So I'm being facetious. Or am I? Bear with me if you're of the school of thought that loose monetary policy was behind the dot com bubble, then behind the housing bubble, and now behind...
The outstanding Econbrowser posted two weeks ago this little jewel. In essence, the Fed's pushed "risk-free" real interest rates into the negative (we've all seen that plot of the real return on the 5-year TIPS , right?) and now all that money is pouring into commodities. He presents this table:
| aluminum | 29.2 |
| barley | 7.5 |
| cocoa | 25.9 |
| coffee | 23.5 |
| copper | 26.3 |
| corn | 21.2 |
| cotton | 32.0 |
| gold | 17.4 |
| lead | 32.7 |
| oats | 33.8 |
| oil | 6.8 |
| silver | 37.8 |
| tin | 15.5 |
| wheat | 32.7 |
| zinc | 20.5 |
At a time of global slowdown, I call it scary (I still believe in decoupling, but as I said here, that perfectly compatible with the world slowing down because of an adjustment in the US's housing market). Nah, I call it bubbly: some investors might have gone in looking for a safe haven, but I'm sure lots more are going in just because of a believe in on-going asset appreciation. Look at those numbers! Let's hope there's a soft-landing for that one too. Wait: "too"?
No comments:
Post a Comment