What goes up can also go down...

Back in April, I wrote a piece about Apple Inc. I suggested that the company’s stock price was a little frothy. I suggested caution was in order. At time of writing that piece, the company’s stock price was at about $635, just a shade off its high.

I got crucified for that piece. Virtually everyone commenting said that my comparisons were inappropriate, that I couldn’t possibly own the company’s products, that I didn’t understand the company’s value-drivers. The consensus of opinion was that investors should continue to add, with caution, to their portfolios. Since that discussion, the company’s stock price dropped around $100 in a matter of weeks, before recovering some of the lost ground since.

And my view hasn’t changed. For the sake of absolute clarity, let me repeat what I said last time. I love this company. I love its products. I own the lot: iPhone, MacBook Pro, iPad, iPod. This company is so good that they could come up with pretty much any three letter word, stick an i in front of it, and I’d be in the line to buy it, whatever it was. If Apple produced a cheese grater, it would be the best cheese grater in the world.

But you need to put those things to one side when considering your stock portfolio. You need to operate with reason, not adoration.

First, let’s consider the general background to this stock. It’s up almost 8,000 percent since December 1995. If you look at the most recent trading data, you can see the price has gone parabolic. On a curve that points upwards at infinity. And simple market experience tells me that these things never last. The dotcom boom didn’t. The housing boom didn’t. This Apple boom won’t either. Markets are apt to vicious corrections and overcorrections. They happen most of all when the parabola looks most enticing.

And then again, think of the economic background. Europe is rapidly approaching a debt meltdown. We’re approaching our own fiscal cliff. No matter who comes into office this winter, we’re about to enter a period of much needed fiscal austerity which will surely threaten the U.S. economy with renewed recession. (Or worse: I think an extended depression the most likely outcome.) At times like these, equity ratings should be cautious, not bullish. Apple’s rating is still sunnily optimistic.

It’s also worth thinking of the fragility of our financial markets generally. The federal government currently borrows ten-year money at 1.42 percent. Our government debt is rapidly approaching the levels last seen at the end of World War II. We have no plan for regaining control over the budget. The Fed has exhausted every tool of monetary policy and has, indeed, risked creating a huge inflationary problem down the road.

The truth is that 1.42 percent is an insanely low yield for a borrower in the shape that the government is in today. Sooner or later, the government bond market will correct (it would do so much faster if the Fed stood back) and there will be an inevitable rebound on to equities.

So much for the general argument. The specifics on Apple are no more cheering. Analysts expected third quarter revenues to come in at $37 billion; they came in at $35 billion. The miss on earnings was even worse: analysts had penciled in $10.36 a share, and the outcome was more than a dollar per share worse than that at $9.32.

Sales of iPods fell. Sales of Macs were flat. Sales of iPhones were up on the year, but sharply down on the prior quarter. Sales of tablets were excellent, but the competitive background is changing fast. The new iPhone is great, but it’s not a game-changer the way the first one was. It’s kind of like the Rocky films. Rocky 15 just won’t lift the heart the way the very first one did.

Now at this point, I should probably reiterate what I said at the start. I love this company’s products. I think the company that Jobs built is the most impressive American company to have emerged since the days of Ford and General Electric. But those judgments are different from judgments about valuation. The results just announced are not the results of a gravity-defying company, but of one governed by the same laws of competition that everyone else faces too.

People haven’t got bored of smart phones or of anything else that Apple makes. But sometimes, as an investor, you have to stand back and ask, really? And the question here is really twofold. One, can Apple’s top line growth continue when its markets are becoming relentlessly competitive? Two, can Apple’s near 40 percent operating margin persist when every big electronics and Internet company on the planet is out to steal the firm’s lunch?

The correct answer to both questions is no. I go on believing that Apple is as good as a company can get. I love its products. But Apple’s boosters have forgotten the laws of competition, which say that you can run ahead of the pack for a while, but not for ever. The economic and financial background is heinous. Apple’s ascent has been parabolic. And the firm now has a raft of competitors which are starting to look lean, sharp and switched on. The stock has fallen a further 6 percent since the company announced its results, but the fall has a good way further to go yet.

