As such, it seems to me that this veiw should caution investors to be humble, to accept (and plan for) the fact that one can't possibly know everything that's going to happen that will affect the markets (my favourite definition of risk is that more things CAN happen than WILL happen).
I certainly respect Taleb's research, insights and opinion. Which is why I found it somewhat curious and, admittedly, disappointing that he was SO SURE of himself to say in February that "every single human being" should bet Treasuries would decline; that it was "a no-brainer" to sell short Treasuries.
That trade hasn't worked so well in the last six months, but Taleb is sticking to his guns, saying that the Treasury bond market is a bubble waiting to collapse, via Bloomberg.
Meanwhile Randall Forsyth says
THERE'S A REAL BUBBLE TAKING PLACE in the markets and you can scarcely miss it, so blatant and omnipresent has it become. It is, of course, the bubble in talk about a bond bubble.in Barrons.
the German economy may be expanding strongly on the back of export growth, up 2.2% quarter-over-quarter in Q2, and up 3.7% since the 2nd quarter of 2009, but when ECB hawk Axel Weber says the ECB should retain stimulus at least til the 1st quarter of next year, the yield on the German 30-year bond fell to a record low 2.89% (meanwhile, "bond vigilantes" are demanding 5.38% yield on Irish 10-year bonds
Why Quantitative Easing is Likely to Trigger a Collapse of the U.S. Dollar. John Hussman.
China real estate watch: crash-in-waiting, from Bloomberg.My impression is that Ben Bernanke has little sense of the damage he is about to provoke. A central banker who talks about throwing money from helicopters is not only arrogant but foolish. Nearly a century ago, the great economist Ludwig von Mises observed that massive central bank easing is invariably a form of cowardice that attempts to avoid the need to restructure debt or correct fiscal deficits, avoiding wiser but more difficult choices by instead destroying the value of the currency....
Good policy is not rocket science. It begins with the refusal to make people pay for mistakes that are not their own. This economy continues to struggle with a fundamental problem, which is that debt obligations exceed the ability to service them. While policy makers have done everything to preserve the patterns of spending and consumption that created the problem in the first place, we have done nothing to restructure those obligations
The Overconfidence Problem in Forecasting. Richard Thaler, NYT.
quotes Mark Twain:
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain't so.”
Great dangers attend the rise and fall of great powers. John Plender, FT.
Armageddon watch: the always-entertaining Gerald Celente, interviewed on techticker.
We went from a country of merchants, craftspeople, manufacturers to one of clerks and cashiers;... once you're off the unemployment roles, you're no longer unemployed!... the type of rioting you're seeing in Greece, you'll see it all over the world... when people lose everything and they have nothing left to lose, they lose it
I knew after the Jackson Hole conference in 2007, when he said that mortgage equity withdrawal didn't impact consumer spending and that the Fed shouldn't be in the business of predicting/calling/or doing anything about asset bubbles, that Mishkin was a yahoo; here's further proof, via zerohedge. How can you write a paper titled "Financial Stability in Iceland" (and get paid to write it but not disclose that little fact!) then go back later and change the title to "Financial INstability in Iceland". We should sue him!
other fare:
Liberty lovers meet their match. National Post.
and today was national go-topless day in the U.S.
No comments:
Post a Comment