• March 31, 2012

All Spain All the Time

Last Monday I was in Paris and was asked to do a spot on CNBC London. I arrived at the studios an hour early due to a misunderstanding of the time zones, so while trying to catch up on the news I listened to CNBC. I had just written about Spain in last week's letter and guessed that was what they wanted to talk to me about, but for the full hour before I got on it seemed like every guest wanted to talk about Spain. When I had my turn and indeed got the Spain question, I smiled and...

• March 29, 2012

Featured Video: John Mauldin Presentation on Global Debt Crisis

Watch video of John Mauldin as he discusses the global debt crisis and how it is changing the world. This special presentation was filmed at the Swedbank Seminar 2012 in Stockholm, Sweden.

• March 24, 2012

A Random Walk Through the Data Minefields

"I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare:

and I dare a little more as I grow older."

- Michel de Montaigne (influential writer of the French Renaissance)

This Friday finds me sleeping later than I planned … in the lounge at the airport in Stockholm, on my way to Paris. To the great applause of readers all over the world this may be the shortest letter in 12 years. I will write here and on the plane and quit when I land so I can be with friends...

• March 17, 2012

Where Will the Jobs Come From?

"Six years into our global data collection effort, we may have already found the single most searing, clarifying, helpful, world-altering fact.

"What the whole world wants is a good job.

"This is one of the most important dsicoveries Gallup has ever made. At the very least, it needs to be considered in every policy, every law, every social initiative. All leaders – policy makers and lawmakers, presidents and prime ministers, parents, judges, priests, pastors, imams, teachers, managers and...

• March 10, 2012

There Will Be Contagion

… (December 11, 2009) – Greece's prime minister, George Papandreou, told reporters in Brussels on Friday that European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker see "no possibility" of a Greek default, Bloomberg News reported. Papandreou also said that there was no possibility of Greece leaving the euro area, according to the report.

• March 3, 2012

Unintended Consequences

"Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces."

– Sigmund Freud

Let me introduce Mauldin's Rule of Thumb Concerning Unintended Consequences:

For every government law hurriedly passed in response to a current or recent crisis, there will be two or more...