The post garnered a remarkable number of comments, the majority of which agreed strongly with the view I expressed. Just one thing disturbed me, however, which was the number of people who assumed I was taking a partisan position. To remind you: the article argued strongly for a full and open enquiry into the Fast and Furious affair. I guess a lot of people reasoned as follows, ‘The Republicans are bashing the Democrats over this enquiry, this guy Feierstein wants an enquiry, so he must be a Republican.’

I don’t blame people for making these assumptions. Our whole country has become infected with this kind of logic. Our entire political debate has caught the virus. Yet it makes no sense. No sense at all. Here are two facts and one conclusion. Fact One: A federal agent has been shot dead. Fact Two: there are allegations — which may be true or false — that the gun used to shoot him was in circulation only because of an ineptly managed operation conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco. Conclusion: These allegations are serious enough to deserve an open investigation, period. Partisan bickering and political spin is simply a diversion from the action that a dead federal agent deserves — and the truth that the American people require.

I say all this because I’m about to call attention to another government department. That department is the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Now I know that Republicans are currently bashing President Obama over his jobs record. I know that Obama is bashing back. But, people, the issue at stake is the creation of jobs in America and the way those things are being recorded and reported. The issues I’m about to address were present under George W. Bush. They haven’t changed under Barack Obama. The depression which struck this country in the wake of financial crisis might have peaked under a Democrat, but it was born in a Republican era. If you yourself are so partisan that you want to make fine distinctions about these things, you should go ahead and make them. Me: I see two peas in a pod.

Good. Preamble over. Here’s the issue. The number of jobs created in America stood at 80,000 in June. That wasn’t nearly enough to budge the jobless rate, which remains stuck at a high 8.2%. (Mitt Romney’s comment: ‘another kick in the gut to middle-class families.’ Barack Obama’s rejoinder: ‘a step in the right direction’ whilst he acknowledged, ‘it’s still tough out there.’)

But let’s put the partisan spin-factory to one side, and instead have a think about the number of jobs being reported. Businesses are born and businesses die. When a business is occupied with either of those processes, it has better things to do than call up the BLS and discuss hires and fires. The BLS therefore estimates the net impact on the joblessness figures of the birth and death of businesses. You can read its full discussion here, but the key line says:

‘There is an unavoidable lag between an establishment opening for business and its appearing on the sample frame and being available for sampling. Because new firm births generate a portion of employment growth each month, non-sampling methods must be used to estimate this growth.’

A non-sampling method: that’s geek-speak for ‘guess.’ We don’t know how many new jobs are being created or lost by business churn, so we’ve got to guess. And you want to know the BLS’s estimate for the number of such jobs ‘created’ (net of losses) in June? Answer: 124,000. In May, the answer was over 200,000.

So, in crude terms, the net jobs growth reported by the BLS — the same one being lambasted by Romney and praised by Obama — is only in positive territory at all because of some number that’s simply a guess. A smart guess probably. One made by intelligent statisticians… but still. In this economy? With Europe in turmoil, China slowing, the country heading for a fiscal cliff which could thrust us back into recession, plus massive uncertainty over the path of healthcare costs per employee? The BLS has never been in this position before, because the economy hasn’t been. And after all, who in their right minds would be hiring new staff given these conditions? Most savvy businesspeople will be watching, waiting… deferring spending and hiring.

The truth is employment in the U.S. might be growing or shrinking. We just plain don’t know. What we do know is that if you add together the unemployed, workers discouraged from seeking work, plus those working part-time when they’d prefer to be working full time… you have an ‘underemployment’ rate of at least 15% — while our labor force participation rates are kicking around decade long-lows. These things are terrible economic news, but they’re terrible on a human scale too. Let’s consider the graduates looking to repay the more than $1 trillion in government-guaranteed student loans. These graduates are America’s future. Those BLS data points represent human lives, human potential. And the outlook is grim.

