但是回顾过去20年的high yield bond index，会发现目前的spread依然和2001-2003年熊市的点位持平，是否意味SP500在2001-2003年的区间850-1000点左右波动？

历届联储主席和DJIA,难道Bernanke命中注定要和1930-1933年的主席Meyer一样的命运？

2008年，温州GDP增幅位居浙江省倒数第一。到了2009年一季度，温州的GDP增长仅为2.5%。到2008年末，经过对2.5万多家企业进行调查，发现有29%的企业开工不足，属于半停工的状态，有10%的企业完全停工，两项相加占到39.9%，接近40%。这让民营经济占比高达80.9%的温州市经济面临空前的压力。
温州的优势产业鞋业，已经由原来的5000多家，变成2672家。打火机行业更是由1000家剩下不足100家。“现在有些回暖迹象，政府很高兴。”但在周德文看来，目前制造业中小企业仍处于生存危机之中，并不像媒体宣传的已经触底反弹，全面复苏。“制造业不能以股市上扬或房地产市场回暖来判断，我认为这一轮危机还是深不见底，至少还需三年，也就是到2012年才能全面复苏。”
--温州40%中小企陷半停工状态 一季度增长仅2.5%

Rodriguez, who races Porsches as a hobby, has a high octane personality but a low tolerance for investment pain. He knows what it is like to lose. A first generation American, his paternal grandparents lost everything in the Mexican Civil War of 1910. His grandfather did not survive the war. His grandmother and six children nearly starved to death. It took them almost six years to come to the United States legally, a route his grandmother insisted on taking so her children could walk down the street with their heads held high.
 Throughout his 39-year investment career, Rodriguez has taken the high integrity path, sometimes to his business detriment. He was one of the first to rail against the dot-com and credit bubbles, raising large defensive cash positions, early moves that lost him clients. He is an outspoken critic of the U.S. government's stimulus packages, burgeoning debt levels and business intervention. Four years ago he moved from California to Nevada to protest the golden state's budget excesses and income taxes, the highest in the nation. And he does not mince words in criticizing Wall Street and the mutual fund industry. In a wide ranging interview, I asked Rodriguez about his exceptional track record which he attributes to discipline and the ability to balance fear and greed.

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: I think we have a healthy dose here of skepticism about our capabilities. When you've had some serious failures, it forces you to look inwardly, and I don't know of too many organizations where an investment professional puts his worst investment failure on his website. And it just tells you that no matter how skilled you are in this field, there are new ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. So you have to balance these things. And we test ourselves daily on this, whether we're correct in our assumptions, but we don't want to let the day-to-day machinations in the marketplace disturb our long-term thinking.

CONSUELO MACK: You had in the Income Fund, you had your 25th straight up year, which is just unheard of. But in the FPA Capital Fund, in the stock fund, you had your worst year ever, down 35%, so what did you learn from last year?

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: Well, we did as much as we could. I felt that by June of '08 there was nothing more we could do.

CONSUELO MACK: You had raised 45% cash?

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: 45% cash, we're getting redeemed, you can't really take it any higher because the more higher you go, the faster the money goes out. So you have to strike a balance. And our largest exposure was to energy. We have a five and ten year horizon on, that we've been in the field for ten years after my being out of the sector for nearly 18 years. So there's the long-term view versus the short-term risk. And we did reduce our exposure in energy, prior to going into it. And we said now it's up to the gods. They went down with the market very hard and the first phase of an economic or stock market debacle, everything goes down. Then in the second phase they start to separate and in the third phase you start to see what really is going to work. Well, this year I would say what was taken away from us last year has been, a large part, has been given back to us this year for the right reasons. And so I have to think probably look at both years combined to say, all right, how did you go through this cycle, how did the others go through this? And then over the next five years, is your analysis correct? We happen to think it is, and if we are then our shareholders will be rewarded for that.

