Market

For thirty years Harry Browne’s Permanent Portfolio worked. But we all know past performance doesn’t predict future performance.

Luckily for us, we’ve been asked for an fallback investment strategy and not the way to generate enormous returns during miserable economic times.

At best, the politician is a conniving opportunist. At worst, he’s a madman or a mass-murderer.

One major problem we see is the common perspective for both investors and the asset management industry to view debt and equity as the entire universe of investor choices available.

The unsustainable trend we have in mind today is the idea that you can get something for nothing. That idea is the backbone of modern politics. It’s the dirty little secret of the financial system upon which modern economies are based. And it’s an idea whose time has come and gone.

Emblazoned across the Internal Revenue Service building in Washington DC, reads one of the most intellectually polluted quotes any free mind is ever likely to encounter: “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.”

Sovereign debt was back on top of the agenda this week. And now Deutsche Bank has said what no other mainstream bank will… “The worst may be yet to come in the global financial crisis.”

When you really think about it (as we do quite often) this market makes no sense. Bulls give the less than convincing argument that you must invest because the Fed is printing that much money you’d be mad not to. But when we look at the actual data, we’re not convinced of this argument.