Vangelia Pandeva Dimitrova

To repeat, I’m not making a partisan point here. I’m making a bigger one. The American economy is in deep trouble. The reported data we have is unreliable. What we do know is that we have too much debt, too much money printing, a culture of total irresponsibility on Wall Street and consequently an absence of credibility in the financial and political promises that underpin our economy. All this, plus a political culture which is not addressing these things in a mature and responsible way.

This country’s in a mess. And partisan bickering will never pull us out of it. We all need to change our mindsets. I voted for change in the last election and I believe that today’s DC landscape is the most polarized in my lifetime. Are things better? Are we going to be offered a real choice in this election year? And where can I get a refund?

I published this article in today’s Huffington Post.

Two bits of news in the last couple days. One, Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, has decided to extend Operation Twist, a policy whereby the Fed sells short-dated government paper in order to buy the longer-dated sort. It sounds boring but it involves $267 billion, so it’s kind of consequential all the same. Oh, and traders warn that the disappearance of the Fed’s holdings of short-dated government paper could gum up those markets, thereby causing costs greater thany any likely benefit. But still, mere reality doesn’t deter Bernanke, who asserts, ”We are prepared to do what’s necessary. We are prepared to provide support for the economy. Additional asset purchases would be among the things that we would certainly consider if we need to take additional measures to strengthen the economy.”

So: $267 billion of your money is being put at risk on a complex long-dated debt operation of dubious benefit, while the leader of that operation comments that much more money might be needed down the road. That’s news item one.

Money printing is all I know.....

News item two: Moody’s announced a mass downgrade of American and European banks. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley took a hit. So did Bank of America, JP Morgan and Citigroup. So too did a raft of European banks, including some of the biggest. The markets didn’t react much to these downgrades, but only because the credit failings of these banks has long been baked into the price. Credit default swaps on two nationalized British banks, RBS and Lloyds, are already priced at junk levels. Anything Moody’s says now is like a punch line delivered long after the party guests have departed. In reality, the truth is probably worse even than Moody’s is suggesting. Many of these banks will see further downgrades, some of them sharp, before this crisis is done.

Now these things are connected. They’re connected in the simplest of ways. The central banks are committed to a policy of debasing the currency, manipulating interest rates and artificially inflating asset bubbles. Meantime, the Western financial system is in parlous shape. Well, duh! Of course. You don’t fix lousy banks by printing wild sums of money to prop up the markets. You fix lousy banks by writing off bad loans, forcing shareholders and creditors to take the hit. You clean up and move on. It’s so obvious a child could see it.

But not Ben Bernanke. Part of the problem is a kind of academic groupthink. Two of the world’s leading central bankers are Ben Bernanke of the Fed and Mervyn King of the Bank of England. King was a visiting professor at Harvard and then MIT, where he shared an office with the then Assistant Professor Ben Bernanke. They come from the same intellectual hutch, the same narrow world-view.

And please note, that world view is born of academic theory, not practical reality. It’s born of an obsession with the Great Depression in the 1930s … forgetting that everything, but everything, has changed since then. Back then, trade was limited, international finance modest, government finances strong, consumer credit exceptionally low, derivative markets all but non-existent. Not one of those things is true today. Government finances are shot to hell. Derivatives markets have bcome too big to regulate and too vast to fail. Consumer credit is terrifying. And the whole world is connected in one lethal stew of poor credit, mistrust and non-disclosure of losses.

So let’s keep this simple. I argue the Great Depression has almost nothing to teach us. The academic central bankers who have guided us into this crisis, and have been printing money throughout it, are only making the problem worse. The mess our banks are in is in large part due to the failures of these same central bankers, the like-minded Nobel laureates and the same old recycled economic advisors.

The recipe for recovery is simple too. You need to rip the bandages off. It’ll hurt, but the patient will get better. Banks (and central bankers) need to face up to their losses. If shareholders and bondholders have lost money, then tough. Why on earth should taxpayers pick up this tab? Because the banks have hired expensive lobbyists to purchase politicians’ favor? I don’t think so.

