We’d like to remind Forumites to please avoid political debate on the Forum.
This is to keep it a safe and useful space for MoneySaving discussions. Threads that are – or become – political in nature may be removed in line with the Forum’s rules. Thank you for your understanding.
PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING: Hello Forumites! In order to help keep the Forum a useful, safe and friendly place for our users, discussions around non-MoneySaving matters are not permitted per the Forum rules. While we understand that mentioning house prices may sometimes be relevant to a user's specific MoneySaving situation, we ask that you please avoid veering into broad, general debates about the market, the economy and politics, as these can unfortunately lead to abusive or hateful behaviour. Threads that are found to have derailed into wider discussions may be removed. Users who repeatedly disregard this may have their Forum account banned. Please also avoid posting personally identifiable information, including links to your own online property listing which may reveal your address. Thank you for your understanding.
📨 Have you signed up to the Forum's new Email Digest yet? Get a selection of trending threads sent straight to your inbox daily, weekly or monthly!
Octobers MPC Decision
Comments
-
Not my style exactly, but..Fed Up With The Fed
September 2007
To: The Fed From: Long or Short Capital Re: You suck
Dear the Fed,
You suck. You don't have a backbone and as a result you are slowly and
very surely making our country and our currency irrelevant. Usually the
masses rebel and bring down great empires but luckily for us democracy
fixed that problem.
Unfortunately, democracy can't fix how lame and fickle you are and so
you will be our ruin.
A few things to tell you:
1) Inflation isn't 2% like your pathetic CPI ex-Food & Energy says it
is.
First of all, as far as I can tell food and energy are the only two
items you should NEVER exclude from an inflation index. Tell your wife
and kids they can have everything in the consumer basket except food and
energy and you will quickly see that they are actually the two MOST
important and indispensable factors in the CPI. You can find substitutes
for, or go without, everything in the basket EXCEPT those two.
Secondly, stop using "Seasonally Adjusted Intervention Analysis" it's as
sketchy as the Seldom-Accepted-Accounting-Principles (SAAP) we use to
cook the books here at LoS. I mean writing a computer program to
automatically remove any items in the basket which deviate meaningfully
from the previous year? Isn't the point of the data to SHOW the change
versus the previous year not hide it? Oh, I found the list of items
that you've adjusted for and it's embarrassing.
The majority of adjustments remove price increases with much less
frequent adjustments for price declines. You've basically left dairy
products out of the index for the last 5 years citing outrageous
one-offs like "a generally tight cheese market" as justification for
this. And as if reporting a separate ex-energy index wasn't enough
you've statistically intervened to remove the effect of higher energy
prices even in the index that's supposed to INCLUDE energy. In one
outrageous case you removed the effect of fuel oil for three months in
March 03 and the reason you cited for the "abnormal" move was the "end
of winter," yeah I was surprised as sh-t when winter ended in Spring 03,
it was wild! For a real measure go back to the old method, you'll see
inflation is at least double what you're reporting.
2) Grow a spine you slimy invertebrate
The market has a memory. Over the past 15 years you trained us to
believe that no matter how much risk we take, and how much we lever that
risk, if anything really scary comes down the pike then you will bail us
out. Now we all run around like reckless, spoiled 16 year olds bidding
up the price of anything we can get our hands on and not worrying about
consequences because daddy
(Greenspan) and mommy (Bernanke - that's right you're spineless AND a
girl) will get us out of any trouble we get in. Well you're only making
the problem worse and we aren't learning anything so we'll continue
taking stupid leveraged bets creating bubble after bubble so you can
tip-toe around trying not to pop any of them.
3) You're lying to yourself if you think we still have real GDP growth
in this country.
I challenge you to find one measure of wealth OTHER THAN THE DOLLAR
which shows the US economy as worth more now than in 2001. If I wanted
to buy our country it would cost me 30% fewer euros today than it did
in 2001, it would cost me less bars of gold, less barrels of oil, less
ounces of copper, less btu's of natural gas, less cubic feet of lumber,
less of almost anything that has intrinsic value. Yet you keep reporting
GDP growth, why? Because your quick fix is to effectively print more
money so that in dollar units everything is getting more "valuable." But
guess what, to the 95% of the world that doesn't use dollars the true
value of the US economy has been shrinking, rapidly.
