Ben Bernanke: Taking Credit for the Good and Not the Bad

With Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke testifying today before the house budget committee let’s take a look back at what has transpired since QE2 was first rumored.

Rumors of QE2 started last August at the Fed’s annual Jackson Hole meeting but didn’t officially start until November. Prior to the official announcement the New York Fed’s Brian Sack had the following to say about the intentions of QE2:

keep longer-term interest rates lower than otherwise by reducing the aggregate amount of risk that the private markets have to bear. In particular, by purchasing longer-term securities, the Federal Reserve removes duration risk from the market, which should help to reduce the term premium that investors demand for holding longer-term securities. That effect should in turn boost other asset prices, as those investors displaced by the Fed’s purchases would likely seek to hold alternative types of securities.

Basically the Fed was attempting to lower interest rates with the hope that this would boost the economy and boost other assets. As you can see in the chart below

QE2 Creates Oppurtunities for Contrarian Value Investing

As always, John Hussman’s weekly market comment is a must read. In it he discusses what he sees as the driver of returns since QE2 was announced (essentially a transient psychological effect), the asset classes that have benefited and current valuation levels. All three areas are worthy of reading and further introspection but I will focus on the second.

Assets Returns Since QE2 Hints

A very nice interactive tool today from Reuters that shows asset returns based on different QE2 related time periods. Link.

Notice how most assets rallied from the Jackson Hole speech until the official QE2 announcement and the USD declined. Since the actual announcement risk assets have sold off and the USD has rallied. Interesting that the anticipation QE resulted in assets moving as the Fed intended, higher equity prices and lower bond yields, but since implementation prices are moving in the opposite direction. The question is, will this continue?

Click to Enlarge

Click to Enlarge

 

Hussman: Bubble, Crash, Bubble, Crash, Bubble…

Hussman’s weekly market comment is a must read. He does not mince words in arguing that QE is utterly misguided and Bernanke’s leadership at the Fed has bordered on criminal. Excerpts below (emphasis mine) but please read the entire comment.

Given that interest rates are already quite depressed, Bernanke seems to be grasping at straws in justifying QE2 on the basis further slight reductions in yields. As for Bernanke’s case for creating wealth effects via the stock market, one might look at this logic and conclude that while it may or may not be valid, the argument is at least the subject of reasonable debate. But that would not be true. Rather, these are undoubtedly among the most ignorant remarks ever made by a central banker.

We will continue this cycle until we catch on. The problem isn’t only that the Fed is treating the symptoms instead of the disease. Rather, by irresponsibly promoting reckless speculation, misallocation of capital, moral hazard (careless lending without repercussions), and illusory “wealth effects,” the Fed has become the disease.

Source: Hussman Funds