Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Steven Roach knocks Greenspan/US Fed

Steven Roach of Morgan Stanley does a pretty good job of knocking / critizising the US central bank and Greenspan:

Roach's piece "Original Sin" on Morgan Stanley's site

"In all my years in this business, never before have I seen a central bank attempt to spin the debate as America’s Federal Reserve has over the past six or seven years. From the New Paradigm mantra of the late 1990s to today’s new theories of the current-account adjustment, the US central bank has led the charge in attempting to rewrite conventional macroeconomics and in making an effort to convince market participants of the wisdom of its revisionist theories. The problem is that this recasting of macro is very self-serving. It is a concentrated effort on the part of the Fed to exonerate itself from the Original Sin of failing to address asset bubbles. The result is an ever-deepening moral hazard dilemma that poses grave threats to financial markets."

[...]

"I am not a believer in conspiracy theories. But the Fed’s behavior since the late 1990s is starting to change my mind."

[...]

"This whole story, in my view, remains balanced on the head of a pin of absurdly low real interest rates."

[...]

---------------------------------------------------------------------

"I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know where I'm a gonna go when the volcano blows."
- Volcano, Jimmy Buffet

What the US is looking at, not that most Americans have a clue:

Gold Price Per Ounce
"I don’t know whether change will come with a bang or a whimper, whether sooner or later. But as things stand, it is more likely than not that it will be financial crises rather than policy foresight that will force the change." - Paul Volker

No comments: