When Ben Bernanke and his colleagues at the Federal Reserve announced their plan for $600 billion in new quantitative easing, I am sure they expected criticism. Angela Merkel? No surprise. Hu Jintao? Ditto. Domestic inflation hawks? Ditto again.
But could the Fed have anticipated that its most vocal critics would be a pair of talking bunnies?
If your email, Facebook, and Twitter feeds are anything like mine, you know the video: two bunny-like creatures (I’ve also heard them called smurfs and dogs) discussing “the quantitative easing” of “the Ben Bernank.” It’s hilariously effective but, as Jim Hamilton helpfully points out, also quite wrong in places.
In case you’ve missed it, here’s the video:
The folks at Xtranormal have been offering the ability to make such movies for a couple of years now, but the idea appears to have gone viral in the economics and finance space in the last week. Indeed, YouTube already has a bunch of rebuttal videos to the quantitative easing one.
So far, the funniest video I have seen (ht: Jack B) features a bunny interviewing for a Wall Street trading job. I usually keep things G-rated here, but I’ll make an exception today. Be forewarned, some of the language may be NSFW — unless, of course, you are a trader:
The problem with “quantitative easing” is NOT that the Fed is printing money. The problem is that they are buying treasuries, when they should be buying other things.
The Wall Street mantra is to “buy low, sell high”. If the dollar is too high, buy with it until it goes to an appropriate level. But buying something denominated in dollars is not terribly effective, since you are swapping one dollar denominated asset for another, and if you succeed in driving down the value of the dollar, your investment will also decline in value.
Far better (though perhaps more challenging from a justifiability perspective) would be to buy assets with real value…oil, buildings, land, senators, even a run on the yuan… First of all, buying a lot of real assets directly would be far more effective at driving down the demand for dollars quickly, and second of all, if successful, the Fed would be left holding something pretty much guaranteed to have gone up in value…
My plumber has a beard, yes but when you call the plumber he usually fixes things, not make them worse.
Face it Bernanke is clueless, the foreclosure rot is destroying the U.S. and papering over the widespread fraud in the banking system and the hidden REO inventory does nothing to improve the situation.
The ship is sinking, the captain is insane, the crew are looting the ship’s stores and the passengers are all watching dancing with the stars.
What happens when it is 2015, and unemployment is 37 per cent and QE 5, 6 and 7 have all failed? When 80 million Americans are on foodstamps and one in 3 americans lives in poverty. Will the lame duck President Lloyd Blankfein continue bailing out wall Street while main street dies of dysentery?
Nice summary Donald,
I assume that Bernanke is purposely monetizing duty as a possibility to get away a comparatively immediate crash. But this is solely a reloaded step, pushing the debt time a little further down the way, where it will be compounded by growing inflation. If things are really this inauspicious, but I don’t assume any other explanation.
Jay Banks
What is the shame of it all. After the 1st Depression in this country and around the world those who chose to be educators have not done the greatest job in preparing generations who have come along afterwards. If Robert Kiasaki is right? The rich who are benefiting off the financial ineptness of the average person, are the ones who have developed past and current education cirriculums. If that is the case, what else have the rich, maniulated to retain and keep their wealth at the expense off those not as finacially saavy. With that in mind, should this be a wake up call to current and future generations. It seems to make what the Bible teaches valid in that, “the human heart is evil and terminally wicked” (emphasis mine) Jer. 17:9,10.
Because only selfish, greedy, and desperately evil and wicked human beings have the capacity to destory those around for their own benefit.
I believe it was as well our own inherent greed that have caused many of us to be in a place where we have made our ownselves vulnerable to situations such as this and those in the past, and may well be indicators for the future.
QE2 was not up to the mark but still QE3 is about to come. It is still facing criticism in any manner. Confusing condition is arising.