Okay, Mr. Bug (Skeeter, to your close associates) -- I just read (or -- pretended to read, since this stuff is almost totally unreadable, it's so boring) the Paul Kasriel (of Northern Trust) piece on exploding monetary numbers.
I used to read Mr. Kasriel's stuff almost daily (about a year or two ago), since I am very heavily involved in interest rate futures trading.
After a while, it was clear to me that no matter what the data was (were), Mr. K always twisted it into a "it proves there's inflation" mode of interpretation.
This becomes "old" very quickly, especially when inflation has been trending sideways to down for roughly ten years now.
I stopped reading his stuff, figuring my time was better spent watching Tom & Jerry cartoons with my kids (among other things).
I cannot refute what he says. I did study this stuff at business school, but I did not "get it" (the way I "got" things like, for example, marginal cost (in introductory micro-economics)).
As Lawrence Kudlow says -- common sense indicates that if any of this stuff were perceived to be a problem, the foreign exchange value of the dollar would not be high (and gold low).
I do not think the U.S. is on the verge of big monetary expansion.
I think Mr. K is "data mining."
Jon. |
