roman_mir's Journal: Bernanke votes for Obama

Federal Reserve came out with an open ended QE, the sequence number does not matter (it's officially 3, but really it's much more than that, Federal Reserve has been buying up bonds and generally creating fake money and propping up the financial sector for a very long time now).

Of-course the economy is as always the victim of this type of behaviour, the savers are further punished, anybody living off of fixed income is further punished, everybody living pay check to pay check is further punished, because all new money that the government creates either prevents deflation (which is a normal situation for a productive market) or it even forces the prices to increase (which is what the majority of people think of when they think about inflation).

Of-course rising prices are not a meaningful measure of economy at all, actually falling prices is a better measure, because it means there is more competition, there are more efficiencies, better technology, more automation, all of which allows the businesses (corporation and other types of businesses) to lower their prices to compete for the customer base. That was a normal course of events for USA before the Federal Reserve was set up, almost 100 years ago. Prices were falling and the money was growing in value.

The increase in prices in the markets will be blamed by the politicians upon the speculators, but of-course speculators are not to blame for the increase of prices, as far as the market is concerned, the speculators have really under-appreciated real assets. The prices of commodities and equities are being held down relative to the promise of open-ended Federal Reserve action. When somebody says: gold is too expensive at 1700 per ounce, they don't realise that they are measuring the value of gold is a currency that has no value at all given the promise of the Federal Reserve and all other central banks in the world to buy up debt with fake money. This is monetisation of debt, this is the reason for the equity prices going up as well as commodity prices.

Equity prices are prices of companies in the market and since the Fed promises to wipe out debt with inflation, the companies also 'gain' from this action, because they are holders of debt as well. However the real rise in equity prices is simply a function of the open-ended fiat currency supply in the market.

This action does show that the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke is voting for Obama in these coming elections. Obviously Bernanke doesn't want to go back to a teaching position some place nowhere in Princeton, he wants to stay in power, he enjoys it, and thus he is helping the sitting president (as every Fed chairman has done before) to get re-elected by providing a short term fix to the long term problem and thus making the long term problem much graver, the consequences of an open-ended monetary expansion is inflation and potential hyper inflation and destruction of the currency. For obvious reason a destroyed currency does not help the economy.

Most of the so called 'economists' that are really government mouth pieces, are calling for more of this type of action, some are even saying that the Fed is doing today what it should have done back in the thirties 'to prevent depression'. Of-course these are witch doctors, in the late twenties and all the way through the thirties (except a short period of time) and through the forties and so on, the Federal reserve has been in the market, propping up bond prices, forcing interest rates lower.

The politicians and 'economists' and various pundits are talking about the coming 'Fiscal Cliff' as if that is the actual problem that the USA economy is facing. It's not a problem, it's part of a solution, which will be avoided. They are all very conveniently forgetting that this so called 'Fiscal Cliff' situation was a response by the government promising to cut spending, a response to a rating agency promising not to lower the rating of the USA sovereign debt.

The real problem for USA is not cutting spending it's the opposite. The real problem for the US (and other countries) economy is to continue spending, to continue government programs that cannot be paid for, to continue printing currencies, to continue expanding government powers, to continue destroying savings, to continue trying to push interest rates down.

Of-course the bond market today has responded in a logical manner, surprisingly enough, given how it responded previously. The prices for bonds are falling, so the interest rates on bonds are going up. Eventually this process will become unstoppable, just like the resolve of the Fed and US government (and all other governments and central banks in the world) to destroy the value of their money.

The solution for the people is not to follow their governments off this real cliff, the fake money cliff, which ends up being the economic cliff. The solution is to avoid fiat currencies of the world altogether. In fact anything except for currencies and various debt instruments is a valid way to avoid inflation, some things are better than others (precious metals, other commodities, farming), some are not as good (various non-farming and non-mining and non-financial equities, properties), but these are completely the wrong way to go: currencies, government bonds, financial equities.

Obama is going to be re-elected, so people like this are going to continue setting the policies and for those who don't have much in terms of savings it is going to become a serious problem. Maybe investing in a small piece of farming land is not such a bad idea, for those who can't do it on their own, maybe it makes sense to stock up on various non-perishable goods. The prices are going up and will go up further, again, not because of any speculation or even bad weather and droughts, it's very specifically tied to the inflation that all the governments are involved in at this point.