Guest Post: Fed's Sense Of Humor, Amazing Foresight, And Inflation Risk

Submitted by Bo Peng

Fed's Sense of Humor, Amazing Foresight, and Inflation Risk

If you still have any doubts of Fed's bias towards sustaining bubbles and being late on fighting inflation, the latest release of 2005 Fed meeting minutes should help you see it more clearly.


But the good news stops there. Were the bubble and risks just a goddamned joke to them? They saw it quite well, made some smartass jokes and had some good laughs, and did NOTHING.

When Bernanke said it takes 15 minutes to raise rates, he was being too modest. The final tally to vote on the decision, I'm sure, takes at most one minute. But this is an insult to the questioner and the audience, isn't it? The real question is how long it would take from rising inflation to them seeing it, then making the decision to act on it, then to inflation being tamed. Instead of providing an honest assessment, Bernanke instead pulled a Clinton what-is-is on us.

I'll be waiting anxiously in 2013 to see the release of 2008 meetings, but even more so on their 2011 meetings. I expect them to see very clearly, with their impressive intellect and good sense of humor, the evidence of inflation in everything except housing, growing bubbles in commodities and stocks, economic polarization both domestically and globally, etc etc, and make some smartass jokes about it, have some good hearty harhars, and do NOTHING.

There's so much money in the system it's scary. Non-real, hot money looking for real return. Everybody knowing anything about the market knows this. The Fed of course knows this well. Every bubble-bust cycle creates some winners and losers, but one sure loser is the vast majority of middle class who have little chance of benefiting meaningfully in the bubble phase and are inevitably hurt in the bust phase. Every bubble-bust cycle knocks a portion of the middle class a few steps down the economic ladder while minting some super-rich. The Fed of course knows this well. I'm sure there's a smartass joke there somewhere. They'll laugh about it, and do NOTHING.


2. Some day somebody will finish positioning and call somebody at WSJ/CNBC/Bloomberg, and the world will be horrified to find out there's a crisis all of a sudden. I'll be balls deep in that trade.

No matter how confident Bernanke is about his ability to fight inflation in time, I'm exactly as confident that he'll be too late. In fact, inflation is already here...nah, just kidding. Harhar. Hehe. Yawn. Good night.