Market chatter over green shoots and rising prices has fueled a bear market rally that won’t last, despite policymaker ‘noise.’

By Andy Xie, guest economist to Caijing and a board member of Rosetta Stone Advisors Ltd.

(Caijing Magazine) A combination of growth optimism and inflation fear has catapulted asset markets in the past few weeks. These two concerns should drive markets in different directions: Inflation fear, for example, should limit room for stimulus and prompt stock markets to retreat. But the investment camps expressing these opposite concerns go separate ways, each pumping up what seems believable. As a result, stock and commodity markets are mirroring the behavior seen during the giddy days of 2007.

Regardless of what investors or speculators say to justify their punting, the real driving force is the return of animal spirit. After living in fear for more than a year, they just couldn’t sit around any longer. So they decided to inch back. The resulting market appreciation emboldened more people. All sorts of theories began to surface to justify the market trend. Now that the rising trend has been around for three months globally and seven months in China, even the most timid have been unable to resist. They’re jumping in, in droves.

When the least informed and most credulous get into the market, the market is usually peaking. A rising economy and growing income produces more funds to fuel the market. But the global economy is now stuck with years of slow growth. Strong economic growth won’t follow the current stock market surge. This is a bear market rally. People who jump in now will lose big.

Over the past three weeks, the dollar dove while oil and treasury yields surged. These price movements exhibited typical symptoms of inflation fear, which is complicating policymaking around the world. The United States, in particular, could be bottled in. The federal government’s fiscal stimulus and liquidity pumping by the Federal Reserve are twin instruments for propping up the bursting U.S. economy. The fiscal deficit could top US$ 2 trillion (15 percent of GDP) in 2009. That would increase by one-third the total stock of federal government debt outstanding. Such a massive amount of federal debt paper needs a buoyant Treasury to absorb. If the Treasury market is a bear market, absorption becomes a huge problem.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner recently visited China to, among other things, persuade China to buy more Treasuries. According to a Brookings Institution estimate, China holds US$ 1.7 trillion in U.S. Treasuries and GSE paper (about 15 percent of the total stock). If China stops buying, it could plunge the Treasury market into deep bear territory. If China does not buy, the Treasury market will get worse. But China can’t prop up the market by buying.

In the past few years, purchases by central banks around the world have dominated demand for Treasuries. Central banks have been buying because their currencies are linked to the dollar. Hence, such demand is not price sensitive. The demand level is proportionate to the U.S. current account deficit, which determines the amount of dollars held by foreign central banks. The bigger the U.S. current account deficit, the greater the demand for Treasuries. This is why the Treasury yield was trending down during the bulging U.S. current account deficit period 2001-’08.

This dynamic in the Treasury market was changed by the bursting of the U.S. credit-cum-property bubble. It is decreasing U.S. consumption and the U.S. current account deficit. The 2009 deficit is probably under US$ 400 billion, halved from the peak. That means non-U.S. central banks have much less money to buy, while the supply is surging. It means central banks no longer determine Treasury pricing. American institutions and families are now marginal buyers. This switch in who determines price is shifting Treasury yields significantly higher.

The 10-year Treasury yield historically averages about 6 percent, with about 3.5 percent inflation and a real yield of 2.5 percent. This reflects the preferences of marginal buyers in the United States. Foreign central banks have pushed down the yield requirement substantially over the past seven years. If marginal buyers become American again, as I believe, Treasury yields will surge even higher from current levels. Future inflation will average more than 3.5 percent, I believe. Some policy thinkers in the United States believe the Fed should target inflation between 5 and 6 percent. The Treasury yield could rise to between 7.5 and 8.5 percent from the current 3.5 percent.

A massive supply of Treasuries would only worsen the market. The Federal Reserve has been trying to prop the Treasury market by buying more than US$ 300 billion – a purchase that’s backfired. Treasury investors are terrified by the inflation implication of the Fed action. It is equivalent to monetizing national debt. As the federal deficit will remain sky-high for years to come, the monetization could become much larger, which might lead to hyperinflation. This is why the Treasury yield has surged in the past three weeks.