CONSUELO MACK: You've quoted in one of your speeches and one of your shareholder letters too that legendary economist John Maynard Keynes describing the long-term investor as eccentric, unconventional and rash in the eyes of the average opinion, which fits you to a tee, actually. So where does the eccentric and unconventional side of Bob Rodriguez come from? Where did you get this?

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: I really don't like following the norm. If I follow the norm, I would never have been in this business. My last name is not a competitive advantage when I entered the field, and had to knock down a lot of doors, and you had to do things to separate yourself from the crowd, so that all started way back when I was very young.  My first time I got anything to do with the investment field was writing a letter to the Federal Reserve chairman when I was ten. It was a school assignment.

CONSUELO MACK: And he wrote you back.

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: And he wrote me back, and I said gee that's kind of neat, how many people would do that. What's the down side? So I started thinking differently about what the norm is, and then how can you turn that to your competitive advantage? So it's always been that way. I would say when I was in graduate school or just going into graduate school, I discovered Graham and Dodd during the summer before I was coming back to graduate school. And it really struck home, and I had the good fortune of meeting Charlie Munger in our investment course there.

CONSUELO MACK: Warren Buffett's kind of unknown partner.

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: As Warren Buffett says, he's the smart one. And after the class I asked him, I said what can I do to make myself a better investor, beyond just what I'm doing here and researching, et cetera? And he said, read history. Read history. Read history. And if people had read history about the economic crises of before, not only the depression but even before then, they would have said this is an old friend, and so that helped. It's come from a number of different parts, but I think really not being afraid to fail and be different. That's what it took in order to differentiate in this business.
 I had a friend of mine who was a growth stock manager who got just before the debacle of 2000, we were having lunch together in January of 2000 and he was buying all this dot com, and I said why are you buying this crap? And he says, because you have to, he says yes, if I don't buy it we won't be competitive. I said, but don't you realize, you are at the epicenter of a debacle that's going to occur? And when you get destroyed, you know, you could either have cash or you can buy these things. If you have cash, you get fired. If you buy the dot-com and it blows up, you get fired. So in both cases you're fired. What's the difference? Over here the one with the cash, where you held your investment discipline, you can rebuild your business. Over here, you've destroyed your credibility, you can never rebuild.

CONSUELO MACK: Let's talk about some of your unconventional current calls. You're describing the current economic state that we're in as a repression, which it's not as bad as the Great Depression, but it's also worse than a recession. Where is this repression taking us? What's it going to feel like?

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: Here in the firm, we're using a new term for the economy. We're calling it the caterpillar economy. Where it goes up and goes down, goes up and goes down, but it doesn't move forward very fast, after this waterfall collapse that we had. And this is different from any other kind of economic environment that we've been in since the depression. You don't destroy the consumer's balance sheet, like what's gone on. You don't have the leverage in the system that we have and expect to come out of it the way we've come out of other periods. The president, I argue, that I think he's on the wrong road and when I compare him to let's say FDR. When he came into power, the debt to GDP was barely 17% when FDR came here, whereas now we're now at 65% going to 75, going to 90% this year.

CONSUELO MACK: IMF says 100 some odd percent?

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ:  Right. And by the way, those numbers when FDR came into power did not include, because we didn't have any, entitlements. So if you add on the entitlements, it's even far larger. So as I've argued, we do not have the balance sheet flexibility today as we did in FDR's time. So if they want to go down, they being the Congress and the executive branch et cetera, and they want to build up these larger programs, they're going to come at a price. And in our opinion that price will be in the debt market, and in the Treasury market longer term. With higher interest rates.

CONSUELO MACK:  Bob, you saw the credit crisis coming about five, at least five years ago. And at that time you predicted that there was a new financial system that was going to be created and a new era. So what's this new financial system that we can look forward to?

