The Public Interest Edition

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The Public Interest Edition

Governments over time fashion policy(ies) and laws to promote some agenda that is for the “common good”. In other words (usually) with good intent.One dotted line to the federal government is known as the Federal Reserve System. The Fed currently has two mandates, 1) maintain price stability and 2) seek to achieve full employment. Meeting both of these goals serves the public interest without argument since runaway inflation and high unemployment rates will wreck the dreams of most Americans. So we do need a stable, growing economy.

However, many astute minds in economic circles have questioned whether or not Federal Reserve policy makers can go too far in their quest to accomplish these mandates? Can they over-stimulate, or over juice the U.S. economy? In my opinion, the answer is an emphatic “Yes!” We’re seeing anecdotal evidence of this in several areas – funds flowing into Crypto currencies now topping $1 trillion dollars? A bubble in housing prices across the country continues, and rents everywhere are being regarded as “crazy high”, and out of control.

he “take away” from this discussion is that Federal Reserve Monetary Stimulus programs are notorious for causing price bubbles to occur, but not always in the same places or same assets, as money will flow like water, always following a path of least resistance. So it’s best to be on the lookout for price bubbles any time the Federal Reserve has embarked on a “quantitative easing” stimulus program and chances are very good you’ll not have to look far to find where that money has traveled.

At the same time let me say that I personally don’t believe this situation can be (necessarily) avoided given the context of free and open markets since we have very smart investors making very smart decisions in mass, well for as long as their newfound genius can last anyway. Which begs my follow-on question – the $64,000 question is, do these price bubbles deflate in an “orderly fashion”? As much as I love this term – “orderly fashion”, I’ve never seen a price bubble burst yet without many people being severely affected… and look what just happened, we just looped back to my thesis in the beginning, “Are Federal Reserve policy makers capable of going too far”?

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