In what reads today as a further warning against Bernanke-style quantitative easing, Mass observed:
"Even aggressive monetary intervention can do little to correct excess capital.. Once excess capacity develops, the forces that previously led to aggressive expansion are almost played out. Efforts to prolong high investment can produce even more excess capital and lead to a more pronounced readjustment later."
Mass concluded his 1978 paper with an observation from economist Robert Gordon:
"Why was the recovery of the 1930's so slow and halting in the United States, and why did it stop so far short of full employment? We have seen that the trouble lay primarily in the lack of inducement to invest. Even with abnormally low interest rates, the economy was unable to generate a volume of investment high enough to raise aggregate demand to the full employment level."
I've generally been critical of Keynes' willingness to advocate government spending regardless of its quality, which focused too little on the long-term effects of diverting private resources to potentially unproductive uses. His remark that "In the long-run we are all dead" was a reflection of this indifference. Still, I do believe that fiscal responses can be useful in a protracted economic downturn, and can include projects such as public infrastructure, incentives for research and development, and investment incentives in sectors that are not burdened with overcapacity. Additional deficit spending is harmful when it fails to produce a stream of future output sufficient to service the debt, so the expected productivity of these projects is the essential consideration. Given present economic conditions, it appears clear that Keynes was right about the dangers of easy monetary policy when an economic downturn results from overcapacity. As I noted last week in The Recklessness of Quantitative Easing, better options are available on the fiscal menu.
Market Climate
As of last week, the Market Climate for stocks remained characterized by an overvalued, overbought, overbullish condition. This has been historically associated with a poor return-risk profile and "negative skew" - a tendency for the market to establish a string of marginal new highs, and for occasional 2-3 day pullbacks to be followed by sharp recoveries. The pattern is for little overall progress, but repeated slight highs, terminating with a steep, abrupt decline that can wipe out weeks or months of gains in a matter of days. In statistical terms, the mode of the distribution is positive, the mean is negative, and the skew is downright wicked.
The Strategic Growth Fund remains fully hedged, with our put strikes raised close to the current market to tighten our downside protection, at a cost of just over 1% of assets in additional time premium. The Strategic International Equity Fund remains largely but not fully hedged against international equity fluctuations. Currency fluctuations typically account for only a small fraction the variability in international returns, so our primary risk is covered by equity hedges, but the Fund also has nearly one-third of its currency risk hedged as well. The Strategic Total Return Fund moved to a fairly defensive stance last week, with an average duration of less than 1.5 years, and only about 3% of assets in precious metals shares, 1% in foreign currencies, and 2% in utility shares. Though we sharply cut our precious metals exposure over the past few weeks on overbought price conditions and other factors, I expect that we'll continue to vary our exposure opportunistically. The Fed's insistence on bad policy will probably continue to support commodity hoarding behavior, but commodity market conditions threaten to become very tenuous if economic conditions strengthen. Presently, I remain concerned about additional weakness in employment, housing, and the broad economy, but we'll take our evidence as it comes.
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