Lots of QE Bashers on Wall St.

     Glasner says there are so many QE bashers, so little time:

     "Both the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal have been full of articles and blog posts warning of the ill-effects of QE3."

      http://uneasymoney.com/2012/09/21/so-many-qe-bashers-so-little-time/

      What's weird is where these arguments are being made. We keep hearing them from CNBC, WSJ, the Financial Times.

       Many make the argument that QE only benefits the rich through inflated stocks and commodities while the poor pay higher gas prices. Now, this argument is not made only by Right of Center editorial pages.

       But when Donald Trump warns you that this will only benefit the rich it makes you suspicious. After all, that's what Trump wants.Why else would he support Romney?

      There has been some talk that QE is not working for another reason-oil prices fell last week. Some felt this proved that QE had lost its effectiveness.

       Then there's the usual garden variety fretting about how big the Fed's balance sheet has gotten. Surely galloping inflation is around the corner:

        "Last Monday an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, penned by five PhDs in economics, among them a former Secretary of the Treasury and an almost-guaranteed Nobel laureate (and most of them former members of the President's Council of Economic Advisors) minced no words in excoriating the current policy. We will look at that op-ed in detail below. The point is that there are grave reservations about the current policy among some very serious policy makers."

       Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-unintended-consequences-of-qe-infinity-2012-9#ixzz27PgCiOk5

       Of course all these guys are shills for the Romney campaign. There are QE bashers off Wall St. but it's those on it that are curious. It depends on what metrics you use. Sumner says it's already worked-after all, the market rose 200 points on the day it was announced along with a rise in TIPs spreads.

       I'm in the camp of it can't do any harm. It might do some good. After the big gains, the market has held onto them. Certainly we are living in a new policy regime now. This may be one of those rare paradigm shifts at the Fed-like what we got with Volcker in 1980.

        The balanced sheet thing, is a red herring. That has nothing to do with inflation. Volcker realized the same thing with his brief Monetarist experiment where the money supply exploded while inflation sunk.

         So there are more than enough naysayers on Left and Right-from the Austrians to the MMTers. My feeling is that while I agree that monetary is not all powerful, I don't think it's powerless either. This will be interesting.