One possible response is to finance the U.S. budget deficit with short-term financing. As the Fed controls short-term interest rates, such a strategy could avoid the pain of high interest rates. But this strategy could crash the dollar.

The dollar index-DXY has fallen 10 percent from the March level, even though the U.S. trade deficit has declined substantially. It reflects the market’s expectations that the Fed’s monetary policy will lead to inflation and a dollar crash. The cause of dollar weakness is the outflow of U.S. money, in my view. It is the primary cause of a surge in emerging markets and commodities. Most U.S. analysts think the dollar’s weakness is due to foreigners buying less of it. This is probably incorrect.

The dollar’s weakness can limit Fed policy options. It heightens inflation risks; a weak dollar imports inflation and, more importantly, increases inflation expectations, which can be self-fulfilling in today’s environment. The Fed has released and committed US$ 12 trillion (83 percent of GDP) for bailing out the financial system. This massive overhang in money supply could cause hyperinflation if not withdrawn in time. So far, the market is still giving the Fed the benefit of the doubt, believing it will indeed withdraw the money. Dollar weakness reflects the market’s wavering confidence in the Fed. If the wavering continues, it could lead to a dollar collapse and make inflation self-fulfilling.

The Fed may have to change its stance, even using token gestures, to assure the market it won’t release too much money. For example, signaling rate hikes would soothe the market. But the economy is still in terrible shape; unemployment may surpass 10 percent this year. Any suggestion of hiking interest rates would dampen growth expectations. The Fed is caught between a rock and a hard place.

Oil prices have doubled since a March low, even though global demand continues to decline. The driving forces again are expectations of inflation and a weaker dollar. As U.S.-based funds flee, some of the money has flowed into oil ETFs. This initially impacted futures prices, creating a huge gap between cash and futures prices. The gap increased inventory demand as investors tried to profit from the gap. Rising inventory demand caused spot prices to reach parity with futures prices. Rising oil prices, though, lead to inflation and depress growth. It is a stagflation factor. If the Fed doesn’t rein in weak dollar expectations, stagflation will arrive sooner than I previously expected.

Stagflation in the 1970s spawned the development of rational expectation theory in economics. Monetary stimulus works by fooling people into believing in money’s value while the central bank cheapens it. This perception gap stimulates the economy by fooling people into demanding more money than they should. Rational expectation theory clarified the underpinning for Keynesian liquidity theory. However, as they say, people can’t be fooled three times. Central banks that tried to use stimuli to solve structural problems in the ’70s saw their stimuli didn’t work. People saw through what they tried again and again, and began behaving accordingly, which translated monetary stimulus straight into inflation without stimulating economic growth.

Rational expectation theory discredited Keynesian theory and laid the foundation for Paul Volker’s tough love policy, which jagged up interest rates and triggered a recession. The recession convinced people that the central bank was serious about cooling inflation, so they adjusted their behavior accordingly. Inflation expectations fell sharply afterward. The credibility that Volker brought to the Fed was exploited by Alan Greenspan, who kept pumping money to solve economic problems. As I have argued before, special factors made Greenspan’s approach effective at the same. Its byproduct was asset bubbles. As the environment has changed, rational expectation theory will again exert force on the impact of monetary policy.

Movements in Treasury yields, oil and the dollar underscore the return of rational expectation. Policymakers have to take actions to dent the speed of its returning. Otherwise, the stimulus will lose traction everywhere, and the global economy will slump. I expect at least gestures from U.S. policymakers to assuage market concerns about rampant fiscal and monetary expansion. The noise would be to emphasize the “temporary” nature of the stimulus. The market will probably be fooled again. It will fully wake up only in 2010. The United States has no way out but to print money. As a rational country, it will do what it has to, regardless of its rhetoric. This is why I expect a second dip for the global economy in 2010.

