Fleck on the Markets and Economy

Bill Fleckenstein is one of the best market pundits around. You'll rarely find him on CNBC because his views are typically Bearish (believes the stock market will go down) and that doesn't jive with CNBC's always Bullish (market will go up). Funny thing about CNBC though, their ratings cratered during the 01'-02' period and they realized that average joe only cares about the market when it's going up. CNBC has responded by becoming more of a stock cheerleading channel than a reliable news source.

Anyways, I've been reading "Fleck" for many years. He's one of my biggest investing influences and he wrote a great article for MSN on the current mess we are in. You can subscribe to his newsletter for $100 a year. It's the best $100 I spend every year.

Here is my favorite quote from his MSN article:

The post-Volcker Fed has changed all that. Ever since it bailed out Wall Street during the Long-Term Capital Management crisis in 1998, the financial system has become more leveraged and less transparent. In the ensuing 10 years, not only were interest rates not tightened to prevent a recurrence, the rules were loosened as the Glass-Steagall Act, which had regulated banks since 1935, was repealed. The Alan Greenspan-led Fed fomented a bubble in stocks, then chose to shortcut the aftermath by creating a housing bubble. That has left us far, far worse off today, and I suspect there are no bubbles left with which to temporarily bail us out.