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: I think, first of all, about four years ago we started talking about the breakdown in underwriting standards, et cetera. With the demise of Bear Stearns in March of last year, and what the response was by the federal government and the Fed, that's when we wrote "Crossing the Rubicon," that we had crossed over into a new financial era, a new system. And little did we know how far that was going to occur, within six months.
 So we're still in this process of defining what this new system is. As a result, it is very difficult to define what appropriate valuation levels are going to be, because the goal posts keep getting moved. Look at Chrysler- we were extremely vehement against Chrysler and what happened there, where senior secured creditors were treated in such a shabby manner, it really ran over, you know, the sanctity of contract. So we're in a new system. That means the government is a larger percentage of GDP. The larger the percentage of GDP, the more likely GDP will grow at a substandard rate for an elongated period of time.
 We're in the group, and I'm in the group, where the new world order that you were referring to, that I've referred to, is that the U.S. is going to have to change its economic system; that our foreign counterparts that have basically grown on the backs of U.S. consumer have got to turn inwardly for their growth. As a result, as they turn inwardly for their growth, such as China, the U.S. has to expand its exports. I don't see anything like that coming out of the administration or the incentives or anything else. As a result, the more the government takes a larger share of the economy, the likelihood we will be in a substandard period of growth and profit margins will also be substandard.

CONSUELO MACK:  So how do you invest in an environment that is going to be substandard growth, that you don't know what the rules of the game are because you don't know what the government is going to do next, what do you do?

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: It's going to be very hard. As a result, on the fixed income side, we're still maintaining our highest levels of quality. We haven't gone into the lower rungs of the high yield area, even though there's been big rungs there, because we think this is a head fake of what's going on in the economy and this rebound, the green shoots that people talk about. So we're going to stay high quality and let other people destroy themselves.
 On the equity side, we think you have to be very focused in terms of the industries you go after. So we have a natural decline rate in, let's say energy, supplies of energy. So we think longer term- three, five, ten years. Energy prices are going to be considerably elevated from where they are today. So we have a heavy exposure there.

CONSUELO MACK:  Heavy, like 55% of the FPA Capital Portfolio, is that right, is in energy?

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: Well, about 41% of the total portfolio, about 55% of the equity. Okay. So we're looking for other areas to deploy capital that will both benefit from the international side but also from the commodities side.
 So we see, you have to be rifle shooting over the course of the next five years or ten years, and that's why I gave a speech in Chicago at Morningstar that in my opinion, a highly diversified equity fund in this new order will be at a competitive disadvantage, especially if it carries management fees, et cetera, so you're going to have to do something different from the rest of the market in order to differentiate again, and that's what we're doing.

CONSUELO MACK:  So let's talk about the investment industry, which you have been highly critical of, and the OPM attitude, "other people's money" attitude that you feel that the industry has been excessively greedy, not really paying attention to shareholders interests.

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: Let's say abusive. I mean, how are mutual funds sold? They're brought out when the particular area is the hottest. So you sell what you can sell, and most of the time that is the absolute wrong time to be marketing that kind of product. So it's not investment oriented, it's marketing oriented. It's a marketing mindset, and as long as we have a marketing mindset in the industry and managers are fearful of under performing their bogey and having what we call tracking error where you deviate too far from your benchmark and god forbid you have too much volatility: all of these things will work to hit the industry. With this collapse, with the technology collapse and now with the credit collapse, the question I'm asking is: if active managers could not identify the two greatest speculative blowoffs in the last 75 years, when will they? And secondly, what are you buying from an active manager if they can't identify these things? You might as well go to an index.

CONSUELO MACK: Talk to me though about the shakeup that you think is going to happen in the mutual industry. Tell me what kind of a shakeout you expect.

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: I just think that first of all, we have too many funds. When you sit there with 8,000 funds, and then you have 25 different share classes, it's quite complicated. And what is the investor getting for all of that? There's an expense to that, and the higher the expense in a lower return environment means you have less margin of safety for a total return.

CONSUELO MACK: So let's also talk about the fact that you are a long-term investor, but you told me that you look out-- some people say long term like a couple of years, you're really talking about five to nine years. And you made a decision about six years ago to take a sabbatical next year from your firm in 2010. And one of the reasons that you decided to take a sabbatical as well is because you looked out beyond the current crisis and you see something even bigger and scarier coming?