While inflation expectations are causing some in the investor community to act, the rest are betting on strong economic recovery. Massive amounts of money have flowed into emerging markets, making it look like a runaway train. Many bystanders can’t take it any longer and are jumping in. Markets, after trending up for three months, are gapping up. Unfortunately for the last-minute bulls, current market movements suggest peaking. If you buy now, you have a 90 percent chance of losing money when you try to get out.

Contrary to all the market noise, there are no signs of a significant economic recovery. So-called green shoots in the global economy are mostly due to inventory cycles. Stimuli might juice up growth a bit in the second half 2009. Nothing, however, suggests a lasting recovery. Markets are trading on imagination.

The return of funds flowing into property is even more ridiculous.  A property burst usually lasts for more than three years. The current burst is larger than usual. The property market is likely to remain in bear territory for much longer. The bulls are talking about inflation as the bullish factor for property. Unfortunately, property prices have risen already and need to come down even as CPI rises. Then the two can reach parity.

While rational expectation is returning to part of the investment community, most investors are still trapped by institutional weakness, which makes them behave irrationally. The Greenspan era has nurtured a vast financial sector. All the people in this business need something to do. Since they invest other people’s money, they are biased toward bullish sentiment. Otherwise, if they say it’s all bad, their investors will take back the money, and they will lose their jobs. Governments know that, and create noise to give them excuses to be bullish.

This institutional weakness has been a catastrophe for people who trust investment professionals. In the past two decades, equity investors have done worse than those who held U.S. market bonds, and who lost big in Japan and emerging markets in general. It is astonishing that a value-destroying industry has lasted so long. The greater irony is that salaries in this industry have been two to three times above what’s paid in other sector. The key to its survival is volatility. As markets collapse and surge, possibilities for getting rich quickly are created. Unfortunately, most people don’t get out when markets are high, as they are now. They only take a ride.

Indeed, most people who invest in the stock market get poorer. Look at Japan, Korea and Taiwan: Even though their per capita incomes have risen enormously over the past three decades, investors in these stock markets lost money. Economic growth is a necessary but not sufficient condition for investors to make money in the stock market. Most countries, unfortunately, don’t possess the conditions for stock markets to reflect economic growth. The key is good corporate governance. It requires rule of law and good morality. Neither is apparent in most markets.

It’s a widely accepted notion that long term stock investors make money. Actually, this is not true. Most companies don’t last for more than 20 years. How can long term investment make money for you? The bankruptcy of General Motors should remind people that this notion is ridiculous. General Motors was a symbol of the U.S. economy, a century-old company that succumbed to bankruptcy. In the long run, all companies go bankrupt.

Property on the surface is better than the stock market. It is something physical that investors can touch. However, it doesn’t hold much value in the long run either. Look at Japan: Its property prices are lower than they were three decades ago. U.S. property prices will likely bottom below levels of 20 years ago, after adjusting for inflation.

China’s property market holds even less value in the long run. Chinese properties are sitting on land leased for 70 years for residential properties and 50 years for commercial properties. Their residual values are zero at the end. The hope for perpetual appreciation is a joke. If you accept zero value at the end of 70 years, the property value should only be the use value during those 70 years. The use value is fully reflected in rental yield. The current rental yield is half the mortgage interest rate. How could properties not be overvalued? The bulls want buyers to ignore rental yield and focus on appreciation. But appreciation in the long run isn’t possible. Depreciation is, as the end value is zero.

The world is setting up for a big crash, again. Since the last bubble burst, governments around the world have not been focusing on reforms. They are trying to pump a new bubble to solve existing problems. Before inflation appears, this strategy works. As inflation expectation rises, its effectiveness is threatened. When inflation appears in 2010, another crash will come.

If you are a speculator and confident you can get out before it crashes, this is your market. If you think this market is for real, you are making a mistake and should get out as soon as possible. If you lost money during your last three market entries, stay away from this one – as far as you can.

