Another View

A few days ago, I did a piece on why I think that QE3 is inevitable.  As an aside and not the point of this piece, there was a really bad error in that one.  I said;

"How long do you think we can sell $45 billion in bonds per day (the projected deficit for 2011 divided by 365 days)?"

There's decimal point missing: it's $4.5 billion per day.

Jeff Clark, who's a "real" stock market analyst and writer (as opposed to me) begs to differ.  He thinks Zimbabwe Ben is going to let the market suffer for a while.  His writing is nice and snarky, too.  Beating old Ben like a rented mule.

Poor Ben. Here's a man who believes his policies prevented a global depression. He saved the banking industry, kept the U.S. economy afloat, prevented unemployment from reaching record levels, and saved the earth from Martian invaders.

 

But he gets no credit for any of it.

 

Instead, he's lambasted in front of Congress, ridiculed in the newspapers, humiliated online, and de-friended from just about everybody's Facebook page. The man gets no respect.

 

My guess is he's anxious to give people a taste of what things would be like if his QE programs weren't around... at least for a little while.

 

No one appreciates the drug dealer until the agonizing moans of the withdrawing heroin addicts drown out the sound of the TV set. "Do whatever it takes to quiet them down!" people shout. "Just get things back to the way they used to be."

(See Junior Deputy Accountant for the actual Stop Bernanke bumper sticker. )

Is Clark right?   I still see red ink everywhere, and I still think that they'll do QE3 because they think it's the least awful alternative.  Ben may want to make us suffer for not worshipping him, but he'd end up hurting his banker buddies, and that probably won't happen.

They are, by definition, going to destroy the savings of any of us who have saved for retirement, "a rainy day", vacations, new homes, cars, or anything else we wanted to save for.  They are, by definition, going to make a mockery of anyone who bought US treasuries (bonds).  Remember when China told us they were concerned we wouldn't honor our debt commitments to them?  China was right.  But, you know, if you're going to make an omelet....