Mr. Market Miscalculates: The Bubble Years and Beyond

James Grant is pretty well known in the financial newsletter industry, and this book shows why. Grant is very insightful and understands the big picture. Most of the pieces in this book were written several years ago, yet what is happening now is exactly what Grant said eventually would happen. The writing style is fluid and polished. All in all a great read.

I haven't finished the book - but I have greatly enjoyed what I have read so far. And yes, it is a compilation of old bi-monthly written reviews from Grant's Interest Rate Observer, and it is a recently selected compilation. perhaps that means that the less perspicacious reviews were left out and as such we are seeing the author as smarter than he really was. but regardless, I have enjoyed and learned from the reviews that have been printed in this book - and I believe that I am seeing the present world and possible future worlds a little more clearly as a result of what I have been reading in this book... I heartily recommend it.

This is my first contact with Grant, the editor of "Grant's Interest Rate Observer". I just wish I had been a subscriber since 2000 and one who would have acted on what he said. Not since I read Winston Churchill's, "The Gathering Storm" have I read a book that shows such prescience and gives over and over the warnings of a boding calamity that, if the warnings had been heeded, could have been lessened in intensity if not prevented. But one great mind is never able to sway leaders and politicians bent upon a self serving course of affairs, be it conquest on one side vs appeasement on the other or in the financial world greed/financial power on one hand vs political power and its misuse on the other. His article of 8/11/2006 predicts, "the long -provoked national bear market[in housing]already underway." The article of 9/22/2006,"Age of Aquarius", describing CDO's and subprime mortgages in general as well as,"ACA Aquarius 006-1 is a $2 billion,mezzanine-structured, hybrid collateralized debt obligation, or CDO." in particular makes one wonder how these impossibly complex and unsound instruments ever floated. But greed and the fear of not getting in on easy money makes people do amazing things. This is the one chapter we all should memorize. He nails the big banks like GS, C, and defunct Merrill as well as their sometimes nefarious CEOs like Ruben and Paulson who obtained great political as well as financial power or ones like O'Neal, and Thain who broke their companies and gives a new(to me) inside view of Alan Greenspan that shows him to be merely mortal and sometimes pretty fallible too. A great read and fun to see his humor poke the 'questionable' guys. The cartoons of Hank Blaustein are a lesson in themselves as well as humorous. I just wish I could afford a subscription to the newsletter.

Grant has written a very nice critique of the deregulation of the financial markets that has been going on since the late 1970's.The Federal Reserve System(Fed) and SEC(Securities and Exchange Commission)simply allowed the big commercial banks and investment banks to ignore all of their OWN creditworthiness standards on who qualifies for a loan ,as well as letting them load up on all types of highly speculative types of assets, like collateralized debt obligations(CDO's). He pinpoints the major problem that led to the current collapse of both the housing bubble and the stock market bubble.It was not the low interest rate policies of the Fed.It was the decisions made to loan money to speculators and well known house flippers(in some real estate markets, 35% -40% of the housing loans were going to house flippers)that set the stage that created the housing bubble and then led to the total collapse of the construction sector in the vast majority of the 50 states. I have deducted 1/2 of a star because the author is apparently unaware that Adam Smith spent 80 pages of The Wealth of Nations(1776;pp.260-340, especially pp.339-340) warning about the dangers of allowing banks to make loans to projectors,imprudent risk takers,and prodigals(These categories of borrower are equivalent to the speculators and rentiers responsible for creating the housing bubble of the mid-to late 1920's and the stock market bubble of the late 1920's).Smith made it clear that such categories of borrower will waste and destroy the loans generated from the savings of the bank's depositors.The central bank should aim at maintaining low rates of interest while simultaneously restricting loans to the three categories of borrower mentioned above.

"The Cassandra industry is not so remunerative as the hedge fund business, so the professional investors and bankers stay in the race, taking the kind of risks that their better judgment tells them to avoid." states James Grant in his 'Mr. Market Miscalculates, The Bubble Years and Beyond,' a work comprised of pieces from his 'Grant's Interest Rate Observor.' Grant has been charting the course of market excesses on a fortnightly basis for 25 years, and he has a remarkable record of getting it right. Most pointedly, Grant illuminates the human foibles to which we all fall prey and how these foibles precipitate the daily gyrations of stock and bond price levels. Grant's wealth of understanding is outstanding enough to recommend the book, but his ability to generously lace his writing with his sense of humor makes his writing simply priceless. About the dismal financial crisis, Grant wryly remarks that there is more than enough blame to go around. Grant faults human nature in general for markets gone wild, yet he is particularly impressed by the level of incompetence exhibited by recent leaders who, according to Grant, "failed almost to the man." The no-holds-barred book journeys through the missteps of the economic leaders of our times, and it does so with a breath-taking straightforwardness. Given the state of the world's economic affairs, I hope 'Mr. Market' becomes required reading for the legislators, the judiciary, and the executives charged with fixing the world's financial systems.