As the Republic’s eyes continue their glossy stare at the trillions (with a T) being poured into the financial bailout by this thing they mention on TV called “the FED,” we at The Barricade, with a fair-use tip-of-the-hat to Letterman submit a TOP TEN LIST: Top Ten Signs You Are Living in a Banana Republic.

Why only ten? While there are certainly other signs that our country is a banana republic worthy of comparison to other ignominious, run-down, despotic regimes where the plutocracy plunders the treasury for its own interest, the American audience has an attention span of less than 30 seconds, is addicted to Ritalin and Adderall, and therefore has a penchant for lazy summaries and cliff notes. Have we lost you yet? Without further adieu:

10. Zimbabwe–the archetypal banana republic and the home of the $100 Billion omelet–praises recent US FED action. So the FED–an institution of which most Americans have no true comprehension–prints over $1.2 trillion (with a T), and Zimbabwe declares, “Banks, including those in the USA and the UK, are now not just talking of, but also actually implementing flexible and pragmatic central bank support programmes where these are deemed necessary in their national interests. That is precisely the path that we began over 4 years ago in pursuit of our own national interest and we have not wavered on that critical path despite the untold misunderstanding, vilification and demonization we have endured from across the political divide.” Not the kind of endorsement we desire to restore confidence in our financial system.

9. The Department of Energy was run by a dentist and never by anyone who has ever worked in the energy industry. Do you ever wonder why we don’t have a national energy policy? Jimmy Carter named James Schlesinger—an apparatchik with no history in the energy sector—as the nation’s first Energy secretary. Ronald Reagan claimed he was going to dismantle the Department of Energy. His pick for Energy secretary was James B. Edwards, a man who understood drilling—he was a dentist. GHWB named former chief of naval operations Admiral James David Watkins as his energy secretary. Bill Clinton’s choices for the top Energy spot were: Hazel O’Leary, a lawyer; Federico Pena, another lawyer; and finally Bill Richardson, a politico and diplomat. George W. Bush’s choices to head the Department of Energy included Spencer Abraham, a lawyer who’d just lost his seat in the U.S. Senate, and Samuel Bodman, an engineer whose professional career was in investments and chemical production. Finally, Obama’s secretary of energy is Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. Chu has experience in energy-related issues, including his job as director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, but he’s never been in the energy business. “It’s the mythology of the Beltway,” one Houston energy analyst told me recently. “You are hopelessly compromised if you are anywhere close to the oil industry.” Ask yourself this simple question, would the Secretary of Treasury ever be nominated if he did NOT have extremely close ties to and was NOT captured by wall street? Which leads us directly to………

8. The Treasury Department is a wholly owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs and the other Wall Street mega-firms that are too big (or too connected) to fail. No explanation needed here. This is obvious to even the dopiest of Americans which leads us to …

7. The complicit failure of the national media to call out the Treasury Department’s clear conflicts of interest when it comes defrauding the Treasury at the expense of the US Taxpayer. Rachel Madow, Keith Olbermann, Daily Kos, Huffington Post, Fox News, anyone? Is there anybody out there? Just nod if you can hear me. This is easy and it makes the KBR/Haliburton/Iraqi war connection look complicated by comparison. When KBR was a wholly owned subsidiary of Haliburton and Cheney was the former CEO of Haliburton, we were confused with the KBR/Haliburton relationship and Cheney’s ties (people had a hard time making that second jump, not sure how we were confused, but we were). This one is so simple even my almost two year old niece understands it: Sec. of Treasury and former CEO of Goldman Sachs Hank Paulson has funneled billions to his old firm and his friends via DIRECT CHECKS and checks to AIG which is run by a former director of Goldman Sachs Edward Liddy. The money spent “bailing out” AIG will be shuffled over mostly to the CDS counterparites, GS et al. Liddy is only taking $1 of salary because he is such a public service saint. He has an acute financial stake in one of AIG’s counterparties—namely, his $3.2 million personal investment in Goldman Sachs stock. Mainstream Media, please call me and I will help you connect the dots…finance is not that complicated, just ask my adorable niece.

