Der USA Bären-Thread

Bernanke "plant ein Desaster", meinen auch Buffett und andere US-Investmentgrößen....

Paul B. Farrell

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Warning, Fed Chairman Ben  Bernanke’s foolish gamble to stimulate the economy will backfire,  triggering a new double-dip recession. Bernanke is “medding” too much in  the economy, say Marc Faber, Bill Gross, Jeremy Grantham, Joseph  Stiglitz and others.

The Fed is making the same kind of mistakes Japan made that resulted in  its 20-year recession. The Washington Post says Larry Mayer, a former  Fed governor, estimates that to work it would take QE2 bond purchases of  “more than $5 trillion …10 times what analysts are expecting.”    

“I’m ultrabearish on everything, but I believe you’ll be better off  owning shares than government bonds,” said Hong Kong economist Marc  Faber at a recent forum in Seoul. He sees a repeat of dot-com-bubble  insanity today. Faber publishes the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report.

And Warren Buffett agrees, warning that anyone buying bonds now is “making a mistake.” Don’t buy. Sell.(Damit redet Buffett freilich zugleich sein "Inflationierungs-Buch" - A.L.)

Here’s how Bloomberg News reported Faber’s warning: “Global markets are  heading for an ‘important turning point’ with interest rates beginning  to rise within about three months and the U.S. dollar gaining strength …  Instead of interest rates going down, they could start to go up.  Instead of the dollar being weak, it could strengthen.”  

Is Faber reliable? You bet: One week before Black Monday 1987 Faber  warned investors to dump stocks. Then in early 2006 he warned of a  “correction coming.” Again in mid-2007 Faber said U.S. stocks were  “entering a bear market.” After that, Wall Street lost over half of  America’s retirement money in its subprime disaster … and Wall Street’s  about to do it again. So when Faber says sell bonds, buy stocks, please  listen.

After Bernanke’s bond bubble pops, a Japan-style 20-year recession?

Lately Bernanke’s acting like an egomaniacal politician, a savior trying  to manipulate the economy in the wake of the failures of Congress,  Obama and the GOP Tea Party of No-No to get results. That’s not the  Fed’s job, and still Bernanke’s pulling out all the stops, repurchasing  government bonds, printing too much money, flooding the currency  markets.   Fed zombies hungry for quantitative easing.

The New York Times warns that the Fed is making bad decisions like the  ones that led to Japan’s 20-year recession. No wonder savvy investors  are getting nervous, worried Bernanke’s pushing us the wrong way, making  matters worse, throwing jet fuel on fears of another credit bubble/bust  cycle worse than the 2008 meltdown.

All so predictable: This has been building since said he wanted to buy  back more bonds. The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Zweig warned earlier  this month of a “Bond Bubble,” noting that while many are blaming “small  investors for taking big bets,” the truths is, “it isn’t Joe Schmoe,  it’s Uncle Sam.”    

Nobel economist Stiglitz predicts it will fail: “Easy money won’t work … the Fed risks fueling a destructive bubble.”  

It’s an old game: Since the 2008 meltdown the Fed has been Wall Street’s  secret conspirator, stealing from Main Street (by keeping money market  interest rates low) and giving that cheap money to a failing Wall Street  (so their quant-speculators can keep gambling on derivatives, to  justify paying themselves mega-bonuses).

Warning, this is all part of the Fed’s ongoing Ponzi scheme to bail Wall  Street out of the destructive subprime decisions that sank the economy  in 2008. Bernanke’s latest Ponzi scheme will soon backfire, this time  bringing down the economy again, further reducing the retirement savings  of America’s 95 million investors.

Obama’s ‘Bush III’ decisions created Tea Party house-cleaning

Before inauguration, president-elect Obama approved former Treasury  Secretary Henry Paulson’s toxic bailout plan. Soon after Obama appointed  Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, two old-style Wall Street insiders, to  his team.

Those staffing decisions were early warnings that “change” was little  more than campaign rhetoric. Instead of “change” Obama morphed into  “Bush III” and the past two years may be worse than if McCain won and  appointed Phil Gramm at Treasury.

But things did get worse: When Obama reappointed Bernanke, “Black Swan”  author Nassim Nicholas Taleb was “stunned” by Obama’s failure to  “change” the direction of America’s misguided monetary policies. I  called Bernanke’s reappointment “Obama’s biggest domestic policy blunder  … Obama’s black swan.”

