Quantitative Easing

On the heels of last Thursday’s Fed announcement, there has been much commentary on the whys and wherefores of a new quantitative easing (the so-called QE3). Rather than re-hashing well-covered ground, I want to instead discuss the potential effects and unintended consequences of this policy and how it may impact the investment landscape going forward. Suffice it to say that the Fed had its reasons. QE3 evidences a belief in the so-called “wealth-effect” – the idea that one will spend more if he/she feels wealthier – and the Fed also believes it can contain any negative consequences. However, others would argue that it’s another shot across the bow of our foreign lenders that we are willing to engage full-out in a currency war as this policy clearly weakens the U.S. dollar. Because the Fed has embarked on a path with little historical precedent – where a central bank has signaled the intent to expand its balance sheet as much as it needs to – we are all now part of an experimental economy.

Since the very beginning of my public writings, I have leaned heavily towards the path of inflation, by which I mean money printing or its electronic equivalent, because even a cursory review of history will show that leaders have always chosen a little money printing today and the possibility of inflation tomorrow over the immediate pain of having to live within their means or with the consequences of their poor decisions. That was just a fancy way of saying 'humans will be humans,' and while our technology has advanced tremendously over the past few decades, our DNA blueprints are virtually identical to those found in people living 50,000 years ago.  History can tell us much. Our current predicament has its roots way back in the early 1980s, when something changed in our collective psyches that allowed us to abandon thrift and savings in favor of spending and borrowing.

Since 2007 our analysis has suggested the likelihood of economic outcomes that most have considered unlikely: significant and ongoing monetary inflation, policy-administered currency devaluation, substantial global price inflation, and an eventual change in how the forty year old global monetary system is structured. Most observers have viewed such outlooks as tail events – highly unlikely, unworthy of serious consideration or a long way off. We remain resolute, and believe last week’s movements in Frankfurt and Washington towards perpetual quantitative easing confirmed and accelerated the validity of our outlook. With QBAMCO's view that $15,000 - $19,000 Gold is possible, timing of the catch-up phase is impossible - though they suspect last week's events may be the catalyst that begins to raise public awareness of the link between monetary inflation and price inflation.

Nigeria gets it. So why not our distinguished Princeton/MIT/Harvard edumacated PeeEichDees?

• NIGERIA'S SANUSI: ECB, US QUANTITATIVE EASING DRIVING OIL PRICE
• NIGERIA'S SANUSI: THREAT OF HOT MONEY FROM QUANTITATIVE EASING

We give our own Politburo intelligentisa at least 3-4 years before they grasp what is now painfully obvious even in Africa.

Global gold production remains at its level of the late '90s, even though prices have risen to over $1,700 per ounce from $252 per ounce in 1999 or roughly 16% per annum in dollar terms. Only Rio Tinto and Ivanhoe's Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia stand out as a major new gold mines expected to begin production in the near future. Bulls note that global production has remained impervious to the price of gold. This may continue to be the case due to the increasingly obvious geological constraints being seen in the gold mining sector. Resource nationalism is beginning to become an important factor again. This will also almost certainly affect supply at a time when demand is increasing from people throughout the world and many hedge funds, pension funds and central banks’ due to geopolitical, systemic and monetary risks. The lesson of QE is that fiat currencies increasingly grow on trees. Gold does not.  This is the primary reason that gold will continue to protect investors in the coming months.

Pump it up, until you can feel it, Pump it up, when you don't really need it...

Marc Faber, one of the few analysts, to have predicted the current crisis correctly and to have protected his clients in the process, remains very bullish on gold. In another excellent Bloomberg interview, Faber said that “the trend for gold prices will be steady but the trend for the dollar and other currencies will be down. So in other words gold in dollar terms will trend higher.”  “How high it will go, you will have to call Mr Bernanke and at the Fed there are other people who actually make Mr Bernanke look like a hawk and so they are going to print money.” Faber is on record as to the importance of owning physical gold and he again warned about the importance of owning gold but not storing it in the U.S.  “You ought to own some gold but don’t store it in the U.S., the Fed will take it away from you one day,” Faber astutely noted. He said that Bernanke is a money printer and this could lead to massive inflation and the Dow Jones at 20,000, 50,000 or 10 million. Faber cheerily predicted that the “the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy will destroy the world” and “eventually we will have a systemic crisis and everything will collapse.”

The Fed had been using “QE hype” to rally the markets. Every time we were on the verge of a collapse another QE announcement would be made bringing us a few feet back from the fiscal cliff. But that tactic wont work anymore…

Well, my fellow Slope-a Dopes, your favorite intrepid seafaring Frenchman got blown out of the water by Benjamin Moby-Dick Bernanke once again.  I have to hand it to captain grey beard, for a guy with a curiously quivering lower lip, who seems so utterly unsure of himself every time he opens his moronic mouth, he sure does have some pair of ballistic brass balls.  Not only did he delivered on his QE3 promise, but he actually turbo charged it into a terrifying trifecta!  Boatswain BDI was left for dead, desperately drowning in a sea of red DOOMs (Deep Options Out of the Money).  So now that Moby Dick has breached and surged the equity waves to new highs, where do we sail from here?  

The new policy of unlimited quantitative easing is an experiment. If those theorists of insufficient aggregate demand are right, then the problem will soon be solved, and we will return to strong long-term organic growth, low unemployment and prosperity. I would be overjoyed at such a prospect, and would gladly admit that I was wrong in my claim that depressed aggregate demand has merely been a symptom and not a cause. On the other hand, if economies remain depressed, or quickly return to elevated unemployment and weak growth, or if the new policy has severe adverse side effects, it is a signal that those who proposed this experiment were wrong.

What is it that makes Keynesians so insanely self destructive?  Is it their mindless blind faith in the power of government?  Their unfortunate ignorance of the mechanics of monetary stimulus?  Their pompous self-righteousness derived from years of intellectual idiocy?  Actually, I suspect all of these factors play a role.  Needless to say, many of them truly believe that the strategy of fiat injection is viable, even though years of application have proven absolutely fruitless.  Anyone with any sense would begin to question what kind of madness it takes to pursue or champion the mindset of the private Federal Reserve bank… Quantitative easing has shown itself to be impotent in the improvement of America’s economic situation.  Despite four years of free reign in central banking, employment remains dismal in the U.S., the housing market continues its freefall, and, our national debt swirls like a vortex at the heart of the Bermuda Triangle.  Despite this abject failure of Keynesian theory, the Federal Reserve is attempting once again to convince you, the happy-go-lucky American citizen, that somehow, this time around, everything will be “different”.

Liar, Liar, Fed on Fire!!! Why no one else has called this thinly vieled bailout out is truly beyond me. Well, the retail and consumer discretionary sector will feel the heat if everyone believes Bernanke and I end up being right... again!

The Fed panicked. It is extraordinary that the Fed would announce an open-ended "we'll print as much as it takes, as long as it takes" policy. Chairman Bernanke is sending a signal to the markets and to government that the economy is bad and getting worse and that the Fed will do its part as everyone expects them to do. This is a clear signal to the markets and the world that the Fed stands for monetary inflation. They don't know what else to do. Here is the fallout.

Welcome to the Fed’s Weekend at Bernie’s ...

Federal Chairman Ben Bernanke made a strong case for more easing in his Jackson Hole speech last month so the outlook is positive. IF the Fed declines additional easing then it could send the markets into a tailspin especially due to the fact that the EU just got the “green-light” on the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) from the German courts.