We are currently in the midst of a major depression. Unemployment (measured by U-6) is at almost 15%. The economic projections in the White House’s budget are clearly powered by the kind of substances that President Clinton once smoked (but did not inhale). The government deficit is in meltdown, yet hasn’t remotely engineered the kind of growth-led recovery we had been led to expect.

I’m not surprised. Here on Planet Ponzi we hold these truths to be self-evident. That the Fed is becoming impotent; it’s running out of bullets. The Fed is out of touch with reality, printing trillions of dollars without the consent of the people of America. That the Fed is taking on a giagantic risk position in long-dated securities, which will have catastrophic consequences if — or rather when — interest rates rise. That existing policies have clearly, plainly and unequivocally failed — yet are still being implemented seemingly without end.

It’s time for a change, and the change can’t come too soon.

I published this in todays Huffington Post

‘Frankly, we are not here to receive lessons in terms of democracy or in terms of how to handle the economy,’ he said. ‘This crisis was not originated in Europe; seeing as you mention North America, this crisis originated in North America and much of our financial sector was contaminated by, how can I put it, unorthodox practices, from some sectors of the financial market.’

Hmmm. So evil Americans are responsible for European woes, huh? That’s an interesting claim, but does it really stand up? And who, really, is to blame for this extraordinary mess?

Who’s to blame? World leaders assemble for the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico

In the spirit of Euro 2012, I thought I’d follow a system of ‘player ratings’. I’ve listed the major players in the Eurozone crisis below. A score of 10 implies, ‘Totally to blame. Why are these guys not in jail already?’ A score of 0 implies … well, it doesn’t really matter: there are no zeroes. Who’s to blame for the Euro crisis? Here are the major players with their scores.

1. American Banks 4/10

OK, I’m no fan of the US banking system. US regulators completely failed to enforce their own rules. The banks screwed up horribly and did a vast amount of damage to the the US economy. But there’s the point: they blew up the American finance system, not the European one. Get a map, Manuel. That big blue thing? It’s the Atlantic Ocean.

2. European banks 9/10

European banks, on the other hand, are vastly to blame for the mess in Europe. For one thing, a lot of the mess in the US was created by the US subsidiaries of European banks: outfits like HSBC, Deutsche, RBS. But then Societe Generale, Paribas, Lloyds, Northern Rock, Bankia, Unicredit, Dexia – these are all home-grown awful, and it’s their problems which have added so much to the European debt load.

Star performer: Greece must take full responsibility

3. Greece (Star Player) 10/10

Every team needs a star man, a Steven Gerrard, Captain Reliable character. The Euro-Blame Team has to name Greece as that €500 billion star. It cooked its books. It never even attempted to reform its economy. It doesn’t get its citizens to pay taxes. It offers crazy pensions. Its rail system notches up losses that exceed its sales. It has a mountain of Ponzi debt that, even after vast write-offs, will be unpayable. You can’t beat that performance. Greece: it’s ten out of ten, all the way.

4. Spanish Real Estate 9/10

It wasn’t so long ago that the Spanish state looked prudent. It had debt levels way lower than those of Germany. (Indeed, it still does.) Its economy thrived. It had a team that played beautiful football. What could possibly be wrong with this picture? Answer: a real estate bubble even worse than the one in America and Ireland. A bubble that Spanish regulators never even attempted to address. A bubble that is currently threatening to wreck not just the Spanish government, but the entire Euro project.

Spain is higher up the radar of international investors at the moment, but Italy is a whale of even larger dimensions. In the decade to 2010, do you want to know how many economies had worse growth than Italy’s? Answer: just two. Zimbabwe and Haiti. If you add to that terrible economic performance a mountainous debt and a corrupt and dysfunctional state – well, 8/10 seems way too generous. I must be Mr Nice Guy as it’s sunny in London today. Portugal, by the way, has somewhat similar problems, but the country’s size means I can’t award it more than a 6/10. Think of it as an impact sub.