6. Only 53% of Americans feel capitalism is better than socialism. Two main points to note here: (1) We have never had free market capitalism in this country, because our government has always encouraged obfuscation and lack of transparency, by selective disclosure and favoritism; and (2) failure of large institutions is not allowed (even though it is an essential part of capitalism). So, we don’t have failure in America. Failure would be upsetting. We are all living in one big Lake Wobegon - where all of our businesses are above average. I didn’t get a chance to vote in this poll, but if I had to choose I would prefer the Scandinavian Socialist model over the Latin American version that we seem to be veering into. Instead, the U.S. gets the worst of both worlds - no public education or health care, high taxes, privatized gains shared by plutocrats and socialized losses shared by taxpayers. If that is your definition of American capitalism - I am amazed the polling numbers were as close as they were.

5. The bankruptcy process has becomes a political process. If this is the worst economy since the great depression, why aren’t there more bankruptcies? When did bondholders–which own a risky asset class called, ahem, “bonds”–become a guaranteed non risk asset class? It is obvious that my college professors were mistaken in teaching that the only RISK FREE asset class was US GOVERNMENT DEBT SECURITIES. They are going to have to rewrite a ton of economics and corporate finance textbooks to include Bear Stearns bondholders and preferred stock holders, any commercial paper facility of GE, Fannie and Freddie bondholders, any bond or preferred instrument held by Bill Gross/PIMCO (the official fourth branch of the US govt.) and any bonds or preferred stocks of the too-politically-connected-to-fail group of financials including AIG, GS, MS, WFC, C, JPM, et al as part of the risk-free asset classes in 21st century American capitalism. And, maybe they should hold off publishing until June because GM and Chrysler debt and preferred holders may be on that list as well. At least all of the rewriting of the books on financial institutions, markets, and money will stimulate the publishing industry. Which leads us directly to…

4. Both politcal parties are beholden to the financial oligarchs–And yes, that includes the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party, the party of FDR, Kennedy, LBJ, Carter and Obama, the party of the little people, the common man, the disadvantaged, the party of farmers, laborers, labor unions, and religious and ethnic minorities continues the same misguided policies and cronyism of the former Republican regime in BAILING OUT BANKERS and INDENTURING GENERATIONS for what will end up being tens of trillions (with a T). We are either in bizzarro world or a banana republic or both. “The Democrats have replaced the Republicans as the big benefactors to the financial community,” said Kevin Phillips, author of “Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism.” Philips writes, “The financial community is donating more to Democrats than ever before and you’ve got more Democrats in the financial community, creating a very powerful pattern there. I don’t think you’re going to see the Obama administration and Congress willing to be tough enough in dealing with these things.” So, let’s get this straight: none of the big banks and financial companies’ bondholders are taking any hit, and they refuse to go into bankruptcy or receivership, however GM and Chrysler may go into the not so delicate arms of bankruptcy. Is Obama more loyal to his wall street friends in the Democratic monopolies in the Northeast and California, or to his hard working lower/middle class constituents in the Midwest which is usually a coin flip in terms of party loyalty–see, Michigan, Ohio and Indiana? To quote John Lennon, strange days indeed, most peculiar momma. That or we are living in a banana republic. Which is easy to accept.

3. William Black, the former Chief Fraud Investigator at the Federal Home Lending Bank and Office of Thrift Supervision during the Savings and Loan scandal, calls the current bank stress tests ” A COMLETE SHAM.” The FHLB is a very big institution, with $1.3 trillion (with a T) in loans, and its Chief Fraud Investigator during the S&L scandal, says a pillar of Federal banking reform policy is “a complete sham.” A complete sham. In addition to comparing the stress tests of our nations’ financial system to a counterfeit, fraud, flimflam, ruse (is that emphatic enough for you America, or do I need naked women shooting you with lasers to make you pay attention? I know, I do. Can we get some graphics of naked ladies in here, please?)

