By John Mauldin
September 22, 2012
www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/...ded-consequences
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...."What if they gave a QE party and no one came?" Maybe this QE will be different and the party will go as planned. But there is a very large and real risk that the party will turn out to be one of those that you try to escape as soon as possible. You know, the kind where the people at the party are not fun, the food is bad, and the wine is awful. The kind where the air conditioning doesn't work in summer. Time to slip out the back, Jack.
But in one real sense, QE Infinity going to put even more pressure on Congress to do something after the elections. We are going to find out the real limits to monetary policy the hard way, I am afraid, and Congress will have to act, or things could get ugly.
I am concerned that we are going to have to deal with the unintended consequences of a monetary policy that has been and will continue to be too easy for too long. The last time out, that did not end well, and I am concerned that it won't this time, either. It will be sadly ironic if in the pursuit of higher employment the Fed creates the conditions for a recession or triggers a negative market reaction that forces them to scramble to pull back hard on the free money throttle.
But there is simply no way to know what will really happen when the Fed has to act to take back some of the liquidity it has provided. While the velocity of money is still trending down, at some point it is going to turn around. While that does not seem likely for the next few years, when it does happen, if the Fed has printed too much money, it will have to pull back sharply to check inflation.
It is a very dangerous game they are playing. ......