HONESTY ABOUT THE STIMULUS: “No one has the faintest idea what effect the stimulus has had.”
UPDATE: A hedge-fund reader emails:
“No one has the faintest idea what effect the stimulus has had.”
That’s not entirely true. In the bond and currency markets, the effect of elephantine borrowing is well-understood. A fiscally weakened America is the baked-in-the-cake default assumption of big finance players, from the hedge fund titans to the sovereign wealth funds of Asia and the Middle East.
The lack of Main Street impact is on the front pages. The corrosive longer term effect preoccupies the capital markets.
Uh oh.