Mr. Black also called the stress test “a Potemkin model. Built to fool people.” Like many others, Black believes the “worst case scenario” used in the stress test don’t go far enough. Black also said, “There is no real purpose [of the stress test] other than to fool us. To make us chumps,” Black says. Noting policymakers have long stated the problem is a lack of confidence, Black says Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is now essentially saying: “’If we lie and they believe us, all will be well.’ It’s Orwellian.” “The fact bank stocks have been rising since Geithner unveiled his plan is “bad news for taxpayers,” he says. “It’s the subsidy of all history.”

2.William Black the former Chief Fraud Investigator and Federal Regulator during the S&L scandal uses the following words to describe the STRESS TEST of capital ratios for our NATIONS’ LARGEST BANKS:
(A)“A COMPLETE SHAM”
(b) “POTEMKIN MODEL” - fancy Russian word for SHAM
(c)“Reason for STRESS TESTS is to FOOL US and to make US CHUMPS”
(d) “’If we lie and they believe us, all will be well.’ It’s Orwellian.”
(e) the Geithner debt plan is “bad news for taxpayers”
If confidence is all we need to restore the financial system, then we should just nominate Tony Robbins as Secretary of Treasury.
OBTW, William Black’s book The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, is a must read about financial fraud and regulatory capture and for the glossy eyed it has a catchy and cool title. Paul Volker wrote this about the book, “Bill Black has detailed an alarming story about financial - and political - corruption. The specifics go back twenty years, but the lessons are as fresh as the morning newspaper. One of those lessons really sticks out: one brave man with a conscience could stand up for us all.” Robert Kuttner of Business Week proclaimed, “Black’s book is partly the definitive history of the savings-and-loan industry scandals of the early 1980s. More important, it is a general theory of how dishonest CEOs, crony directors, and corrupt middlemen can systematically defeat market discipline and conceal deliberate fraud for a long time — enough to create massive damage.”

Now, drum roll…

1. The People Don’t Know and Don’t Care to Know. The American people are quite aware of Malawian Adoption Law, can cite the California statutes on artificial insemination, and know Octomom’s middle name, but can’t or won’t listen to one word about who controls their institutions, nor can they find William Black on any other media outlet other than the Web or Bill Moyers. We have the former Chief Fraud Investigator screaming SHAM, SWINDLE, HEIST and we just sit there glassy-eyed, wondering if the blind guy was given a fair shot on Idol. No hour slot on Larry King, no lead story on 60 minutes, not even 5 minutes on The Daily Show, which is arguably the best financial and investigative journalist show on television.

My friends and dear readers, this is your representative republic. This is the product of your popular sovereignty. This is your AMERICA.

(Thanks to Robert Rapier, and Robert Bryce for some of their energy material and quotes.)

PS - Some readers are NOT familiar with the term BANANA REPUBLIC apart from the mid end fashion stores located in every mall in america. Michael Panzner does a great job describing the origin of the word and enlightens yours truly.

First coined by author O. Henry in his 1904 (and only) novel, Cabbages and Kings, the words “banana republic” described an imaginary Central American republic named Anchuria, a place “where larceny is rampant and revolution always a possibility.”

Nowadays, according to Wikipedia, the expression is a “pejorative term for a country that is politically unstable, dependent on limited agriculture (e.g., bananas), and ruled by a small, self-elected, wealthy, and corrupt clique.”

Typically, such countries also have “large wealth inequities, poor infrastructure, poor schools, a ‘backward’ economy, low capital spending, a reliance on foreign capital and money printing, budget deficits, and a weakening currency.”

