In a recent Bloomberg interview, James Grant, editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, offered his assessment of Greenspan’s performance as Federal Reserve Chairman.
Grant on how he would grade Alan Greenspan:
“Here’s the book on Alan Greenspan. He thinks what everyone else thinks, but one fiscal quarter later. He has the lamentable knack, or lamentable tendency or personality trait of needing to be liked, which is not the best thing to have when you’re chairman of the Federal Reserve board.”
“So we saw him bullish on technology in March of 2000. We saw him ever so unhelpfully urge the American homeowner to consider adjustable rate mortgages at the very bottom of the interest rate cycle in the mid-aughts. He is a front-running momentum kind of guy and Wall Street’s full of them. He is just a guy in a business suit. That’s Alan Greenspan.”
Why Grant is a skeptic of Greenspan:
“Here’s the thing about Greenspan. The first — the second sentence of his prepared testimony he comes out against central planning, an audacious stance to take in front of this commission. He is against the Berlin Wall; he was glad it fell — it exposed the hopeless flaws of central planning. He is in the business of central planning. He, when he was Fed chairman, fixed an interest rate. And the interest rate he fixed did terrific damage from time to time because he told us how he would fix it and for how long.”
“Wall Street is nothing if not observant. And hearing him tell you that the rates will be low for a considerable period, people did what you would expect them to do which is to tee off. And that was the origin of this terrific debt bubble, the shrapnel of which we are paying for to this day and will continue to pay for.”
Jim Grant has been a well respected voice of reason for a very long time – he publishes Grant’s Interest Rate Observer and from the "About Us" page you can get an idea from where he is coming from. Grant’s Interest Rate Observer is an independent, value-oriented and contrary-minded journal of the financial markets. We publish 24 times a year. Our mission is to identify investment opportunities in a range of markets at both extremes of valuation, high and low alike. Without bragging, we like to think that we are the financial-information medium that least resembles CNBC.
Some might consider his type a bear; I call them realists… he has been an opponent of the policies of the (now rogue) Federal Reserve for a long time. Below is a CNBC interview from this morning – again, one must ask why the most powerful institution in the world can be run without any oversight. On the other hand, the scary thought is Congress might one day provide oversight… I don’t know which evil to fear more. 8 Minute Video of sense.
The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet is so out of whack that the central bank would be shut down if subjected to a conventional audit, Jim Grant, editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, told CNBC.
With $45 billion in capital and $2.1 trillion in assets, the central bank would not withstand the scrutiny normally afforded other institutions, Grant said in a live interview.
"If the Fed examiners were set upon the Fed’s own documents—unlabeled documents—to pass judgment on the Fed’s capacity to survive the difficulties it faces in credit, it would shut this institution down," he said. "The Fed is undercapitalized in a way that Citicorp is undercapitalized."
"If the Fed examiners were set upon the Fed’s own documents—unlabeled documents—to pass judgment on the Fed’s capacity to survive the difficulties it faces in credit, it would shut this institution down."
"The Fed is undercapitalized in the same way that Citicorp is undercapitalized."
"I think zero is the wrong rate for almost any economy."
"So great is the slack in the economy that it will be years before there is anything like a murmur from the inflation front."
"15 out of 16 primary government bond dealers are in agreement that the Fed will not move before the year end."
"There are no bad bonds, just bad prices. Treasuries at 2% were a toxic asset."
"Citibank is a rogue bank."
In the 1940s, the Fed adopted pegging operations to protect the financial system against rising interest rates and to ensure the smooth financing of the war effort. In effect, the Fed became part of the Treasury’s debt management team; as the budget deficit hit 25% of GDP in WW2, it capped 1Y notes at 87.5bps and 30Y bonds at 2.5%. From the massive bond holdings of its domestic banks to its exploding public debt, Japan today faces a situation very similar to the US in the 1940s. With the market becoming dysfunctional as the BoJ’s massive buying operations drain the pool of available bonds, the BoJ’s overriding presence in the market each day has increasingly made the JGB...
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High Yield ETFs JNK & HYG have formed bearish rising wedges. Two-thirds of the time, prices end up lower in the future after forming this type of pattern. The support lines of the rising wedges are being tested very hard and appear to be giving way right now.
