Julian Robertson  

Here's one of my occasional diversions out into deeply bearish territory. I'm not sure if this should simply be labelled "conspiracy theory", but it does fit into the some of the patterns of behaviour I've muttered about before.

Anyway, Julian Robertson is an old time hedge fund guru who is predicting grim times ahead (via FTD). His "head for the hills" plan seems to involve New Zealand. Of course, he could just be senile, or it could be some extreme real estate marketing for his golf course development - but it does fit with what Ray on ROE3 was talking about a few months ago (good real estate in NZ being bought up by expats who were rapidly pushing up prices).

There was an interview on CNBC of the renowned funds manager Julian Robertson. He is one of the greatest of the old-timers. 53 years on the Street. He manages the Robertson group of funds. They used to call him, still do call him ´Never Been Wrong´ Robertson. He has predicted every economic cycle, every debacle, every bull market, and every bear market. Of course, he´s a very old man now. But his reputation on the Street is like nothing you could imagine. When the segment of his interview was through, his comments alone took the Dow Jones down 50 points. Just on his comments alone. That´s how powerful this man´s reputation is.

Robertson was actually a teary-eyed, an old man. When Ron Insana asked him about his predictions, he said that he´s worried about the speculative bubble in housing and the fact that more than 1/4 of all consumer spending is now sustained by that bubble, plus the fact that 20 million citizens could lose their homes in a collapse of the speculative bubble in housing, and that the Fed and, indeed, central banks worldwide would act in concert out of desperation to reinflate the global economy in the process, creating an inflationary spiral unheralded in the economic history of the planet.

Insana then asks, "Where does it end?" And he said, "Utter global collapse." Not simply economic collapse; complete disintegration of all infrastructure and of all public structures of governments. Utter, utter collapse. That the end is collapse of simply epic proportion.