need to be dramatically more extreme than the adjustments they have experienced so far.<\/em>\u201d It should be obvious to everyone that this is a textbook scenario which we might call a \u2018peripheral European recession\u2019, which would, of course, also have a very significant impact on the global economic recovery.<\/p>\n

We are facing a second half of the year that is more uncertain than ever. The dark clouds hanging over debt and the anaemic economies of the Eurozone spell the perfect storm; yet corporate results beyond the European periphery are proving increasingly robust. Perhaps that is the key to the coming six-month periods: let us cling to this lifeline for businesses and weather the storm by steering clear of assets that could lose their value irreversibly and permanently. At this point, I cannot resist suggesting to you a look back at how, for over a year now, we have been resuscitating the Greek canary in the coal mine in a suicidal manner<\/a>. I think that, after all this time, that article makes even more sense \u2013 don\u2019t you agree?<\/p>\n

Via JohnMauldin.com<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Est\u00e1 claro que en los tiempos que corren, predecir lo que va a ocurrir en la segunda mitad del a\u00f1o es cuando menos arriesgado. Pero a pesar de ello, no deja de ser nuestra obligaci\u00f3n como asesores de patrimonio, como family office en definitiva. Leer o escuchar las visiones macro de tipos como John Mauldin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,45,41,42,39,40,37,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actualidad","category-asesoramiento-deportistas-artistas","category-economia-y-finanzas","category-estrategia","category-crear-mi-propio-family-offices","category-gestion-financiera","category-reflexion","category-sin-categorizar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}