6. France 6/10

France lies even further from international radars than its two big southern neighbours, but when you think about a highly indebted country with an exceptionally leveraged banking system, gigantic unfunded pension liabilities, an addiction to state spending, and huge assets parked in the not-so-safe countries of the Mediterranean … well, you probably don’t feel like putting your funds on deposit anywhere that smells of garlic. Stay away.

7. The European Central Bank 9/10

The ECB. What can you say? How Ponzi-ish, irresponsible, non-transparent and undemocratic can a central bank be? The answer, it seems, is ‘very’, four times over. The ECB enabled asset bubbles to form in Spain and elsewhere. It permitted a vastly overleveraged financial sector. And its response to crisis: to extend trillions of euros in soft loans to insolvent banks to gamble on dubious bonds issued by failing governments. That’s not monetary policy. It’s monetary insanity.

Damaging to Britain: But can Sir Mervyn King and Gordon Brown really be blamed for the eurozone crisis?

8. Gordon Brown & Swervyn Mervyn King 6/10

If we were talking about how far this pair of superheroes had injured the UK economy, we’d be pulling out perfect tens. But the question here is about the damage to the European economy and although Britain has been saddled with eye-watering debt, hideous inflation, rotten banks and a stagnant economy, those things have only a marginal impact on the Eurozone. That little strip of blue, Manuel? It’s the English Channel. (And don’t call it La Manche.)

9. Angela Merkel 7/10

OK, this is a tough one. Germany has a strong economy. It has weak and overleveraged banks, a scarily under-recognised pension problem, and too much government debt. But still. Angela and team didn’t create this problem, they’ve only compounded it. They’ve compounded it by always choosing to kick the can down the road, instead of addressing and fixing the giant issues in the European system. Germany’s not mostly to blame, but still. It should have done so much better.

10. Jacques Delors 9/10

Jacques Delors, the principal architect of the Euro, has admitted that the project was structurally flawed from the outset. He’s even admitted that British objections to the idea had real substance. (Thanks, Jacques, and it only took you 15 years to figure that out.) Basically, this project could never have worked and now here it is not working. Quelle surprise.

L’homme culpable: European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso should take a look in the mirror

11. Jose Manuel Barroso 9/10

Manuel Barroso: if you have a mirror anywhere in your €1.4 billion offices, take a look. The person looking out at you is responsible for maintaining and boosting an impossible system. If EU officials had ever had any respect for democracy, this crisis would never have occurred. If the EU had ever recognised the real gravity of the crisis, if it had allocated blame and responsibility in the right quarters and in a timely way, this would never have happened. Manuel Barroso, l’homme culpable – c’est vous.

Meantime, and in light of the football theme of this article, I have a simple, neat suggestion to make everything right. Spain wants to be bailed out by the German taxpayer. German taxpayers, understandably, aren’t all that keen with the idea. But there’s a footie tournament on, right? Spain and Germany: the two favourites. So what about a simple little wager, double or quits according to which team fares better. And that’s a game I’d pay to see. 

I published this in todays Daily Mail

It’s a strange world we’re living in. This newspaper reported yesterday that, ‘Britain and the US joined forces to urge Germany to create a central Brussels body that could assume sovereignty over individual countries’ budgets and fiscal policies.’

David Cameron and George Osborne are said to believe that ‘a single currency can only work if the Eurozone creates an effective fiscal union.’ Barack Obama is in on the act too. Everyone, it seems, wants a Euro superstate … except for Angela Merkel, the woman who’d be in charge of running it.

Now this seems like a simple story, only the more you look at it, the more it’s like one of those pictures where you have to count up the number of impossible things: fish flying through the air, roofs with no walls, water flowing uphill. And right now, we’ve got a lot of flying fish.

Point number one, a simple one. Germany can’t bail out Spanish banks. It’s illegal and unconstitutional. I know that democracy has taken a pasting recently – just witness an unelected Italian government or the almost total absence of democratic consultation over the fiscal stability treaty. (Take a bow, Ireland, for remembering that voters matter.) But even in these undemocratic times, the rule of law still matters. Germany is coming under acute pressure to break or bend laws passed in good faith. It is right to resist.

