I partly made this point last week. Now here’s Marc Faber saying it well:
The Fed has been flooding the system with money. The problem is the money doesn’t flow into the system evenly. It doesn’t increase economic activity and asset prices in concert. Instead, it creates dangerous excesses in countries and asset classes. Money-printing fueled the colossal stock-market bubble of 1999-2000, when the Nasdaq more than doubled, becoming disconnected from economic reality. It fueled the housing bubble, which burst in 2008, and the commodities bubble. Now money is flowing into the high-end asset market – things like stocks, bonds, art, wine, jewelry, and luxury real estate.
Money-printing boosts the economy of the people closest to the money flow. But it doesn’t help the worker in Detroit, or the vast majority of the middle class. It leads to a widening wealth gap. The majority loses, and the minority wins.
Bold added. Faber has neglected to mention that Big Government is “closest to the flow” of anybody; money-printing is, first and foremost, a hidden tax to pay for Obama’s oh-so-ingeniously-productive(!) deficits and spending. And a regressive tax, at that. Obamunism at work!
By the way, the effect that Faber talks about is well known to Austrian School economists and other believers in sound money; it’s called the Cantillon Effect.
And if anyone wants to say it’s Bernanke doing it, not Obama, my answer is this: Yes, but Bernanke was re-appointed by Obama and is absolutely doing what Obama needs and intends.