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De Vlaamse kermis op de Amerikaanse beurzen houdt aan.
Het is kenmerkend voor de algemene toestand van de Amerikaanse maatschappij dat er zelfs volksfeesten uitbreken naar aanleiding van de dood van een vergeten Al-Quada leider. De beelden op TV deden zowaar denken aan de massabetogingen op het Tahrirplein in Caïro enige tijd geleden. Het toont nogmaals met verve aan hoe de Amerikanen aan het afglijden zijn, geenzelfvertrouwen meer hebben, en zich precies daarom euforisch gedragen omwille van de moord op een Osama Bin Laden.
De volgende stap kan onmiddellijk gezet worden.
Het is angstaanjagend hoe de financiële wereld zich nog steeds op sleeptouw laat nemen door Wall Street, waar een knettergekke beurshausse aan de gang is, volledig aangevuurd door de onverantwoorde monetaire politiek van Ben Bernanke.
Dit stemt toch tot nadenken. Hoe is het mogelijk dat ogenschijnlijk zeer verstandige mensen er alles aan doen om, net na een enorme zware financiële en economische crisis, opnieuw kolossale zeepbellen te creëren. Het klopt dat de superrijken er op korte termijn alleen nóg rijker door worden, maar uiteindelijk kan dit enkel eindigen in een economisch inferno voor het overgrote deel van de bevolking, zowel in de VS als daarbuiten. En dat kan en mag toch nooit de bedoeling zijn.
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) The U.S. country index of the Billion Prices Project, a real-time inflation index published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is back after mysteriously disappearing last week.
The BPP tracked online prices of over a half million products sold online in seven nations. OK, so it wasnt a billion prices, but it was certainly large enough to be a representative sample of a broad spectrum of products and services.
The U.S. index had recently become increasingly popular in the economic blogosphere. It was thus a growing source of embarrassment for the Fed because it showed much greater inflation across a wide spectrum of goods and services, generally not impacted by energy prices, than the Fed has been willing to admit to.
The Billion Prices Project was showing much stronger inflation before MIT briefly pulled the plug.
The MIT research team behind the BPP briefly posted an announcement on its website last week that they would no longer publish the BPP country indexes, but would publish a world index in its place. It mentioned that they were working on a deal with a partner to resume publication of the country indexes. The announcement said that the country indexes were just too much work (Im paraphrasing here), and that the team had more important economic research to tend to. This is like a politician quitting to spend more time with the family.
On Monday morning, the site was down completely, with only a notice that it would be back soon. Later Monday, the site was restored, with updated data through Sunday. See for yourself at the Billion Prices Project site.
Being the cynical sort that I am, I dont think that the disappearance was coincidence or due purely to the MIT Sloan School of Management needing to get back to its more important research. The data that they were providing was increasingly a thorn in the Feds side. Suddenly, and with no good reason or significant advance notice, it was gone. Connect the dots.
Before coming back on line, the last chart of the U.S. BPP index was posted on April 13. It reflected an annualized inflation rate of more than 7% over the past three months, and over 4% since the Fed kicked off QE2 last November.
MIT had made a point of emphasizing that the index essentially did not include energy prices, and had relatively little impact from food, since these items are minimally represented online. The data was especially embarrassing to the Fed because just a few months ago the Federal Open Market Committee meeting minutes had memorialized a quote about how difficult it was to understand the mechanisms of inflation in real time. Maybe this little MIT chart made things just a little too easy for the hoi polloi to understand inflation, while the FOMC members couldnt.
MIT stopped updating the chart without warning on April 14 and it sat there quietly on its website for about a week with no updates. Then came the very briefly posted notice that the U.S. index would be going away.
MITs Alberto Cavallo, one of the economists who developed the BPP, told MarketWatch, The paranoia about the Fed or the idea that we have been pressured to hide the data are completely unfounded. We are working on a way to continue to produce these indexes. The BPP website will be re-launched soon.
It didnt take long.
Just two hours after the original version of this report noting the disappearance of the BPP index, the website reappeared just as mysteriously, including the U.S. country index. It showed U.S. inflation raging on, now running at an annualized rate of 8% over the past four months. Im just hoping that MIT will find the resources to keep the BPP going. Coming from an unbiased, mainstream institution, this is one of the best tools we have to counter the Feds insistence that inflation is not a problem.
Lee Adler is the publisher of the Wall Street Examiner.
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Irrationele uitbundigheid gisteren op de beurzen
De sterke bedrijfsresultaten van IBM, Intel, Yahoo en Apple redden voorlopig de markten, want op macro-economisch gebied is er voor investeerders geen enkele reden om gelukkig te zijn.
Merk trouwens ook op dat het allemaal IT-bedrijven betreft, die niet onderhevig zijn aan de hoge grondstofprijzen.
Dergelijke opstoten zijn natuurlijk mooi meegenomen voor de FED, die niets liever ziet dan een stijgende beurs. Op die manier vormt dit een aanvulling op het laks gevoerde monetaire beleid.
