"All of us would like to observe lower unemployment, but the belief that quantitative easing will materially contribute to this outcome is unsupported in both theory and evidence. The present course of Fed policy is destabilizing the global economy by contributing to a financial environment that encourages the allocation of scarce savings toward speculative activity, not productive investment. When 'QE' and the 'Bernanke put' are the sole focus of the financial markets – not productivity, not innovation, not sound policy options, not careful intermediation of capital, and certainly not the plight of the elderly that have been starved of interest income – it should be obvious that things have gone too far.
"This experiment has played out long enough. Establishing the largest fiscal and monetary imbalance in U.S. history has certainly created a pleasant environment for speculators, but it does not create employment, and it sows the seeds of the next collapse. The Fed is stepping on a gas pedal in the hope of making the wheels go faster, and instead the gasoline is spurting out of the tank and feeding speculative flames, because a reliable transmission mechanism does not exist."
--John Hussman, Ph.D., in his weekly market comment (includes an open letter to the Federal Open Market Committee)
