A Havenstein Moment.

A Havenstein Moment.

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A Havenstein Moment.
A Havenstein Moment.
They don't know anything.

They don't know anything.

An "abomination of speculation."

Rudy Havenstein's avatar
Rudy Havenstein
Jan 17, 2024
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A Havenstein Moment.
A Havenstein Moment.
They don't know anything.
20
9
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β€œIt is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.”

Karl Kristian Steincke


People think that the Fed knows something, right? You know, why are they talking about this??

They don't know anything. All you've got to do is look at what they have said for the last 20 or 25 years and then what happened. I mean, Bernanke was completely clueless about the subprime and the real estate bubble.

Greenspan said specifically real estate could not get in a bubble, because real estate wasn't an arbitrage between Portland, Maine and Portland, Oregon. I'm not making this up, he said that.

I remember. So they don't know anything, and if you have any doubt go, read the Fed transcripts - I don't mean the minutes, I mean the transcripts - that get released after five years.

I don't think they have any special knowledge, and you can kind of see from them that they kind of flail around, and they have been the cause of tremendous amounts of financial dislocation and misallocated capital in the last 25 years, and they're still held up with some reverence, which is completely mind-blowing to me.

So I have a very low opinion of the Fed, and I have very low opinion of their ability to get things right.

- Bill Fleckenstein

β€œWhile it's true that a record high 58% of American households do own stocks via mutual funds or as individual shares, in the aggregate the amount of stock most of these folks own is tiny…While bullish surges…are welcome to pretty much all investors, the fact is that the majority of the gains go to the richest stockholders.”

Data: Federal Reserve; Chart: Axios Visuals
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fyi There’s no paywall on any of my posts up until late-April 2023, so go check some of the old stuff out, and see if you might want to donate.

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