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- Monday, June 28, 2010, 1:15 PM RBS tells clients to prepare for 'monster' money-printing: As the recovery starts to stall, bond strategists dust off Ben Bernanke's freshman Fed speech, which inlcudes this gem: "The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press, that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost."
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We also have seen little effect from past printing in the real economy thus the Fed may lean on the private sector & government to use the current cash towards business investment to earn money vs. rely on the Fed forever.
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The Federal Reserve should be wary of the short-term allure of further asset purchases, said Fed governor Kevin Warsh on Monday.
saying he would need to be convinced the benefits of the purchases would outweigh the costs of "erosion of market functioning, perceptions of monetizing indebtedness, crowding-out of private buyers, or loss of central bank credibility."
Clearly we are nearing the end of the "Phoney War", that phase of the global crisis when it seemed as if governments could conjure away the Great Debt. The trauma has merely been displaced from banks, auto makers, and homeowners onto the taxpayer, lifting public debt in the OECD bloc from 70pc of GDP to 100pc by next year. As the Bank for International Settlements warns, sovereign debt crises are nearing "boiling point" in half the world economy.
Fiscal largesse had its place last year. It arrested the downward spiral at a crucial moment, but that moment has passed. There is a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. The Krugman doctrine of perma-deficits is ruinous - and has in fact ruined Japan. The only plausible escape route for the West is a decade of fiscal austerity offset by helicopter drops of printed money, for as long as it takes.