“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”
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Can’t let the month end without another Sunday Sermon.
This time a little bit of an update on the political and financial scene as I see it.
So far the Obama administration is doing great! (That was a little sarcasm in case anyone didn’t get it.)
Troops are being sent to Syria and soon we’ll get bogged down in another mess that’s none of our business and will probably take many years and many lives to get us disentangled from – leaving behind chaos and confusion and a worse situation than the one we tried to fix.
Meanwhile the economic crisis continues. Not that you’d notice. The sham recovery has meant that stocks have been on an upward trend, bonds have been doing well, and confidence is high.
And all because….
….well all because the Fed continues to print money and pour it into these markets.
Or at least it has been.
Then Bernanke made a statement a few days ago to “clarify” the government’s position.
Oh dear me!
He said that the government would… he thought… he hoped anyway…. assuming nothing unforeseen happened…. at least nothing major that they didn’t see coming… that they would ease off their money printing and bond buying… or at least they might… soon or maybe later… but sometime at least… well, it was being discussed…
Needless to say with that dithering statement confidence immediately melted away from the market and the DOW headed down by more than 500 points. In fact investors and brokers seemed to be selling everything, not just stocks and bonds but gold and other commodities too. Not quite panic but definite unease was clear to be seen.
The only reason it didn’t all collapse is that while the underlying message is clear, the Fed’s delay in implementing their tap turn off gives investors a little more time to make a little more money – they hope.
The problem with that is knowing when to sell. And that is the trick that has eluded investors from individuals to hedge fund managers since the markets began.
What Obama and Bernanke want is crystal clear. They see the folly in printing money and buying bonds at near $100 billion a month and they know they have to stop it eventually otherwise an even bigger financial catastrophe will result.
Their problem is they want to stop it without causing a massive market correction.
And that, as Samuel Goldwin used to say, can be summed up in two words – im possible!
It will be interesting and perhaps a bit painful to watch what happens next.
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fasab 