Unfortunately Bernanke is just one of Obama’s many capitulations to the failed Reaganomics of the past generation.  

So here we are on Election Day stuck with the failures of the  Bush-Paulson team, aggravated by the failing of their replacements,  Obama, Summers, Geithner and Bernanke. Two failed teams that set the  stage for the GOP’s lethal return and the creation of the Tea Party, a  new team high on hollow rhetoric with no interest in compromising.    

Warning, “gridlock” is the sole policy-making rule in Washington for the next two years.

And beyond: Because odds are Obama will be replaced by an  ultra-conservative president whose brain will be driven by the  discredited ideologies of Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand and Reaganomics … a  political scenario guaranteed to trigger another, bigger economic  meltdown that will push America into a long Japan-style recession.  

Pimco boss: Bernanke’s plan a self-destructive Ponzi scheme

Today we have two of America’s most respected investment managers angry  and worried about Bernanke’s irrational behavior: One of them is Bill  Gross, founder and director at bond powerhouse Pimco, managers of $1.2  trillion of assets. His warnings about Bernanke’s dangerous meddling  were shared by Jeremy Grantham GMO chief investment strategist, managers  of $95 billion in retirement assets.

The Fed’s plan to “buy government bonds, intending to lower interest  rates and stimulate demand won’t work, Gross and Grantham say in letters  to investors: They actually make things worse.”  

Gross says Bernanke’s plan is a “brazen Ponzi scheme.” Instead of a  rational plan to pay for “maturing debt with receipts from financial  sector creditors, the Fed” is acting as a speculator, a high-risk  gambler.“ The government will be its own investor, feeding its own Ponzi  machine.” Bernanke’s extreme “meddling” is a disaster waiting to happen.   QE2 a Ponzi scheme, says Pimco's Gross.

Grantham’s hostility toward Bernanke is oozing from in his Halloween  letter to investors. In “Night of the Living Fed,” he warns that  Bernanke’s plan is just a short-lived “adrenaline injection” that will  backfire: “If I were a benevolent dictator, I would strip the Fed of its  obligation to worry about the economy and ask it to limit its meddling  to attempting to manage inflation … force it to swear off manipulating  asset prices through artificially low rates and asymmetric promises of  help in tough times. ... It would be a better, simpler, and less  dangerous world.” Send in the vampires!

Don’t blame Bernanke … you are to blame … you voted for them

Gross’s outrage also oozed like the bloody bite of a vampire: “I call it  a Sammy scheme, in honor of Uncle Sam and the politicians (as well as  its citizens) who have brought us to this critical moment in time … It  is not a Bernanke scheme … It is a Sammy scheme. You and I and the  politicians that we elect every two years ... deserve all the blame.”

Yes, you and I are to blame, not “them” … we voted for Reagan, Clinton,  Bush, then Obama … we let them pick the Paulsons, Cheneys, Geithners and  Summers, addicts who believe in living high on borrowed money … we  created China to replace us as the world’s next superpower … we created  the Tea Party ... we are to blame for appointing a Supreme Court that’s  unleashed billions destroying democracy, from within … we are to blame  for an insatiable Wall Street that stole trillions from the Treasury in  2008 and keeps stealing in Wall Street’s derivatives casino ... and in  these midterm elections, we’ll vote to make things even worse … then  we’ll do it again in 2012.

Yes, we will … you and me … we will keep doing it … setting up the  mother-of-all-meltdowns. And like all addicts, we just don’t get it,  can’t stop our self-destructive behavior

Gross is right, don’t blame “them.” We’re to blame for what’s happening …  we are responsible … you and me, we’re doing this to ourselves … we are  killing the golden goose.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/story/print?guid=52B6F79A-E5DE-11DF-ABF6-002128040CF6

dass die Griechen jetzt durch die Sparpakete leiden, OHNE im Gegenzug mit einer erlösenden Pleite dafür "entlohnt" zu werden...

Genauer gesagt war es A. Evans-Pritchard im Telegraph (#  616) - zugegeben auch angelsächsische Presse "vom (un)feinsten".

 

MQ2853 kann man zu 0,15 Cent kaufen und zur US Börseneröffnung zu einem anderen Kurs verkaufen.

Permanent

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker said on Tuesday he did not expect "overpowering results" from any policy easing the central bank adopts this week to try to revive the U.S. economic recovery.

