I've been listening to the audio book 'Wisdom of Crowds' for a while now. I highly recommend it. Apparently there situations where crowds can be expected to make intelligent guesses and when they are expected to act dumb depends on a number of factors
Larry Meyer argues Ben Bernanke owns the FOMC http://blogs.ft.com/money-supply/2010/07/07/laws-of-the-fed/#more-57796
Hussman on morning star http://pragcap.com/rare-interview-with-john-hussman-why-he-is-bearish-right-now
Krugman's lastest: Useless spending by Congress pays for itself http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/self-defeating-austerity/ I would agree that SOME spending might pay for itself, like necessary infrastructure projects and others. But they did a $750B worth of stimulus, they are likely to have done all the necessary and crucial things that goverment can do(there is only so many of them, Krugman acts as if the number of those things is $1.5T or whatever was the stimulus he was asking for in 2009) and had to pile on pork and special favors to do the rest. And if they didnt do the necessary things in the first package, they wont do on the next. Furthermore Krugman continues to talk about the 'zero bound', which is irrelevant. As rates are still quite above zero in the 1y 2y and on USTs, and the Fed could bring those down to zero with one FOMC statement change("Economy is not doing well, we will keep rates at 0% for the next 2 years, this is a timetable, 9-1 decision, thank you")
I'm pretty sure that's what the Fed just did with their leak to the WaPo last night. I am no longer short the AUD/USD. Instead, I am now short AUD/JPY. The USD could go to zero by November. The US is a banana republic, nothing more.
FOMC minutes from now on will be huge, publicly the voters seem to shy to come out and say they need to do more but at the table they seem more honest
Hoisington and Hunt are out w/their latest. These guys have been correctly bullish on long term Treasuries forever, and remain bullish today. In this essay, among other things, they try to explain why the recent massive expansion in the monetary base does not mean there has been an expansion in the money supply, and therefore is not inflationary. http://www.scribd.com/doc/34240295/HIM2010Q2NP
Duke's comment regarding no more Fed stimulus are surprising. Lacker I would consider almost irrelevant as he loves to run his mouth(like when he said the fed might not buy all the assets they promised). I have no idea what is she thinking, I suppose they really believe the banks are about to start some kind of lending boom that will prop up M2. I'm curious to see how a 5-10% in home prices will affect lending standards