Le marché selon Hussman

Budi pense que John Hussman, manager du fond d'investissement éponyme, est un économiste sensé, et lit avec intérêt ses commentaires hebdomadaires. Discutant cette semaine les conséquences inflationnistes du sauvetage du système financier US orchestré par les autorités (conséquences à long terme, autrement dit un climat inflationniste de longue durée pourrait se mettre en place dans un délai de 2 ou 3 ans), Hussman nous livre les deux observations capitales qui doivent, selon Budi, orienter toute réflexion sur la situation actuelle des marchés. D'abord:

this bailout is not really a defense of the global financial system, as much as it is a defense of bank bondholders against any loss whatsoever, quickly orchestrated and sold to a confused public as the only option, when it is nothing of the sort.

Ensuite:

it is literally the most important fiscal and bureaucratic event that we are likely to observe in our lifetimes, and is very possibly the precursor to enormous future economic difficulties. You simply cannot have an economy lend out trillions of dollars in bad debt, and then make the lenders whole with public funds (while still facing a massive second wave of probable mortgage defaults) without destructive repercussions. There is very little chance, in my view, that the current downturn is over. We have enjoyed a nice reprieve – if over a trillion dollars in redistribution could not accomplish even a reprieve, it would be a surprise. It's clear that investors are hopeful that we can simply return to rich valuations, debt-financed economic expansion, and abnormal profit margins based on excessive leverage. From my perspective, this hope is as thin as those that we observed at the peak of the internet bubble, the housing bubble, and the profit margin peak of 2007.