There is a conflict between what Al Martin said Julian Robertson said on Ron Insana and what the tape of the show says that you can see at WSJ. Here are the two links to Ron Insana's show:
Here's what Al Martin said he said. By Al Martin
(May 30) 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.
In 10 years time, he said, whoever is still alive on the planet will be effectively starting again.
And the comments were so negative. I´ve never heard anything like it. From a guy who was 53 years on the Street. This is
Julian Robertson, the renowned Republican. And yet he blamed everything on ´the Bushonian Cabal,´ that the Cabal has now
consolidated power and money on the planet to the maximum extent possible. That the planet´s net liquidity--that is, net free cash flow--is now a negative number. That the planet is not simply sinking into a sea of red ink; it is already sunk. The people just don´t realize it yet.
The enormity of it was such that he said that the Bush-Cheney regime--calls them ´the Bush-Cheney regime´ (I swear this guy must listen to me)--the Bush-Cheney regime is preparing the nation for transition from democracy into dictatorship because a dictatorship will be necessary to control, not civil unrest. That isn´t what he said. He said that it will be necessary to control, in 5 years´ time, food and water riots.
He said the federal government, that part of Patriot II Act, the internal exile, that the government is going to have to
build now huge detention compounds on federal lands, probably in the West where the land is available, to potentially house 50 million or more citizens that will be in financial ruin.
Food production will fall. And any further effort to control environmental destruction will be abandoned. Inflation will
run into the double and eventually triple digits. People will be carrying around U.S. dollars in wheelbarrows like Germany.
And he finally ended his comments by saying that he hopes that he is not alive to see this. And he looks at Ron Insana and he said, "The ´lucky´ ones are the ones who are my age now."
Total collapse of public infrastructure. Total collapse of medical care systems.
All public pension plans, Social Security will collapse. All corporate pension plans will collapse. I´ve never heard
anything like it.
But he backed that up with some fabulous statistics that I have pointed out before in various articles.
What he did is he did it all in literally one statement literally. But, 14% of all real estate transactions now being interest-only mortgages, and another 14% of people now, that, when they bought their homes, originated more than 100% of the purchase price in the mortgage and then borrowed further.
This was on the Ron Insana show on May 24, 2004. I mean, it was absolutely extraordinary. And he had pointed out all that we have pointed out before. What he talked about is he globalized it a lot more than I have in the past by saying that the American consumer is effectively now supporting the rest of the planet, which is true; that consumption rates in all other nations are falling, have fallen to the point that the tax revenues to governments, that the business and industries those nation states are providing is now a net negative number relative to total debt service and public cost, that this exists in virtually every nation state on the planet now.
And he pointed out, more importantly, and I´m trying to think how we imply this or how we express this to the people, what extraordinary times we are living in and how the destruction of the planet has been engineered by the Bushonian Cabal from 1980 to 1992, and then from 2001 to present, which has effectively destroyed the economic liquidity of the planet.
And it was absolutely extraordinary.
When Insana asked him, you know, he said he had sold all of his real estate and he was moving into one of the new
super-secure compounds for wealthy Republicans for when the ´barbarians will be at the gate.´
He said, "Ron, those barbarians will be potentially a third of the American population."
Ron asked, "What are your friends doing?"
