Trade War, 1929 Crash…Yada Yada Yada

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“Davidson” submits:

Check out our H2 hedge fund letters here.

The issue has always been the T-Bill/10yr Treasury rate spread. Same for the worry today about a repeat of the 1929 Crash which many ascribe tariffs. But, it was not about that at all. It was about the financial instability built into the economy since Woodrow Wilson’s 1913 Inaugural Speech about extending lending to farmers, the rural poor.  The use of changing underwriting benchmarks to solve poverty was repeated in the our more recent Sub-Prime Crisis. Both, ended with a bang when short-term rates exceeded long-term rates and lending slowed sharply. Bad lending practices suddenly became apparent and investors panicked. Took 16yrs for Wilson’s experiment to cause collapse. It took 13yrs for Sub-Prime and took 16yrs for the damage of the Great Society of the mid-1960s to end in 1982.

The T-Bill/10yr Treas rate spread is 1.25% and mid-range today. All will be fine.

History is chock-a-block full of misperception identification of events as triggers and we miss the underlying conditions. This is why I have read the details of periods of financial corrections to understand what the actual facts indicate. The issue today is not only do we have to separate fact from opinion, but now we have agendas interpreting economic facts in terms of supporting one political party vs another and the confusion has only been compounded.

HTTP://NEWWORLDECONOMICS.COM/THE-FEDERAL-RESERVE-IN-THE-1920S-2-INTEREST-RATES/

Trade War, 1929 Crash

 

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Todd Sullivan is a Massachusetts-based value investor and a General Partner in Rand Strategic Partners. He looks for investments he believes are selling for a discount to their intrinsic value given their current situation and future prospects. He holds them until that value is realized or the fundamentals change in a way that no longer support his thesis. His blog features his various ideas and commentary and he updates readers on their progress in a timely fashion. His commentary has been seen in the online versions of the Wall St. Journal, New York Times, CNN Money, Business Week, Crain’s NY, Kiplingers and other publications. He has also appeared on Fox Business News & Fox News and is a RealMoney.com contributor. His commentary on Starbucks during 2008 was recently quoted by its Founder Howard Schultz in his recent book “Onward”. In 2011 he was asked to present an investment idea at Bill Ackman’s “Harbor Investment Conference”.

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