Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
September 29, 2011 at 08:25 AM
A growing chorus of critics is questioning the efficacy of the Fed’s latest attempt to put downward pressure on long-term interest rates and “help make broader financial conditions more accommodative”—also known as Operation Twist.
Currency fund manager Axel Merk, president and CIO of Merk Investments, told the The Daily Ticker on Thursday that recent easing is flat out “useless,” and believes it is meant to “set the stage” for a third round of quantitative easing later this year.
“He is just doing it much more slowly than many of us would have anticipated” in an effort to prime markets for additional money printing, Merk (left) said.
When asked for the reasoning behind his prediction, Merk said he believed Bernanke had yet to see the dollar fall as much as he would like; the Fed chairman can still use this one key tool to devalue the dollar even more to help spur exports. In Merk’s view, according to The daily Ticker, “Bernanke will spend the next few months arguing that inflation remains low and that little harm would come from firing up the printing presses again.”
