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Endgame: The End of the Debt Supercycle and How It Changes Everything Hardcover – March 8, 2011
Purchase options and add-ons
- Reveals why the world economy is in for an extended period of sluggish growth, high unemployment, and volatile markets punctuated by persistent recessions
- Reviews global markets, trends in population, government policies, and currencies
Around the world, countries are faced with difficult choices. Endgame provides a framework for making those choices.
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherJohn Wiley & Sons
- Publication dateMarch 8, 2011
- Dimensions6.25 x 1.1 x 9.3 inches
- ISBN-101118004574
- ISBN-13978-1118004579
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Q&A with Authors John Mauldin and Jonathan Tepper
Author John Mauldin What is the debt supercycle?Over a period of about sixty years, debt levels grew faster than incomes. This increase in debt became particularly pronounced in the 1980s, 90s and finally went parabolic after the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to 1% after the Nasdaq crash. The increase in debt was not just a US phenomenon. As interest rates fell structurally with the fall in inflation from 1982 onwards, people took on more debt because it became more manageable. However, by 2008 the burden of debt became too much to bear and the debt supercycle came to an end. People started deleveraging and banks started collapsing due to low levels of capital and large losses from loans people couldn't pay back.
How does the sovereign debt crisis play into this?
The rapid contraction in debt levels due to default and deleveraging lead to a fall in economic activity as people started saving and cutting spending. Governments immediately stepped in and backed bank debt with explicit guarantees. Governments also started borrowing and spending to transfer money to the private sector, for example via unemployment insurance. So in a very real sense, private borrowing was replaced with public borrowing. Debt was added onto more debt. Rather than free itself of debt, the system now has more debt. The sovereign debt crisis is the recognition that most of this debt will not be paid back, and governments are making promises to pay debt and other obligations, for example general spending and pensions, that they simply lack the ability to fulfill.
Author Jonathan Tepper The end of the debt supercycle and the beginning of the sovereign debt crisis present problems and challenges for investors and governments. Governments will need to either 1) inflate, 2) default or 3) devalue, which is similar to inflate. That is the way governments have historically dealt with too much debt. Some countries will experience deflation and others inflation, depending on what choices governments make. Currently governments have only bad and worse choices. Let's hope they can choose wisely.
What do you predict for the next ten years?
Central banks globally have shown a predisposition to print money to solve problems. We forsee rising inflation in many parts of the world, reductions in real income as people lose purchasing power due to higher food and fuel prices and more macroeconomic volatility. Some countries that do not control their own money supply or are running pegs may experience deflation as they are forced to delever and cannot increase the money supply to counteract the weight of deleveraging.
You cite the events in Greece as an example of a country continuing to run massive deficits. Is there an example of a country making a better choice?
The UK is making some of the right steps to control spending, but even the UK could be more draconian. In nominal and real terms, government spending in aggregate will not be cut in the UK. Also, Iceland has made positive steps by defaulting on its debt effectively. Default is a good way to cure too much debt.
Review
―Charles Sizemore, HS Dent Research Analyst and Editor of the Sizemore Investment Letter
From the Inside Flap
Hundreds of books have been written about the financial crisis that engulfed the world after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. But what if the bigger financial crisis is ahead of us, not behind us?
As John Mauldin and Jonathan Tepper deftly illustrate in this controversial book, the crisis was more than a half-century in the making. The Great Financial Crisis, however, was merely Act I. Act II has now begun.
The massive household deleveraging and historic shift of private debt onto government balance sheets now underway all over the world represents the end of a sixty-year global Debt Supercycle. We have now entered the Endgame, a time when bankruptcies and defaults (disguised as "restructuring") will not be of households and companies but of governments. The stakes are now higher. The coming crises will offer policymakers few good choices and many bad ones. It will require extraordinary clarity and courage from leaders, courage that so far is largely completely lacking.
Yet, despite the authors' dark forecast, the message in Endgame is not all gloom and doom. The book lays out positive steps governments can take to weather the worst of the stormy days ahead, minimize the inevitable pain and discomfort most of us can expect to experience, and chart a bold new course to sustained economic growth and prosperity.
It also offers investors an abundance of useful analysis and expert advice on how to protect their assets during the worst of it and prosper from the many new opportunities that will emerge globally as they present themselves.
