Jim Grant on Wealth Track

[osoab]

Excellent interview. I don't think one member on this forum would disagree with anything he says. I caught this over at ZeroHedge a few days ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dexHf5LdFgA

ZH just posted another article by Grant. This is his site. http://www.grantspub.com/ It looks like you have to buy something to read it. 70 bucks an issue. 1 year subscription is 910 FRN's. Ouch. :o >:(

Jim Grant Explains Why QE3 Is Coming (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/jim-grant-explains-why-qe3-coming)


Once again we are reminded why we like Jim Grant so much. From his latest Grant's Interest Rate Observer (which, trust us, is worth the subscription): "Almost 30% of the respondents to a poll conducted by UBS a few weeks back said they anticipate a third round of so-called quantitative easing... We count ourselves among the expectant 30%. To its congressional directed dual mandate the Bernanke Fed has unilaterally added a third. It has undertaken to make the markets rise. The chairman himself has more than once taken credit for the post-2008 bull market (on one such occasion in January, he reminded the CNBC audience how far the Russell 2000 had come under Fed ministrations). Could he therefore stand idly by in the face of a new bear market. Byron Wien, vice chairman of Blackstone Advisory Services, went on record the other day predicting a summer swoon in stocks following the scheduled winding down of QE2 in June. Let us say that Wien is right, and that, furthermore, drooping stocks are accompanied by sagging house prices and a weakening labor market. Bernanke was hard put to explain why he chose to let Lehman go while acting to save Bear Stearns. He would be harder put to explain why he chose to implement QE1 and QE2 but, in another hour of need, refused to launch QE3." And "Sooner or later, gravity turns speculative markets into investment markets. When this transformation occurs, the Fed will confront the need to bail out the innocents it had previously bailed in. Hence, QE3." And therein lies the rub. Simple, sweet, and, for the US dollar, suicidal.

[osoab]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eceUXYtdw8Q

[osoab]

Jim Grant on Bennie's speech today. I really like the dude in the bow tie.

Jim Grant Says All The Things That Ben Bernanke Avoided During His Press Conference, And Much More (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/jim-grant-says-all-things-ben-bernanke-avoided-during-his-press-conference-and-much-more)


Considering the only soundbite that was relevant from Ben Bernanke's 45 minute 2:15pm oratory was that "we don't have a precise read on why this slower pace of growth is persisting" America, and the entire civilized world, could have done just as well without it. Instead, we should have listened to Jim Grant, who once again correctly identifies all the things that the Fed chairman should have said (Bernanke certainly focused on the other side): "What we are not going to get is a concession that QE2 has achieved its unintended consequences, namely a lower dollar exchange rate, a higher gold price meaning weaker confidence in the dollar, slower economic growth and a higher measured rate of inflation. Those are some of the things that have come out of this experiment and let us call it by its name money printing...How do we know that this 30% gain in the Russell and 20% gain in Dow since the Chairman spoke in August, how are we to know these are real values. The prices are up, but are people who are buying these stocks on the back of the Fed, are they doing something wise from an investment point of view, and if the market is too high because the Fed has put it there, what does the Fed do when the market comes down, which opens the fate for QE3." And on a far more important topic which we will soon hear much more of, namely extensive US money market exposure in Europe, which will be completely locked up if, pardon, when there is a major liquidity run in Europe snagging American money market liquidity: "The money market mutual funds have nothing to do in this country cause rates are zero, go to Europe. So money market mutual funds investors are taking quite ponderable risks for about a 0% return, these funds are yielding a few basis points only. But to get those few basis point, these funds are crossing the Atlantic right smack dab in the middle of the European banking crisis. This is a prime example of the unintended consequences of this massive intervention by our central bank." Indeed, this is just one simple example of the massive clusterfuck, which certainly does not need Greece's $5 billion notional in CDS, to make the Lehman liquidity freeze seems like a little melting ice cube. And since everyone now agrees that Greece will default, and it is only a matter of time, all the trillions in dollars in the shadow and open banking systems that we have been exposing for years now, will suddenly be locked up in the forms of 1 and 0 in computers belonging to institutions that are no longer operational. And most unfortunately, the man in charge of it all, has a quivering lip problem.
Much more in the entire must watch interview with Bloomberg's Margaret Brennan:


vid at link

or at bloomberg http://www.bloomberg.com/video/71274340/

[osoab]

Jim Grant On Gold-Backed Bonds And 'The Hope Leeches' (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/jim-grant-gold-backed-bonds-and-hope-leeches)



Radio player @ the link.


Jim Grant gave his wife a gold sovereign for V-day.