Ruling Class Without a Clue

What are we to think about the market falling out of bed after Gentle Ben Bernanke’s hint last week that he might start tapering off the money printing operation at the Fed? Was it because the Fed is, in fact, following a dangerous deflationary policy, as Larry Kudlow writes? Given that gold and other metals are down 30 percent from their highs, Larry has a point.

Or was it nothing to do with the Fed, but instead renewed problems with the Euro? Or with the property implosion in China?

Probably the answer is: None of the above. The truth is probably the old one about Hollywood and how to produce a hit movie: Nobody knows nothing.

The truth is that governments are always like pitchers trying to pitch out of a jam with all the bases loaded. We the people want a little free stuff. The ruling class wants to seize and hold political power. Promising free stuff is how you get elected.

Usually, those vote-buying promises result in policies that damage the economy. President Obama has been worse than most. The result is that politicians and their officials are always involved in trying to band-aid over the distortions and the wounds they have inflicted on the economy in their crude bid for power.

That is the way to understand the global economic situation. It is governments trying to paper over their mistakes. In the U.S. the government is trying to paper over a credit system that is still badly holed from the mortgage meltdown.

There’s only one way that the ruling class knows how to deal with the inevitable consequence of gunning the housing market with mortgage subsidies. Print lots of money to float the underwater mortgages. The Fed wants to stop the presses, and it can, it will some day. But it doesn’t want to bring on another panic. The trouble is that even talk about ending its quantitative easing leads to a market swoon.