In Part 2, the authors take readers on a country-by-country tour--including the United States, UK, European countries, and Japan--clearly explaining the problems each country faces, as well as the good and bad policy options open to each, and the investment pitfalls and opportunities likely to be found in each national economy.
Whether you call it the Great Recession, the Great Financial Crisis, or the Global Debt Crisis, what we are experiencing is unlike anything seen in eighty years. Now is not the time to succumb to panic and superstition. It is a time for courage and intelligent decision making informed by the brand of rational analysis and wisdom you'll find in Endgame.
From the Back Cover
Hundreds of books have been written about the financial crisis that engulfed the world after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. But what if the bigger financial crisis is ahead of us, not behind us?
As John Mauldin and Jonathan Tepper deftly illustrate in this controversial book, the crisis was more than a half-century in the making. The Great Financial Crisis, however, was merely Act I. Act II has now begun.
The massive household deleveraging and historic shift of private debt onto government balance sheets now underway all over the world represents the end of a sixty-year global Debt Supercycle. We have now entered the Endgame, a time when bankruptcies and defaults (disguised as “restructuring”) will not be of households and companies but of governments. The stakes are now higher. The coming crises will offer policymakers few good choices and many bad ones. It will require extraordinary clarity and courage from leaders, courage that so far is largely completely lacking.
Yet, despite the authors’ dark forecast, the message in Endgame is not all gloom and doom. The book lays out positive steps governments can take to weather the worst of the stormy days ahead, minimize the inevitable pain and discomfort most of us can expect to experience, and chart a bold new course to sustained economic growth and prosperity.
It also offers investors an abundance of useful analysis and expert advice on how to protect their assets during the worst of it and prosper from the many new opportunities that will emerge globally as they present themselves.
In Part 2, the authors take readers on a country-by-country tour―including the United States, UK, European countries, and Japan―clearly explaining the problems each country faces, as well as the good and bad policy options open to each, and the investment pitfalls and opportunities likely to be found in each national economy.
Whether you call it the Great Recession, the Great Financial Crisis, or the Global Debt Crisis, what we are experiencing is unlike anything seen in eighty years. Now is not the time to succumb to panic and superstition. It is a time for courage and intelligent decision making informed by the brand of rational analysis and wisdom you’ll find in Endgame.
About the Author
JOHN MAULDIN is a renowned financial expert, a multiple New York Times best-selling author, and a pioneering online commentator. His weekly e-newsletter, Thoughts From The Frontline, was one of the first publications to provide investors with free, unbiased information and guidance. Today, it is one of the most widely distributed investment newsletters in the world, translated into Chinese, Spanish and Italian. He is regularly seen on TV and in national print media. President of Millennium Wave Investments, he is the father of seven children (five adopted) and lives in Dallas, Texas.
JONATHAN TEPPER is the founder and Chief Editor of Variant Perception, a macroeconomic research group catering to hedge funds and high-net-worth individuals.
Product details
- Publisher : John Wiley & Sons; First Hardback Edition. (March 8, 2011)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1118004574
- ISBN-13 : 978-1118004579
- Item Weight : 1.16 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 1.1 x 9.3 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,254,462 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,038 in International Economics (Books)
- #1,055 in Political Economy
- #1,907 in Economic Conditions (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

John Mauldin is a renowned financial expert, a multiple New York Times best-selling author, and a pioneering online commentator. His weekly e-newsletter, Thoughts From The Frontline, was one of the first publications to provide investors with free, unbiased information and guidance. Today, it is one of the most widely distributed investment newsletters in the world, translated into Chinese, Spanish and Italian. He is regularly seen on TV and in national print media. President of Millennium Wave Investments, he is the father of seven children (five adopted) and lives in Dallas, Texas.
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Customers find the book highly readable, easy to read, and straightforward. They also appreciate the useful information and thorough analysis. Opinions differ on the investment value, with some finding it good and investor-friendly, while others say it provides limited advice.
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Customers find the book highly readable, captivating, and easy to read. They say it's straightforward, clear, and to the point. Readers also mention the author writes in fairly common language and is well-articulated.
