Another one, Ruchir Sharma, global strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, displayed his computer keyboard skills with "The Dollar--the Fed--Still Rule"--in the Wall Street Journal. The article begins with what is apparently one of the Journal's editorial page requirements, the usual screed against Donal Trump.
To many readers this article would appear to about The Fed. It isn't. This is about Trump, his followers and anyone contemplating voting for him and their backward ways and inward turning views that are spreading around the globe. As you might expect, according to this apologist, it's happening at the wrong time. Which should leave you with a fair question: When is the right time, sir? We think we know the answer to that.
What follows is a weak defense of the Fed's incompetence and a not so subtle plea for expanding their mandates. They have screwed up the main two things they claimed they were responsible for, employment and inflation, and now because the interconnectedness of the globe they need to expand their mandate.
"The Fed has been forced to recognize it can no longer focus on America alone," Sharma writes. He then notes in early 2015 the Fed officially announced for the first time it was considering "international development" into it decisions. The financial crisis began in 2008. This is a real prescient group of non-elected bureaucrats.
"Though Mr. Trump argues that America must tend to its own affairs because it is weak, the Fed's evolving role shows the limits of this argument." Sharma sets up his straw man with this next line. "The U.S. may have slipped as an economic superpower, falling to 23% of global GDP from 60% in 1960. But as a financial superpower Washington has never been more influential. Forecasts of the dollar's downfall have completely missed the mark."
He shrewdly covers a lot of ground there. So let's break it down piece by piece. On the contrary, the evolving Fed role proves Trump's view. The Federal Reserve is a powerful institution being used to spread U.S. hegemony via the political and military industrial complex at the expense of its citizenry. Another globalist tip is "Washington has never been more influential." In some corners that would labeled a blatant lie. We will be nice and just call it deceptive. Apparently, Mr. Sharma hasn't been following this administration's foreign policy record very close.
Forecasts about the dollar's lack of weakness is a backhanded shot at gold. It's an attempt to reassure and keep whatever confidence is left in the fiat money world from further decay. Without their printing presses central bankers are nothing more than a group of overpaid bureaucratic eunuchs, cautiously probing their way around on their hand and knees for their dropped set of keys when the power suddenly went out.
"The Fed is caught in a trap," he says. "Every time the U.S. economy starts to perk up, the Fed signals it's intent to start to return interest rates to normal. But the signal sends shock waves through a heavily indebted global economy and back to American shores. (We wonder how long he struggled to come up with that "back to American shores" phrase.) So the Fed delays rate increases as it did in June and again this week."
To begin with, nobody--not the Fed, this author or us--knows what and where normal interest rates are. Only the market can determine normal interest rates. And that won't happen and can't happen because a bunch of bureaucrats, mostly who've never had real jobs, can't fathom the unfathomable. He mentions heavy global indebtedness but fails to suggest who and what caused it. Some how the term politicians isn't mentioned. We were probably asleep at the outhouse, but we'll ask the question anyway: How many times has the U.S. economy started to perk up in the last decade?
The real truth is this gentleman is a globalist, maybe even a neocon, like his editorial friends at the Journal. The Fed is part of the problem. The status quo crowd are trembling weekends in their under ground getaway caves and never is the only good time for the change that is badly needed, the change in part Trump represents but most probably won't achieve if elected.
The only thing new and it isn't new. But we all know history tells us what that is. Like the words of an old song slightly rearranged: The only thing different, the only thing new, he's got your picture and I'm stuck here with you. For now.
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