Jim Grant: The Fed Turned the Stock Market Into a 'Hall of Mirrors'
The editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer on the recent turmoil.
"Confoundingly to me, people have come to be quite accepting of the value attached by fiat to these pieces of paper we call currency," says Jim Grant, who's the editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer and the author of The Forgotten Depression: The Crash That Cured Itself.
"Are prices meant to be imposed from on high, or discovered by individuals acting spontaneously in markets? The readers and viewers of Reason know the answer to that but they're regrettably in the minority."
Grant sat down with Reason magazine editor-in-chief Matt Welch on Tuesday to discuss the underlying causes of the recent market turbulence, why we don't really "have interest rates anymore," and how the classic jazz song "It's Only a Paper Moon" provides a fitting metaphor for the equities market.
Seven minutes.
Shot by Jim Epstein and Anthony Fisher. Edited by Epstein.
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You lost me at bow tie.
Bowties are cool.
Like I'm going to be lectured on economics by the Nation of Islam. I DON'T THINK SO.
You must be a hipster.
^This.
His comments about how cheap money (very low interest rates) not only affects demand but also supply draws a straight line to the current issues in China and the affects of stimulated over supply.
Elegantly but succinctly stated, Jim.
At it's core a stock market is a marketplace to purchase a piece of an enterprise. We are SO far from that today. Today it's a sham supported by wealthy people who need to put their cash someplace and investment funds who manage people's 401Ks. It is operated by algorithms and computers just like gamblers in Vegas.
Is it any wonder between government regulation and the political manipulation of the financial markets we're at 1% (adjusting for population and inflation) grown and going nowhere?
I'm not an economist, nor a scatologist but I know fresh shit when I smell it.
Take my word for it - it's old shit...very old.
The readers and viewers of Reason known the answer to that but they're regrettably in the minority.
I don't know any such thing! If learned men from a central location plan out economic activity for their lessers, how can we go wrong?
I recall being attacked by several fellow commentarians for telling them that the stock market has become one big bubble because of government policy causing investors to divert unnaturally high amounts of money into it. They thought I was blaspheming against capitalism itself for daring to impugn the integrity of the equity market.
Really? I don't know anybody here other than shriek who doesn't believe the stock market is one gigantic bubble.
I find that hard to believe, unless your phrasing made you come off like a leftoid.
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They've helped turn the real estate markets in a hall of mirrors as well.
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