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: I see another crisis coming.

CONSUELO MACK: What is that and like when?

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: It's the explosion in the treasury debt, and the finances of this country. We still have time. But to, shall we say, become fiscally responsible. Am I optimistic about us doing that? No. You're residing in the state of California that I left here four years ago, because in my opinion, the system was fundamentally broken and the state was going to experience a devastating recession on the down side.

CONSUELO MACK: Which it is right now.

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: Which it is right now. I believe the system in
 Washington is fundamentally broken. And as a result, the explosion in dealt that I foresee in the next three years and if other programs are added on it will accelerate it, then I think we have a real problem brewing in our finances here. I'm estimating somewhere in the neighborhood of five to seven years from here.

CONSUELO MACK: Do you envision any time in FPA Income basically going out the risk curve a little bit? I mean, is there anything-- you've got about 90% in triple A rated securities in the portfolio?

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: We are 22% in cash and we're barely over a one-year duration. We've had as much as 25% of the fund in high yield. We would love to go out on the risk curve. In the last six months, eight months, it's been highly profitable, just like the stock market has rallied. Is this sustainable? We don't think so. We think there's other dominos to fall that can disrupt this. So we don't like the odds. Plus in New Income, people come into the bond fund in New Income because they can trust it. It's when they couldn't trust virtually anything else in this country, other than Treasuries, our bond fund grew in the neighborhood of 60 to 80%. People came in because they could trust it. Well, here we are saying, how do we be good stewards going forward? Do we bet with other people's money or do we invest as if it's our money? That's what we're doing, we're waiting for that opportunity.

CONSUELO MACK:  Bob, what's your advice to individual investors who have had severe wealth destruction in their investment portfolios over the last couple of years? How can they rebuild that kind of wealth loss?

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: I wish there was an easy, nice comforting answer to it. Unfortunately, there isn't. In my opinion it will take probably upwards of eight or ten years for the S&P 500 to get back to where it was in October of '07. And thus there has been severe capital destruction, and for some it's permanent because of where they are in their life cycle. If you're in your 20s and 30s and 40s, you have the benefit of time. If you're in your 60s and you're part of the baby boom generation and you got destroyed, guess what, you better be working. You better find a job. Those things there. You move in, you may become a renter out there.

CONSUELO MACK: If can you sell your house.

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: Well no, the house gets taken, at least if they would allow it to go. But there is no God given right to an easy retirement. It was a fool's paradise out there. My parents and grandparents did not have an easy retirement. The world is unsafe and unstable. We had in this country, I believe, a perverse view of what reality truly was, and now that veil is being lifted, and I'm sorry, but it's going to take a long time and that nice retirement home or continuous vacations may not be there.

CONSUELO MACK: You told me that you see things that other people don't see.

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: Sometimes.

CONSUELO MACK:  So what are you seeing now that other people aren't seeing?

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: I think the difference is many of us see the buildup of federal liabilities. But there's this feeling, well, it'll be okay, we'll get through it. Well, that was the same not too long ago when the house prices were going through and people would raise the question, what happens if housing prices get hit? Don't worry about it, we'll get through it. There's always that element. So I think the question is, as you have to place the odds, what are the odds that we'll get through this with the least amount of pain? I think that's where the difference comes.
 If you want to be on the optimistic side and say we'll get through it and you're wrong, your shareholders pay for it and your clients pay for it. If we're right and we've done our job correctly, we protect capital in the negative side, and if we're wrong, we just don't earn as much as our competition. I think that's a better combination than destroying your clients and saying, well, we'll go out and get some more new clients out there. I don't like that one.

CONSUELO MACK: That's a great way actually to end the interview. So Bob Rodriguez, thank you so much for giving us your time.

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: Thank you.