The Fed is widely expected to resume purchases of longer-term Treasuries to inject cash into the economy following a two-day meeting that ends on Wednesday.

Many analysts expect the Fed to announce a $500 billion buying programme over about six months.

"I don't look for any overpowering results of this action," Volcker, currently chairman of the Obama administration's Economic Recovery Board, said in Singapore as part of a dialogue on financial reform.

He said a fresh injection of Fed cash into the economy could create a risk of inflation longer term, but "I don't think it's beyond the capacity of a central bank to deal with that problem...but they're going to have to deal with it."

He was speaking at the National University of Singapore.

Volcker, who lent his name to a law cracking down on banks trading with their own money, urged U.S. regulators on Monday to spell out clear guidelines for the implementation of the Volcker Rule.

Volcker warned that bankers and financial services lobbyists will work hard to find loopholes and that regulators must clear up any potential ambiguities.

In a letter to the Financial Stability Oversight Council — a U.S. regulator in charge of monitoring risks in markets — Volcker also emphasized that implementation of the curbs on proprietary trading needs to start at the top.

"In consulting informally with senior bank officials, my sense that both 'the Tone at the Top' and effective procedures for control will be necessary for effective implementation," he said.

The Volcker rule is one of the more controversial parts of the financial reform signed into law this summer, and how it will be implemented is the subject of intense interest on Wall Street and in Washington.

"Clear and concise definitions, firmly worded prohibitions, and specificity in describing the permissible activities will be of prime importance for the regulators as they implement and enforce this law," the former Federal Reserve chairman wrote.

The Volcker rule restricts banks from trading with their own money, known as proprietary trading, and allows them to invest only up to 3 percent of their Tier 1 capital in hedge funds and private equity funds.

Several Wall Street firms have already taken steps in response to the law.

Goldman Sachs, for instance, is winding down its proprietary trading desk.

Prop Trading Disguises

Industry officials are skeptical the government can "draw the lines" in a way that does not have negative consequences, Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association Chief Executive Tim Ryan said in a speech last week.

But Volcker said regulators should be alert to banks trying to muddy those lines.

He said supervisors should look for unusually active trading "in the guise of market making" as potential attempts to circumvent the rule, "especially if further reflected in relatively wide fluctuations in trading results."

Volcker said it was important to define the term "market making" to ensure it is not used to "disguise essentially proprietary wagers".

He said "trading account," on the other hand, should be defined broadly so as not to limit supervisors' examinations.

"The ability of supervisors should be clear to undertake close scrutiny of trading books if there is reason to suspect significant proprietary activity may exist and be tolerated by management," he said.

The council, which is headed by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and includes the top financial regulatory agencies, was created to identify and respond to emerging threats in financial markets.

One of its initial tasks is to make recommendations on enforcement of the Volcker rule by mid-January.

Regulations are due nine months later and will take effect about a year afterward.

Democratic senators last week urged regulators to set up a two-tiered regulatory approach to ensure that the Volcker Rule is properly enforced.

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FAZIT: QE ist keine Zinspolitik, sondern die Fed (und deren Festplatte) wird zum Bailout-Notnagel für ganz Amerika! 

Ja, was hast du denn erwartet? Genau darum gehts doch!

Etwas fassungslos....

in den Hinterköpfen von Bernanke und Greenspan.

Ich bleibe bei der Kritik von "Das Kapital", wonach das Hochpumpen von Assets zur Belebung der Wirtschaft eine Schnapsidee ist. Pimcos Bill Gross bezeichnet es sogar als das unverschämteste Schneeballsystem der Wirtschaftsgeschichte.


Jim Cramer Blog
Bernanke's Bull Market
By Jim Cramer
Street.com Columnist
11/2/2010 11:02 AM EDT

Does Fed chief Ben Bernanke play the stock market? Does he, unlike our president, get that stocks are an important repository of savings, with trillions locked up in 401(k)s and IRAs? Does he get what moves stocks, and is he simply abetting it in some sort of brilliant-mad-scientist way?

I have been thinking long and hard about this idea during this run here, knowing that his predecessor understood the interplay between stocks and his policies and used them to great advantage. Anyone who remembers the October 1998 intervention by Greenspan -- calling an emergency rate cut meeting five days after suggesting rates should stay the same or climb -- recognizes that Greenspan was the master of moving stocks.