Bernanke managed to shoot global markets in the head the day before yesterday, and then, as has become typical when investors throw brickbats at what the Fed has said, various mouthpieces go about talking the markets back up (this case, in the form of San Francisco Fed president John Williams pointing out that the central bank could ease off or reverse its QE exit if the economy faltered).
I welcome readers telling me I’ve missed something, but looking at the Fed’s problem from 50,000 feet, it appears that the the monetary authority appears to have set boundary conditions for its QE exit that it can’t meet.
While the S&P 500 has had quite a year already the Nikkei has been the story of the globe as they are performing acts of central banking that even put the U.S. Fed to shame. And Japan's central bank can buy ETFs and REITs directly per their charter versus the U.S. bank. Combined with a yen in free fall it's been a heck of a move for the Nikkei since last November. I noted last week we were seeing extremely rare weekly and monthly type overbought readings on bo...
Few stocks have attracted more news over the last six months than nutritional supplement maker Herbalife (NYSE: HLF).
Even casual market observers are aware of the circumstances surrounding the the initial bout of extreme volatility in the name back in December 2012. The shares went into free-fall at the end of the year after hedge fund manager Bill Ackman revealed in typical sanctimonious fashion that his firm Pershing Square Capital Management was short around $1 billion worth of the stock.
Amid much pomp and circumstance, Ackman laid out his short thesis at a New York investment conference and...
HD - Home Depot – Shares in the home improvement retailer are trading lower on Thursday, off the lowest levels of the session but still down 1.25% at $78.69 as of 11:50 a.m. ET, amid a down day for U.S. stocks. Trading traffic in newly issued weekly options on Home Depot suggests some traders are taking advantage of the dip today and positioning for shares in the name to resume hitting record highs next week. The stock yesterday rallied as much as 3.6% to touch an all-time high of $81.56 after the company reported better-than-expected first...
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The market went through some gyrations on Wednesday in reaction to Fed Chairman Bernanke’s testimony before the Joint Economic Committee. He first defended continued quant easing by warning, “A premature tightening of monetary policy could lead interest rates to rise temporarily but also would carry a substantial risk of slowing or ending the economic recovery.” Stocks dutifully rallied and all major indexes hit new intraday highs.
But alas, consensus is apparently not a given over the longer term. The minutes hinted that a tapering off could start sooner, “A number of participants expressed willingness to adjust the flow of purchases downward as early as the June meeting if the economic information received by that time showed evidence of sufficiently strong and sustained growth.” So …...
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By Craigzooka
I am going to share with you how I manage my IRA and the power of reducing your cost basis. My goal each year is a 20% return in my IRA. Sometimes I make it and sometimes I don't, but I believe that all of my success is due to reducing my cost basis. To illustrate the power of reducing your cost basis here are some trades we did last year. These trades are taken from an educational portfolio we ran in a paper-trading account for a little more than a year.
We bought RIG on 5/15/2012 for $44.13, sold it on 1/18/2013 for $46 but booked a profit of $1,154.
We bought MT on 1/4/2012 for $19.24, sold it on 12/21/2012 for $15 but booked a profit of $454.
We bought CHK on 1/27/2012 for $21.93, sold it on 10/19/2012 for $18 b...
Stock market posts another record setting week, but the big news came after Friday’s close.
Courtesy of NASA
The stock market put on another record setting show with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) closing at a record high 15,118 and the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) closing at 1633.70, another all time closing high.
For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) gained 1%, the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) climbed 1.2%, the Nasdaq Composite (NYSEARCA:...
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Well, well, well....it is good to know that there are others in the scientific arena who believed that YMI Bioscience's data (cough - Gilead) is a better drug than Incyte's Jakafi. Now, the definitive data are still unknown, but there was enough evidence from a Phase 2 trial to take a small risk for a huge reward. So, let's forget about Apple (AAPL), and do nothing but biotechs from now until Congress passes universal health care coverage for prescriptions....and drive the prices down so that research and development is no longer feasible to conduct in the US. Even Seattle Genetics (SGEN) has been on a tear as of late...
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(
