The Fed plan is to continue sopping up all those toxic mortgage bonds that are slopping around the system. They also plan on buying some $300 billion in U.S. Treasury notes over the next six months.
Funny that, because they are the only ones who want Treasuries and such right now. Certainly almost no one besides the Japanese and Chinese is interested. And yet outsiders are supposed to be funding most all of Washington’s various recovery plans.
As per the accountants at the Treasury Department, net foreign purchases of long-term U.S. Treasury notes, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds, corporate debt and stocks dropped from a positive $34.7 billion in December ’08 to a negative $43 billion in January ’09, a 224% net decline in one short month!
Now consider that both Japan and China actually increased their holdings over this period (although even they came in under their 12-month purchase average). Seems to me that right about the same moment that we are trying to flog $2 trillion in shiny new “Obama-Bonds” on the open market, most everyone else is trying to unload nasty old used U.S. notes onto that same market.
The upshot? That light at the end of the tunnel that the cheerleaders were touting? That’s the 4:19 express out of Galveston,and the Obama recovery program is sitting square in the middle of the track.
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