12/28/10 Los Perros, Nicaragua – This week, between Christmas and New Years, is always slow. Traders have mostly taken the week off. The Dow was down a little yesterday. Gold was up a little. Nothing to get excited about.
Here’s a guy who should have taken off too. Bloomberg reports:
“QE2 has had unforeseen benefits in raising risk appetites and improving confidence across the board,” said Mark MacQueen, a partner at Austin, Texas-based Sage Advisory Services, which oversees $9.5 billion.
What? Unforeseen benefits? Those are exactly the flimflam benefits the Fed promised. Put more money in the system; hope it causes “animal spirits” to pick up.
How do increased “risk appetites” really help anything? The US economy gorged itself on risk during the bubble years. The Fed should be helping it stay on a diet; not waving chocolate éclairs in front of the slob’s nose.
But we’re already beginning to apply our New Year’s Resolution for 2011. We’re going to improve ourself. We’re not going to be so critical.
Yeah…more risk appetite. Sure. Why not? Just what we need, right? We need speculators to make bigger bets. We need homeowners to take chances again – buy a new house…flip one or two of them… Who knows; maybe they’ll go up. And we need consumers to buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have.
Yeah…that’s just what we need – more credit-fueled risk-taking. Thanks for bringing that to our attention, Mr. MacQueen.
Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning
Bill Bonner
Since founding Agora Inc. in 1979, Bill Bonner has found success and garnered camaraderie in numerous communities and industries. A man of many talents, his entrepreneurial savvy, unique writings, philanthropic undertakings, and preservationist activities have all been recognized and awarded by some of America's most respected authorities. Along with Addison Wiggin, his friend and colleague, Bill has written two New York Times best-selling books, Financial Reckoning Day and Empire of Debt. Both works have been critically acclaimed internationally. With political journalist Lila Rajiva, he wrote his third New York Times best-selling book, Mobs, Messiahs and Markets, which offers concrete advice on how to avoid the public spectacle of modern finance. Since 1999, Bill has been a daily contributor and the driving force behind The Daily Reckoning. Dice Have No Memory: Big Bets & Bad Economics from Paris to the Pampas, the newest book from Bill Bonner, is the definitive compendium of Bill’s daily reckonings from more than a decade: 1999-2010.
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Who would give this guy 9.5 billion to manage? About the only one I can think of would be the Fed, anyone else would have to be nuts. Perhaps Bernanke can cut me a check for a few tens of billions and in return I too will spout off about the benefits of QE-II.
The speculators who are in control of the markets are like termites that require wood to eat and thrive on. Here the wood is the savings of the rest of the population and the money traders use for trading the markets. The simple way to destroy the speculators is to keep money out of their reach.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article24581.html
I guess this guy is pretty smug right now.
As he “oversees” $9.5 billion and he notes, as a professional overseer, that the stock market goes up just about every day since August, how could he not think that this QE stuff is wonderful? Hey, it sure makes
HIM seem like a true professional.
now the year is definitely coming to an end … no new DR this morning ! …
well, all the best to you, Bill, and your family for the coming year … thanks for your insights …