It appears that
Pimco's Bill Gross is finally willing to blow the whistle on the fraudulent CPI statistics that I've been harping on for a while. Of course I doubt his motives, as it has been disclosed that he's shorter than a midget in the US Treasury market right now,
but that doesn't make him wrong:
"Changes in the way the Bureau of Labor Statistics measures prices over the past 25 years have led to the understating of inflation, Gross, co-chief investment officer of Newport Beach, California-based Pimco, said in a commentary on the company's Web site today. The Federal Reserve's focus on 'core' instead of 'headline' inflation has also helped understate the increase in prices, he said."
"Join me in lobbying for change in U.S. leadership, the attitude of its citizenry, and (to the point of this Outlook) the market's assumption of low relative U.S. inflation in comparison to our global competitors."
What took you so long Bill? Had to get "maximally short" before you blew the whistle eh?
I guess he's given up on the idea that he's gonna get his bailout in the MBS space.....
But despite my intense personal distaste for Bill Gross and his incessant "book talking" even a blind (or disingenuous) squirrel finds a nut once in a while, and it appears Bill has been reading The Ticker.
His urging of people to get out of the United States and into other nation's stocks and bonds is, unfortunately, exactly what people are likely to do as
confidence in our financial system and reporting continues to erode.
When the world's largest bond fund manager, based in the United States, says that people should move away from United States investments because of our incessant book cooking you had damn well better listen up!(You can read Bill's
full missive here)
Even better though is the fact that now all the stinky garbage that was pulled in the wake of ENRON - this time by
the banks - is coming to light,
as the stench can no longer be hidden under a couple of wraps of "newsprint" from the Wall Street Journal:
"'They never got the real problem fixed after Enron,' said Lynn Turner, the chief accountant for the Securities and Exchange Commission when the Enron scandal was exposed. 'When people find out how little FASB did, they're going to be shocked.