Secondly, another simple point. As a hedge fund manager, I’m charged with looking after money on behalf of my investors. It’s my job to make money when the markets are good, to avoid losing it when they’re not. And one of my rules is the oldest one in the market: you never double up on a losing trade. You don’t throw good money after bad.

That plain good sense has been altogether lost in recent times. Europe has too much debt, right? So what’s the solution everyone’s been talking about? Answer: more debt. Yes, sure, we’ve been hurling money – whether borrowed or printed – at these problems for the past four years. That solution has clearly failed … yet the answer, apparently, is to do the same again, only on a larger scale. That’s craziness, the very definition of insanity.

What makes it worse is that we see the same recycled advisers coming up with the same failed solutions. I estimate that, if you include guarantees, the co-ordinated money printing since 2008 has currently added at least $14trillion to the global money supply. That’s almost one quarter of world GDP. Does anyone really think that if $14 trillion hasn’t solved the problem, more money is going to do the trick? The problems and challenges have been getting worse, not better.

And third, don’t we live in a capitalist world? Where smart ideas are meant to make money, where dumb ideas lose it. Capitalism without bankruptcy is comparable to Catholicism without hell – yet G7 leaders seem ready to gang up on Germany for holding fast to this basic truth. If a Spanish or Greek bank has got itself into trouble by making bad bets with its shareholders’ capital, it deserves to lose everything. If the Spanish government wants to fix its financial system, it should do so with money belonging to its own taxpayers.

And finally, the Elefant in the Zimmer. Germany doesn’t have the money to bail out Europe. In the first place, its debt to GDP ratio is actually worse than Spain’s. It’s about the same as Britain’s, and we’re hardly in fine financial fettle at the moment. Furthermore, those ratios are based on the official debt numbers … which exclude, for example, any notion of pension liabilities, an area where Germany has massively under-provided over the years. The German economy itself is robust, but that country’s pensioners are going to need every ounce of that muscle for themselves.

Merkel is unwilling to bail out Spanish banks – which would be unconstitutional – despite the encouragement of the G7

Personally, I think Angela Merkel is resisting the G7 pressure for some honourable reasons. I think she doesn’t want to break the law. I think she believes completely in the law of capitalist consequences: that the people who make the mistakes need to be the ones to pay for them.

But she’s also a numerate, intelligent woman. She knows that Germany’s financial strength is far from impregnable. The country’s financial capacity is strong, precisely because she and her predecessors have taken care not to overload it – not to do to Germany what Blair and Brown did to Britain. I don’t want a superstate any more than you do. I certainly don’t want a British Prime Minister to be advocating the development of such a state. But fortunately, I think Merkel doesn’t want one either. Can’t finance it, doesn’t want it. Let’s hope she holds firm

I published this in todays Daily Mail

Those two acronyms apply — with as many exclamation points as you care to add — to a piece published yesterday in the New York Times. The op-ed by Greg Smith, a former Executive Director of Goldman Sachs, accused the firm of having abandoned its principles in pursuit of profit. Specifically, he says, ‘The environment [at Goldman] now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it. To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money.’

That may not immediately strike you as remarkable — or at least, you might find it remarkable merely that it took Greg Smith a dozen years to notice the nature of the beast he worked for. It would be like a Santorum aide quitting because he found his boss too Catholic. Or like a Romney aide quitting because he didn’t want to work for a rich guy.

Yet Smith’s testimony is important in two ways. First, Smith is a genuinely senior figure. The Goldman spin machine is already out in force to blat away his comments, but Smith ran the US Equity Derivatives business for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. That doesn’t place him at the top of the firm, or even in the next rank down, but his job is — sorry, was — of real heft and substance. It’s people like Smith who are most closely in touch with how the firm treats its clients day to day.

Secondly, his article summarizes the entire problem of the last few years in a remarkably succinct way. The financial industry — exemplified and led by Goldman Sachs — lost touch with its clients. It forgot its ethics. It forgot that its first duty was to serve others.

