November 10, 2010

The Fed has not asked the market what it is going to use the QE for.

I do not feel like classifying among the hysterics only because I do not see a real business plan behind the Fed´s new QE by which it is throwing sort of bad money after sort of bad money…. and frankly I do not give much for a business plan which according to Martin Wolf should include as a pillar the commitment of above target inflation so as to “shift inflation expectations upward”, “The Fed is right to turn on the tap” November 10.

Wolf describes “the essence of the contemporary monetary system [to be the] creation of money, out of nothing, by private banks’ often foolish lending” and then asks why a central cannot do that, Well the only reasonable answer to that is simply that no one should do foolish lending, since foolish lending cannot be anything but foolish no matter who does it. Why the all the fuss with Citi’s Chuck Prince not being able to stop dancing, if now all it was about was to allow the Fed to exhaust itself on the dance-floor. The first question all bankers are taught to ask when lending is, “what are you going to use that money for?”, and we have yet heard the Fed asking the markets that. And what if the markets answer... "to invest it abroad"?

Personally while bank regulators, Fed included, insist on discriminating against small businesses and entrepreneurs forcing banks to have much higher capital requirements when lending to these as compared to when lending to triple-A-ex-ante-rated clients and governments I believe the Fed has not earned it right to mambo or tango with our money.

Ps. By the way, is there something like becoming hysterically anti-hysterical?