The Feds Biggest Fear

Last week’s decision by the Fed to start another round of Quantitative Easing was met with only one dissenting vote by the Federal Open Market Committee. That does not mean everybody in the rest of the world thinks this is a good idea. Any country holding dollars is faced with a decrease in buying power. Some of the most powerful members of the G-20 are highly critical of the Fed’s money printing. Germany, Brazil and China all made negative comments about the Fed’s latest round of QE in a Bloomberg article over the weekend. It reported, “It’s our problem as well if the U.S. is no longer certain that the old recipes don’t work anymore,” German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said yesterday in Berlin. The Fed’s injection of $600 billion was “clueless” and won’t revive growth, he said. Brazil’s central bank president, Henrique Meirelles, said “excess liquidity” in the U.S. economy is creating “risks for everyone.” In China, Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai said “many countries are worried about the impact of the policy on their economies.” He also said the U.S. “owes us some explanation on their decision on quantitative easing.” (more)