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Saturday, April 24, 2010

Jeremy Grantham, Animal Spirits, and "Bubble Business"

"Don't Just Stand There -- Buy Something!"

Some people wait for a new episode of a favorite TV series (Seinfeld, The Sopranos).

Others for a new album from a favorite artist.

I look forward to Jeremy Grantham's latest quarterly newsletter. Seriously.

The man's honest, brilliantly insightful -- and a great writer, to boot:
Greenspan was lucky enough to inherit Volcker’s good work, and that gave him a base from which he could launch or blow a huge equity bubble; he also had the advantage that the country’s balance sheet was in excellent shape. Even Bernanke inherited a reasonably solid position from which to fund a second bailout. But a third time? It is hard to work out where the resources would come from to resuscitate the economy if a real shock were to be delivered by another collapse of a major asset class.

--Jeremy Grantham, "Playing With Fire"; GMO Q1 2010 Newsletter

Subscribing to the notion that the "bigger the bubble, the more damaging the bust," what is Grantham's antidote?

"We had better hope that something lucky turns up to break the speculative spirit."

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