While some of the descriptions don’t quite fit — after all, we’re not really known for our bananas, except, perhaps, in Hawaii — it’s hard not to look at some of the things going on in this country

We don’t want to change the bankers.  To put new, honest people in charge,  would beg to define the scope of the problem and reveal the cover-up.  Its not so much of a cover-up as an obfuscation by way of direction attention away from the otherwise glaring fact that the people that were in charge of preventing the crisis in the first place are still at the commanding heights of government and banking.  This echos the sentiment consistently expressed by Taleb that we need to replace the current bankers and bank regulators with people who demonstrated the vision to anticipate the problems that we’re in now, rather than promote and consolidate the power of those who were at the helm when the ship ran arground.  This is not a partisan, or ideological issue.  I like O.  I voted for him.  But Geithner, as Paulson did, says that it will take $2 trillion to deal with the banks’ undercapitalization, but they both report that the recipient institutions are “solvent.”

Geithner was one of the top regulators during the subprime lending years, but he heeded no warnings. Way to many liabilities, way too few assets.  Give them a CAMEL rating of (1), FDIC them, fire everyone and put them in receivership.  But, no, that would fuck-your-buddies.  A failed legacy regulator, Geithner denies that he was a regulator at all.  Nevermind, that he was a FED Governor, and the NY FED was charged with regulating the largest banks and bank holding companies in the country.

While its true that the FED had no power to regulate financial instruments themselves nor the derivative trade (nor did anyone else, it seems), financial instruments and derivatives in-and-of themselves were not the problem, its the risk that they represented and the fact that the biggest banks and bank holding companies in the country were massively undercapitalized in relation to that risk.   Trade all the bullshit CDO’s you want, as long as you have the reserves to absorb their defaults.  Oh, and CDS’s don’t count because they’re not money.  Would it matter what AIG did if the banks were honest about their balance sheets? The gaping under-capitalization of the big banks falls squarely in the area of the FED’s regulatory responsibility.  True that I-Banks were not then subject to the same regulatory scheme, but even if they were, would it have mattered given the regulatory posture during the height of the largest asset and credit bubble of all time?  They didn’t see the liabilities, and therefore could not accurately determine whether the biggest institutions were adequately capitalized.  Maybe they didn’t bother to see, because the too-big-too fail idea was so pervasive.  Maybe they didn’t want to. Wonderful discussion of this, here:

Three federal banking agencies, the Federal Reserve Board, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and FDIC, along with state banking departments or commissioners, are the regulatory agencies for bank market regulation.  At the federal level, the Comptroller is the oldest agency, which has served since the [war time] Banking Act of 1863 as the chartering authority for national banks, and their primary agency for supervision and examination.  The FDIC became a collateral supervising agency in 1933 for all N.A.s. and anyone seeking FDIC insurance.

The Federal Reserve Board, created in 1913, also has supervision and examination authority for state chartered member banks, and since then has become the most important agency because it is the agency that has been given the most general power under subsequent statutes covering mergers, bank holding companies, truth-in-lending, fair credit reporting, and certain aspects of multinational banking.

So, while it is true that other agencies frequently have had overlapping regulatory authority, including with the OTS, its clear that as the lender of last resort (after all, the FDIC has a limited pool of money to work with) and as the agency with the widest authority to look after bank solvency, the FED is surely a regulator, and should be considered the regulator of first and last resort when it comes to money.

Wither the FED? Is it even constitutional?  I suppose we have to have a FED if the world is going to be on a the Dollar Standard.  The Dollar Standard is, of course, a bubble, and it will burst with much bloodshed and gnashing of teeth, but that’s the subject of another post.

Martin Wolf, in an interview with Nayan Chanda, explains what caused the financial crises, outlines the steps for ending this destructive cycle.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSfOsvaMS00]

From Blodget at Clusterstock:

Bailouts Of Bondholders Will Sock

Taxpayers With $10-$14 Trillion

Loss

The hope is that the economy shrinks further and prices come down. The WORST policy is to support asset prices at the present time–that is the worst.

Advice is to “go and buy a farm and shotgun, because things are going to get very bad in the world.”
-Faber