"...didn't matter during times of economic growth, second; He writes in fairly common language..." Read more
"...This data is all graphed and explained in a very readable, non-political, non-emotional way, but don't imagine it's at all dull...." Read more
"...It reads like a multi-generational novel, with much greater emphasis on description & interpretation, rather than just quoting fact after fact, as..." Read more
"...John does an excellent job of writing a very thorough yet imminently readable analysis on the current economic mess our world finds itself in today...." Read more
Customers find the book useful, thorough, and well-researched. They say it provides an overview and an education in the basics of macroeconomic theory. Readers also mention the authors provide lots of details to support their conclusions. They appreciate that the book describes technical detail of economics pretty well.
"...This is a very thought-provoking book an Mauldin does us all a service by showing us that there is a way out of the mess that we a currently in but..." Read more
"It describes technical detail of economics pretty well. It does go over your head here and there. So it's a good source for this info...." Read more
"...Its value is that the authors have sourced dozens of obscure (to the ordinary man) economists and analysts from around the world who are notable in..." Read more
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Customers find the book frightening and disturbing.
"...crises over an 800 year span of time interesting, informative and disturbing...." Read more
"...book, the picture painted by the mosaic of views is both stark and disturbing...." Read more
"...It is absolutely fascinating and scary as hell.Another good thing is that it is not all gloom and doom...." Read more
"An excellent but scary book about the economic future of developed and emerging countries...." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the investment value of the book. Some mention it's a great book on economics, while others say it provides limited investment advice.
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"very goodvery good,product was of good value and the quality is also very good, if i need another i will consider this source again" Read more
"...financial position of the planet today is that there is way too much debt for individuals and governments to ever pay off...." Read more
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Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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This is a very thought-provoking book an Mauldin does us all a service by showing us that there is a way out of the mess that we a currently in but the way out to personal and national fiscal health will not happen quickly and it will require significant behavior changes and expectations, smart policy choices and some hard work.
But the writing and "desktop publishing" are not very good. They need a better editor and document designer. The fonts are fine. But they use title case for figure captions (hard to read), many graphs and charts have no labels for the axis, making them hard to understand, and the graphs they refer to are often on another page, making you flip to that page while reading the current page.
The writer and editor don't understand basic punctuation and other publishing problems such as: Commas where they don't belong, no commas where they do belong, inconsistent use of em dashes (Alt-0151 = —) and semicolons, poor use of parenthesis (like putting complete sentences in parenthesis, which makes no sense), fake ellipsis (4 periods) with no space before it instead of using the real ellipsis character (Alt-0133 = …), putting Figure references in brackets (like "Blah blah blah. [See Figure 4.3.]" when it should be "Blah blah blah (Figure 4.3)."), spelling out all numbers over 10 when it would be easier to read "570" instead of "five hundred and seventy" (but not consistent about this), spelling out "nineteenth century" instead of "19th century," and many other publishing issues that pros should be aware of. They clearly don't have a clue on how to make something easy to read.
The transition from the debt supercycle to the endgame is characterized, for the most part, by a transfer of debt, not an extinction of it, from the private sector to the public sector (pp. 24-25). Western governments and central banks have run large fiscal deficits and printed massive amounts of money to reduce the impact of the multiyear balance sheet recession in the private sector (pp. 8; 13; 24-25; 29; 58-63; 98-104; 136-141; 155; 158; 172-174; 227; 230; 252; 267-272). To their credit, Mauldin and Tepper clearly explain why deficits matter. Unfortunately, countries like the United States have mostly not run surplus and pay down debt in good times so that there is room for a policy response in bad times (pp. 54-57; 178-180; 188-196; 224; 235; 249). Unless central banks print money, the financing of large government debt runs the risk of crowding out business investment that relies on savings of consumers and businesses (pp. 53; 121-122).
Mauldin and Tepper are not surprised at all about this policy of kicking the proverbial can down the road that will result into greater systemic instability with more macroeconomic volatility and greater variability of inflation rates (pp. 29; 34-44; 73-89; 154; 240; 254; 271). Most politicians in the developed economies have a hard time to address any long-term problem because most voters prefer to opt out of a long-term gain if a short-term pain is required (pp. 3; 7; 118; 129; 182; 188; 218; 238). The authors warn public decision-makers and their respective electorate that the longer hard decisions are put off, the more pain their country, state, or city will have to ultimately endure (pp. 6; 89; 92; 100; 155-156; 219; 226; 239; 245; 253-259). Like the private sector, the public sector will be hold accountable for trying to borrow its way out of a debt crisis (pp. 41; 55-56; 100; 259).
