Endgame: The End of the Debt Supercycle and How It Changes Everything - Hardcover

by John Mauldin (Author), Jonathan Tepper (Author)

Greece isn't the only country drowning in debt. The Debt Supercycle--when the easily managed, decades-long growth of debt results in a massive sovereign debt and credit crisis--is affecting developed countries around the world, including the United States. For these countries, there are only two options, and neither is good--restructure the debt or reduce it through austerity measures. Endgame details the Debt Supercycle and the sovereign debt crisis, and shows that, while there are no good choices, the worst choice would be to ignore the deleveraging resulting from the credit crisis. The book:

• 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.

Front Jacket

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.

Author Biography

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.