Every once in awhile an investment book comes along which forces me to reexamine my core assumptions and face the fact that one or more them are quite possibly…wrong. This has been one of those books.
While very large swaths of this book may not come as a surprise to some readers (the impending demise of the USD as reserve currency, the looming debt crisis, the bond bubble bursting and a multi-year commodities boom in the offing with gold leading the charge), it made me look at secular bear markets with a new perspective that is forcing me to seriously rethink my game plan.
In the neverending debate as to whether there is yet another shoe to drop in the Global Financial Crisis (as I have assumed, from even before the first one hit), or are we in the early stages of a V-shaped recovery…Skarica’s answer is surprising, and yet resolves much of the cognitive dissonance I was experiencing around the issue and why Bulls and Bears may both be wrong in the years ahead.
The deflation vs. inflation debate is tackled and he makes compelling arguments to deflation-as-a-red-herring.
Not only is this a great investment book, as a history lover I really enjoyed the historical context Skarica weaves around the themes he explores.
By the time I was finished reading this book it was dogeared and bashed up with lots of highlights, underlines, circled passages, notes in the margins and page annotations. I basically just dove into this book and plowed through it in about 3 days.
This book is an absolute must-read for anybody interested in the macroeconomics of the times we find ourselves in, with a real practical application to one’s own personal finances and investment program.
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