There is one difference, though -- this time it's life or death (was Murphy's Investment Law heraufbeschwört... A.L.). Greenspan wanted a healthy stock market. We didn't have one in 1998 because of Long Term Capital, the failed hedge fund that threatened to wipe out the financial system. Greenspan's move in 1998 gave us the most bountiful September and October in ages -- so big that they skew the post-election numbers and make them look better than they are. (We should be aware of that effect when we look at how well stocks have done after midterm elections.)

Bernanke, on the other hand, needs one of the pieces of the average consumer's wealth to go higher. He can't boost the worth of your house, no matter how hard he tries -- and he has tried. That's all caught up in the overbuild and the foreclosure mess. He can't give you a wage or create jobs -- again, although he has tried with rates so low that they should have triggered hiring, as they did around the globe. I think Washington's uncertainty and the consumer retrenchment have blunted his efforts.

But the stock market? What does the stock market want? It wants higher commodity prices, which he can give us by flooding the world with dollars that will then cause oil and copper to run, which he must know we key off of. We see that at work every day. How many people are taking their cue on the market from the iPath Copper (JJC) , the copper ETN. How many are taking their cue from the oil futures, which are, in part, about the refuge from the dollar? Bernanke knows that earnings are going to propel stocks higher, and he can control the overseas component by making us more competitive simply by debasing the dollar.

I know it seems attenuated but, trust me, unlike the media and the short-sellers, he knows for certain that people will buy the stocks of companies that are reporting better earnings. And he can keep those earnings going higher by keeping the dollar from going higher or even sending it lower vs. our major trading partners. Believe me when I say that Bernanke is looking at these earnings reports and recognizing the success of in allowing indebted companies to refinance, in allowing U.S. companies to make more money and take share internationally and by creating profits that can be dividended back to shareholders, making stocks all the more attractive.

Bernanke can also keep rates so low that CDs and savings accounts are just stupid places to keep your money. He can make it so Treasuries give you no returns whatsoever. He can do this even if we raise taxes on the wealthy and their savings, because he knows that the repository of wealth is in tax-free instruments for retirement and college, and therefore it is a pure-return issue -- not an issue about variable tax rates. He is encouraging dividend boosts because people get them tax-free and reinvest in them.

Why do this? Because the wealth effect is so important to his thinking. He knows that if people feel more confident -- something he can do by affecting the animal spirits of the market -- they will spend ... and we need spending so that we don't become Japan. (geht das auch bei schuldenfinanziertem Mehr-Konsum? - A.L.)

I have read so much lately about Japan and how we might be on a Japanese course. What those articles miss -- endlessly miss -- is that the Japanese citizenry was all in the stock market at the time of the crash. They were in at 38,000 on the now-9000 Nikkei, and it's been down there forever. People forget that we were at 5000 on the Dow when they were at 38,000 on the Nikkei. It was that crash, NOT the real estate crash, that really wiped out peoples' savings.

Bernanke knows this.

He knows that they key to stopping the Japanization is twofold: Get money off the sidelines into stocks, both growth and high-yield, and get the stock market up so people will spend. I ask all of the retail CEOs what drives sales, and they almost all come back and say the feeling that people's homes or their portfolios are going higher. Again, Bernanke has failed with the former (although I think he will ultimately succeed -- if you look at the aggregate numbers, home prices have been bumping along the bottom for a year now).

Wie fühlt es sich eigentlich in der Zeltstadt an, wenn die Rentenerwartung wegen steigender Aktien höher geworden ist??

He is not going to fail with the stock market.

Remember, Bernanke has studied the Dow more than you and I. He has studied the Nikkei more than you and I. He knows it. He knows the key lever, the lever that affects 90 million Americans: the stock market.

Bernanke wusste 2007 auch, dass "Subprime auf Subprime beschränkt bleiben wird" - nach 30 Jahren Depressions-Studien...

We are always quick to try to relate Bernanke's efforts to creating jobs and to stabilizing housing. I am telling you that we aren't thinking about this right. He's creating a put, he's telling you to buy the call, and he is creating wealth DESPITE OBAMA AND CONGRESS' seemingly best attempts to destroy it.

He is succeeding. He will stop the Japanization of this economy through his stock market efforts.

It is just a wonder that nobody's calling this the Bernanke Bull Market. Because that's precisely what it is.

P.S. Lieber Jim, bei DOW 5000 wirst Du abermals als Scharlatan dastehen. Ich werde es zu gegebener Zeit verlinken.