IT AINT OVER 'TIL THE FAT LADY SINGS

Matterhorn Asset Management AG
by Egon von Greyerz

In our January 2009 Newsletter we forecast that there would be a correction up in the US stockmarket similar to 1930 when the market went up 50% from the low and then declined by a total of 90% and resulted in a depression. None of the fundamentals have changed and we are going to see the most horrendous hyperinflationary depression that the world has experienced for at least 200 years. It will be worse than the 1930’s because the world is now totally interconnected both financially and economically and because there has never been in history a worldwide asset bubble and credit bubble of this magnitude .

THE US GOVERNMENT HAS LOST ALL CONTROL

The US Government is not running the country. It is running around like a headless chicken reacting to events and firefighting. It doesn’t have a cohesive or proactive plan how to deal the biggest financial crisis that the world has ever experienced. So it hasn’t taken a single measure that could solve the crisis. The only thing it knows is to print money. The US Government doesn’t understand that running the printing presses ever faster can never be a solution to a problem that was caused by excessive credit and deficit spending.

Wall Street is in control

All reactive decisions taken by the Government are governed by Wall Street who are more in control than the Government. Wall Street understands the problem much better since they are the principal beneficiaries of the current financial crisis. The crisis was created by the loose monetary policy of the US Government. Wall Street took advantage and exacerbated the problem by issuing unlimited amounts of toxic debt and derivatives. Wall Street obviously had the total blessing of Government which benefited greatly from political donations and the perceived prosperity that the credit bubble created. So not only did Wall Street make immoral amounts of money during the credit bubble but they are now the main beneficiaries of the Governments money printing. So far the US Government has lent, invested or committed $ 13 trillion since the crisis started in 2007. The majority of these funds are being used to save the financial system.

Wall Street by, being too big to fail, has created the perfect situation for itself. Losses are being socialised and absorbed by the Government and profits are privatised. So whilst the economy as a whole is suffering greatly due to financial crisis, most of the financial sector is continuing to prosper. In the medium term such unfair inequality will have political and social consequences.
What the US Government doesn’t understand is that directing virtually all their rescue efforts to Wall Street is not going to solve the problem. The Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said in a recent interview that the bank rescue efforts will probably fail because the programs have been designed to help Wall Street rather than to create a viable financial system. Stiglitz went on to say: “the people who designed the plans are either in the pockets of the banks or incompetent”.

Full article HERE