Charles Dumas, chief economist at Lombard Street Research, says he finds himself in an unusual position he's not as pessimistic as most people. I'm less pessimistic than the consensus regarding the United States, he said at the AsianInvestor and FinanceAsia-sponsored conference on Distressed Troubled Asset Investing last week.
Dumas has been a proponent since 2004 of the argument that excess savings in China, Japan, Germany and other countries played a direct role in the financial bubble of the US and Britain. Without the 'savings glut' there would have been no extravagant consumption binge, because US interest rates and spreads on Treasuries would have soared.
Excess savings caused the trouble, and now savings...
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