I believe Smith is right. When I first joined the financial services industry thirty years back, Goldman had an almost unblemished reputation. It cared more about its integrity than its rivals. For a long time it wouldn’t handle a hostile M&A bid, because it wasn’t sure it would be able to preserve its ethics in the trench warfare of a proxy fight. The firm did well financially, because it did right ethically. The two things fed each other.

But as other firms improved their act, as competition intensified, Goldman sought other ways to maintain its edge. Since everyone fought over the same Ivy League and business school graduates, since everyone paid top dollar, since everyone compelled their employees to work all the hours of the clock, Goldman figured that it could make money from an ethical arbitrage. In plainer language, the firm’s senior executives thought, ‘We’re Goldman, we can shaft our clients.’

And they did. I think the firm has been going sour for longer than Smith suggests, but he works there. Maybe he knows more. They key point, however, lies in his remark that, ‘I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them … It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off.’

And of course, competition breeds a response. Goldman has been so good at doing what it does that others follow. There has been, during my time on the Street and in the City of London, a long slide downhill in ethics. We used to serve clients. Now we serve ourselves. I myself became a hedge fund owner so I could choose my own investors, select my own investment strategy, and cleave to my own ethical path. I’m shocked to reflect that there is almost no leading Wall Street firm I would now be willing to work for. I think they’re cowboys.

There is a still more somber side to this story, however, and it’s that the people we pay to protect us from these rogues have become the rogues’ own henchmen, nodding dolls that wave through every new outrage. David Stockman, a former White House budget director, said in an interview with the Associated Press,

Here’s the heart of the matter. The Fed is a patsy. It is a pathetic dependent of the big Wall Street banks, traders and hedge funds. Everything [it does] is designed to keep this rickety structure from unwinding. If you had a [former Fed Chairman] Paul Volcker running the Fed today — utterly fearless and independent and willing to scare the hell out of the market any day of the week — you wouldn’t have half, you wouldn’t have 95 percent, of the speculative positions today.

He’s right. Smith is right and Stockman is right. Read those two pieces (here and here) and you have everything in a nutshell. The moral corruption at the heart of the Wall Street. The regulatory failure that means the Fed, the SEC, Congress and every other regulatory agency we have are failing in their duty to protect ordinary citizens. That Goldman is a vampire squid has long been recognized. The conflicted and non-transparent nature of the aquarium is, as yet, far too little understood.

Asked how he sees the immediate financial future, Stockman says, ‘The carnage will be unimaginable.’ He’s right again and I’ll bet Greg Smith agrees. But you know what? Nothing will change. There are times when you have to be teenage to know what to say. OMG and WTF.

This article was published in the Huffington Post and may be found here

"This looks like a very solid and robust recovery to me" - B. Bernanke

Just how wrong can a policymaker be?

Take this news, that as late as 2006 the Fed managed to miss obvious signs of collapse in the US housing bubble. Although the stats pointed to a once-in-a-century boom which would, unless financial gravity went on holiday, turn into a once-in-a-century bust, somehow those guys at the Fed thought that a gradual stabilization and firming of prices was in the cards.

That’s despite the obviously manic prices, despite the obviously crazed (and often fraudulent) activity in the mortgage markets.

Now you might think so what? That’s history, right?

Well, yes – except the same guys are in charge, and the same guys are pumping vast amounts of American dollars into supporting the housing market. Since January 2009, some $1.25 trillion have gone into supporting this market – which has nevertheless fallen. Current reports suggest that the Fed may be contemplating additional purchases of $750 billion.

But we all know what happens when you plunge huge amounts of cash into a fundamentally unsound asset: you lose money. In this case, unelected officials at the Federal Reserve lose US taxpayer money. And maybe it would be worth taking a risk on these things, if you really thought the guys in charge knew what they were doing. But they don’t. In 2006, they saw a bubble and called it stable. In 2012, they’re thinking about placing $2 trillion on the same number of the roulette wheel and hoping for a better outcome. That’s bold policy-making for sure. But also dumber than taking a bungee jump without checking your rope.