Mauldin and Tepper recommend that:
1. Americans reduce their personal leverage and save more. Policy makers have relied on debt and income transfers to mask the fact that low-end wages have become too high under the relentless pressure of globalization;
2. The U.S. economy shift from consumption, real estate, and finance toward manufacturing to start addressing the structural decline in its civilian participation rate. Germany has been thriving because the world has been buying its goods;
3. The United States put in place more tax policies to encourage new businesses and therefore new jobs;
4. The United States restructure Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security thoroughly. No reasonably foreseeable rate of economic growth will overcome the structural deficit associated with these three major programs. Otherwise, a substantial value added tax will be needed to cover the cost and result into even slower growth;
5. The United States, its states, and its cities revisit the total remuneration package of their respective workforce. The status quo is unsustainable;
6. The United States take a cue from Canada by giving a higher priority to legal immigrants with degrees and money for a few years;
7. The U.S. economy reduce its over-dependence on foreign oil through steep taxation on gasoline to make alternatives more competitive that they are today. The tax burden in the United States is low compared to other countries around the world;
8. The United States use some of the proceeds, of a significantly higher taxation, on gasoline to fix its infrastructure, which is badly in need of repair;
9. The United States get serious about the much-touted nuclear renaissance by approving the building of a large number of new reactors (pp. 67-69; 85-86; 88-89; 118-119; 124-125; 137; 160; 167-169; 181-214; 243-244).
Mauldin and Tepper point out that there is no way to know in advance when bondholders will suddenly lose confidence in the ability of a government to pay its debt, even if that debt is denominated in a currency that the government can print (pp. 13-14; 32; 54-55; 57; 94-98; 125-127; 186-188; 259; 263; 279-281). When countries have too much debt, they usually inflate away excessive debt. Devaluation and default on debt are the two other options available to over-indebted countries (pp. 25; 110; 122-125; 128-131; 158; 180; 200; 229). To compensate for this higher perceived risk, bondholders will press for a rise in interest rates, which will further debilitate the capacity of a country to refund its debt (pp. 55; 105; 123; 231). A program of austerity becomes a necessity to bring the debt back to acceptable levels and to reinvigorate the confidence of bondholders (pp. 12; 154). Without the precarious and fickle confidence of bondholders, the ability to roll over (large) debt, especially short-term one, or borrow new debt at affordable rates, crumbles concomitantly with the liquidity of the financial markets and the economy (pp. 94; 96; 278).
Although Mauldin and Tepper do not offer any practical investment advice, they give a non-exhaustive list of possible investments to consider if one believes in either deflation and/or inflation (pp. 284-292; 294-296). The authors believe that deflation will precede inflation (pp. 133; 295). Mauldin and Tepper have a low confidence in the ability of Western central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, to appropriately transition their respective economies from a deflationary era to one of controlled inflation. Therefore, timing will be critical to capitalize on an era of increasing volatility (p. 296).
Top reviews from other countries
A decent relief is that Endgame is, unlike most other works, a US-centric book. While it does focus on the US economy, it provides a worldwide tour of similar debt crises, ranging from Japan, to UK, to Hungary, Greece and the Baltics.
The most alarming of them all is Japan, which is the most overleveraged country on Earth. Maudlin describes Japan as a bug in search of a windshield.
An interesting chapter, and one almost never touched upon, is Australia. While there are no, or rather, few economic problems within Australia, Australia has what every other country had prior to financial collapse, a housing bubble. The thing is, most bubbles are normally ignored until they happen. Kudos on Mr Maudlin for spotting it and giving it more attention than other writers normally do.
The only criticism of this work is excessive citation of a recent book, Reinhart and Rogoff's This Time is Different. This book receives a whole chapter of attention, and the coverage made me feel somewhat lacking in the sense that I had not yet read that book, so it may be advisable to read Reinhart and Rogoff first.
Although the Endgame of the title remains somewhat ambiguous, this reader at least comes to the conclusion that it will involve inflating away the debt. Indeed, it seems like the only option on the cards. Maudlin seems distrustful of Keynesianism, although his exact ideology seems difficult to pin.
On the whole, Endgame is a very readable book, perhaps one of the most readable I've read in recent years, and a decent addition to the reading list of anyone who is, like me, still trying to understand the full implications of the Crash of 2008.
