Money and Finance
- The Absolute Return Letter - July 2013: Much Ado About Nothing
The growing presence of political incompetence is beginning to annoy the world’s central bankers. The Bank for International Settlements (the central bank of central banks) has sharpened its knives, but BIS cannot have it both ways. Simultaneous de-leveraging...
- Which Way For Bonds? Mapping A Path Forward - By Bill Gross
Q: Can you explain what is happening in markets now? Gross: In 1980, the Federal Reserve, led by Paul Volcker, tightened the quantitative noose to tame double-digit inflation, fueling an unprecedented tailwind for bond prices. Thirty years later...
- 2010 Repost: Wsj Op-ed: Open Letter To Ben Bernanke
As talk of QE3 remains in the headlines, I thought it might be a good time to review this Op-Ed, which was signed by Seth Klarman, Jim Grant, Jim Chanos and Niall Ferguson, among others, in November of 2010. The following is the text of an open letter...
- Wsj Op-ed: Open Letter To Ben Bernanke
Signed by Seth Klarman, Jim Grant, Jim Chanos and Niall Ferguson, among others: The following is the text of an open letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke signed by several economists, along with investors and political strategists, most of...
- The Absolute Return Letter - November 2010: Four Rather Sick Patients
For a world which continues to be on life support – in the form of unsustainably large fiscal stimulus and near zero interest rates – policy makers are fast running out of options. One of the options left is quantitative easing and rumours are rife...
Money and Finance
Hoisington Q3 2013 Letter
The Fed’s capabilities to engineer changes in economic growth and inflation are asymmetric. It has been historically documented that central bank tools are well suited to fight excess demand and rampant inflation. The Fed showed great resolve in containing the fast price increases in the aftermath of World Wars I and II and the Korean War. Later, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, rampant inflation was brought under control by a determined and persistent Federal Reserve.
However, when an economy is excessively over-indebted and disinflationary factors have forced central banks to make overnight interest rates as close to zero as possible, central bank policy has repeatedly proved powerless to further move inflation or growth metrics. The periods between 1927 and 1939 in the U.S. (and elsewhere) and from 1989 to the present in Japan are clear examples of the impotence of central bank policy actions during periods of over-indebtedness.
Four considerations suggest the Fed will continue to be unsuccessful in engineering stronger growth and higher inflation with their continuation of the current program of Large Scale Asset Purchases (LSAP). First, the Fed’s forecasts have consistently been overly optimistic, indicating that their knowledge of how LSAP operates is flawed. LSAP obviously is not working in the way they had hoped, and they are unable to make needed course corrections. Second, debt levels in the U.S. are so excessive that monetary policy’s traditional transmission mechanism is defunct. Third, recent scholarly studies, all employing different rigorous analytical methods, indicate LSAP is ineffective.Fourth, declining velocity deprives the Fed of the ability to have a measurable influence on aggregate economic activity and is an alternative way of confirming the validity of the aforementioned academic studies.
- The Absolute Return Letter - July 2013: Much Ado About Nothing
The growing presence of political incompetence is beginning to annoy the world’s central bankers. The Bank for International Settlements (the central bank of central banks) has sharpened its knives, but BIS cannot have it both ways. Simultaneous de-leveraging...
- Which Way For Bonds? Mapping A Path Forward - By Bill Gross
Q: Can you explain what is happening in markets now? Gross: In 1980, the Federal Reserve, led by Paul Volcker, tightened the quantitative noose to tame double-digit inflation, fueling an unprecedented tailwind for bond prices. Thirty years later...
- 2010 Repost: Wsj Op-ed: Open Letter To Ben Bernanke
As talk of QE3 remains in the headlines, I thought it might be a good time to review this Op-Ed, which was signed by Seth Klarman, Jim Grant, Jim Chanos and Niall Ferguson, among others, in November of 2010. The following is the text of an open letter...
- Wsj Op-ed: Open Letter To Ben Bernanke
Signed by Seth Klarman, Jim Grant, Jim Chanos and Niall Ferguson, among others: The following is the text of an open letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke signed by several economists, along with investors and political strategists, most of...
- The Absolute Return Letter - November 2010: Four Rather Sick Patients
For a world which continues to be on life support – in the form of unsustainably large fiscal stimulus and near zero interest rates – policy makers are fast running out of options. One of the options left is quantitative easing and rumours are rife...