Hussman Weekly Market Comment: The Destructive Implications of the Bailout - Understanding Equilibrium
One of the features that has enabled the bureaucratic abuse of the public during the past year has been the frantic, if temporary, flight-to-safety by investors. The Treasury has issued an enormous volume of debt into the frightened hands of investors seeking default-free securities. This has allowed the Treasury to finance a massive and largely needless transfer of wealth to bank bondholders so easily over the short-term that the longer-term cost has been almost completely obscured. But by transferring wealth from those who did not finance reckless loans to those who did – providing monetary compensation without economic production – the bureaucrats at the Treasury and Federal Reserve have crowded out more than a trillion dollars of gross investment that would have otherwise have been made by responsible people in the coming years, shifted assets to the control of those who have proven themselves to be irresponsible destroyers of capital, and have planted the seeds of inflation that will cut short any emerging recovery.
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The bottom line is that the attempt to save bank bondholders from losses – to provide monetary compensation without economic production – is not sound economic policy but is instead a grand monetary experiment that has never been tried in the developed world except in
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The second fact is that as a result of more than a trillion dollars of new issuance of Treasury securities with relatively short durations, it is a tautology that there is a mountain of what is mistakenly viewed as “cash on the sidelines” invested in these securities. This mountain of “sideline cash” exists and must continue to exist as long as these additional government securities remain outstanding. It is an error to view outstanding debt securities as if they are “liquidity” poised to “flow back into the stock market.” The faith in that myth may very well spur some speculation in stocks, but it is a belief that is utterly detached from reality. The mountain of outstanding money market securities is the result of government debt issuance that must be held by somebody until those securities are retired. It is not spendable “liquidity” – it is a pile of IOUs printed up as evidence of money that has already been squandered. The analysts and financial news reporters who observe this enormous swamp of short-term money market securities, and talk about “cash on the sidelines” as if it is spendable in aggregate immediately reveal themselves to be unaware of the concept of equilibrium and of the nature of secondary markets (where there must be a buyer for every security sold, and a seller for every security bought).
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At present, it is not valid to say that the economy is weak because people are saving too much, because if gross savings were up, gross investment would also be up. One might say that the economy is weak because people are unsuccessfully attempting to save more, but it is far more accurate to say that the economy is weak because gross investment is collapsing despite a greater willingness of individuals to save. If we don't get those distinctions right, we'll end up with policies aimed at discouraging savings, which by their very nature will end up discouraging investment and will make the economy suffer interminably. Growth-oriented policies encourage new investment, and require an economy with the capacity to save in order to finance that investment. As long as we have a set of economic policies aimed at running massive government deficits at the same time individuals are encouraged not to save, we will risk driving this economy into the ground for a very, very long time.
- Hussman Weekly Market Comment: All Of The Above
Notes on fruitless monetary policy The prospect of continued tepid economic growth, if not recession, might be taken as evidence that the Fed will not taper its program of quantitative easing anytime soon. I actually think this inference is incorrect....
- Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Not In Kansas Anymore
Even in the event that quantitative easing is sufficient to override hostile market conditions in the near-term, it is worth noting that long-term outcomes are likely to be unaffected. We presently estimate a prospective 10-year total return on the S&P...
- Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Cash And Credit - Implications For The Financial Markets
So what is the effect of creating an extra $600 billion dollars of monetary base by having the Fed purchase $600 billion dollars of Treasury debt? The same thing that happens anytime any security is issued. Somebody has to hold it, and the returns on...
- Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Sequential Signals
On the subject of inflation, I should emphasize that while I expect inflation pressures to be contained for several years, the impact of massive deficit spending should not be disregarded simply because Japan, with an enormously high savings rate, was...
- Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Timothy Geithner Meets Vladimir Lenin
Last week, while Congress and the nation were preoccupied with the holidays, the Treasury made a Christmas eve announcement that it would be providing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac unlimited financial support for the next three years. The Treasury's...