It's like a company doing a 5 for 4 reverse stock split every year and
claiming to have 20% eps growth, you haven't changed the earnings just
the units those earnings are measured in. The rest of the world is
telling you our country is worth less by massively selling our currency
and you still naively think we're growing value - I feel like I'm at a
gathering of the flat earth society or in Zimbabwenomics 101.
This will come back to bite you but not nearly as much as it bites us.
The cheaper the dollar gets the more expensive all our imports get,
inflation will rise faster than you can statistically manipulate it and
when that happens expected inflation goes through the roof (which as you
yourself have pointed out many times is by far the most serious threat
to economic existence). Then the only way out will be interest rate
increases as swift and severe as all the cuts have been. All the
bubbles will pop at once and then we're really in for it.
Maybe it's 10 years away but there's a toll collector at the end of
every free ride.
When will you learn that recession is ok? It's actually healthy, it's
the cycle, it's how things have worked for a thousand years. Trying to
prevent every small recession is going to end in one huge recession
(i.e. depression) and no one will trust you anymore which is a much
bigger problem. No economy in history has ever been able to
successfully inflate its way to health, this won't be any different.
Benny, I know you had to trade in your hypothalamus and spine to be fed
chairman and now you biologically over-react to everything and are
incapable of standing up straight when confronted by bully-morons like
Kramer. But I'm hoping you at least still have your brain. Before you
had this job all your published research showed that central banks
should strictly target inflation and should be ignorant of asset prices.
You had good reasons for this conclusion, don't forget them.
Subprimely,
Long or Short Capital ManagementErrors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. - Jefferson0 -
Melissa177 wrote: »Not my style exactly, but..
Someone write a similar letter to Gordon Clown!
Or rant at him on Youtube. Now there's a plan. Lets bring down Brown virally. :beer:0 -
I think they'll hold again this month.
If they drop we need to get ready for the upcoming election!Disclaimer: Any spelling mistakes or incorrect grammar is purely coincidental and in no way reflects the intelligence of the author.0 -
^and even more inflation - yipeee:rolleyes:BLOODBATH IN THE EVENING THEN? :shocked: OR PERHAPS THE AFTERNOON? OR THE MORNING? OH, FORGET THIS MALARKEY!
THE KILLERS :cool:
THE PUNISHER :dance: MATURE CHEDDAR ADDICT:cool:0 -
-
JohnInDebt wrote: »I think they'll hold again this month.
If they drop we need to get ready for the upcoming election!
And here's me thinking that the BofE are independent. :rotfl:0 -
^they are about as independent as the inflation figures:rolleyes:BLOODBATH IN THE EVENING THEN? :shocked: OR PERHAPS THE AFTERNOON? OR THE MORNING? OH, FORGET THIS MALARKEY!
THE KILLERS :cool:
THE PUNISHER :dance: MATURE CHEDDAR ADDICT:cool:0 -
5.75 unchanged -phew!BLOODBATH IN THE EVENING THEN? :shocked: OR PERHAPS THE AFTERNOON? OR THE MORNING? OH, FORGET THIS MALARKEY!
THE KILLERS :cool:
THE PUNISHER :dance: MATURE CHEDDAR ADDICT:cool:0 -
Oh well. Big Bank did me a favour with their molly coddling internet usage policy.
Thanks Big Bank.0 -
free4440273 wrote: »^they are about as independent as the inflation figures:rolleyes:
You're not saying that Gordon rigs CPI are you? He's an honest bloke, he'd never do a thing like that! :rotfl:0
This discussion has been closed.
Confirm your email address to Create Threads and Reply

Categories
- All Categories
- 352.1K Banking & Borrowing
- 253.5K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
- 454.2K Spending & Discounts
- 245.1K Work, Benefits & Business
- 600.7K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
- 177.4K Life & Family
- 258.9K Travel & Transport
- 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
- 16.2K Discuss & Feedback
- 37.6K Read-Only Boards