CONSUELO MACK: Next week in our "Great Investors" series, we are devoting our program to the late Peter Bernstein, one of the giants of the financial world who died in June at the age of 90. Bernstein, an economist, historian and seminal financial thinker and prolific author, appeared on WealthTrack exclusively several times. Next week we share his timeless wisdom.
 In the meantime, to access the collective wisdom of our other great investors, go to our website, weathtrack.com. Have a great weekend and make the week ahead a profitable and a productive one.

    

    

就算美国政府扩大借债支出，也无法抵消美国private debt contraction

所以综合public and private的借债来看，对于GDP都是收缩的负面影响。中短期之内，恐怕出了中国，在西方国家都不太可能出现通胀。当然，美国明年中期选举，为了提升就业率，奥巴马会不会大力贬值美元来导致小小通胀还说不定。但是经济的基本面是不可能出现通胀。

私人部门缩小借债规模，就意味大批失业

Household credit market debt currently stands at $13.8 trillion, an all-time high. It has not fallen. From 1965 through 2000, it ranged from 14% to 17% of Household net worth. It currently stands at 27% of Household net worth, an all-time high. Is this normal or abnormal? At the end of 2008, household net worth totaled $51.5 trillion, down $11.2 trillion in one year. In order to get household debt as a percentage of net worth to a “normal” level of 16%, will require households to either reduce debt or increase savings by $5.6 trillion.
美国家庭要减债的话，还有很长的路。如果减到98年的水平--基本上家庭能维持正的现金流,可能也需要好几年的时间

Credit money from bank is everywhere.

Overall, specific households and individual businesses may have borrowed too much recently, and they could run into problems. However, leverage does not seem to be a systemic problem at present。Relative to households, the loan-to-GDP ratio for the nonfinancial business sector in China is rather high at present, but it is not wildly out of line with the comparable ratio in the U.S. And the ratio in China has trended down from 100 percent in 2004 to 87 percent at present. Among industrial firms, interest expense has declined from nearly 3 percent of revenue in 2000 to about 1 percent at present, and the liability-to-asset ratio has dropped from about 0.62 to 0.58 over that period. If the current financial position among industrial firms is reflective of the overall business sector, then a rash of bankruptcies does not seem to be in the cards, at least not in the near term.


RMB升值预期还会吸引热钱，国内泡泡还有生长空间，估计CPI会很快上升到正的空间.中国官方外汇储备空前飙升，6月达到2.132万亿美元，部分是受追逐强劲增长的海外资本回流所推动。经济学家预计，这类“热钱”第二季度的总额在300亿-500亿美元。

An unknowable amount of this new loan has ended up on the blackjack tables of Macao – or that other casino, the Shanghai Stock Exchange, where daily volumes are currently three times the five-year average. But even assuming that most has gone where intended, there are still many reasons to worry --Ft.com

China used about $45 billion of its foreign exchange reserves earlier this decade to recapitalize two of its four state-owned commercial banks. The country’s foreign exchange reserves have subsequently risen from $400 billion at the end of 2003 to more than $2 trillion at present, giving it ample financial resources to recapitalize the banking system again, should that prove necessary. Given that the NPL ratio in the commercial banking system is only 2 percent at present, recapitalization does not seem necessary anytime soon.

外汇储备其实只是央行管理的一项资产，而且是只能在海外投资的资产，无论其增值还是缩水都只是央行自己的损益，公众也不必过于操心。当然，要操心的是国际收支危机，即外资撤退和汇率暴跌会让外汇储备告罄，这就像亚洲金融危机或者像去年的冰岛和匈牙利等国经历的那样。但中国目前不存在这样的风险，虽然说有热钱在兴风作浪，但去年下半年以来，外汇储备只是在2008年10月， 11月以及2009年1月， 2月有过轻微的负增长，目前中国还是要担心外汇储备太多以及如何保值增值的问题.外汇储备的变动有很多的因素，比如经常项目差额，资本项目差额，热钱，汇率和投资收益等等，因此很难判断外汇储备增加或减少的具体原因，而且外汇管理部门并没有公布外汇储备的币种结构和投资方向.
--外汇储备 与我无关