Tuesday, April 21, 2009

"Long Term Consequences are Grave"

I receive periodic letters and reports on the economic and investment climate from many sources. Many of them I have learned simply to discard, but others I read carefully. One of the latter is from an investment manager at Northern Trust. His letter of April 10 includes this passage:

We believe [the US] governments' (sic) aggressive monetary and fiscal stimulus programs will restore positive economic growth at some point during the second half of this year. We also acknowledge that the longer-term consequences of these programs are grave, and to the extent these programs are not unwound in a timely and successful manner, they may become the source of future economic distress. Nonetheless, these massive governmental interventions were and remain necessary given the past 20 months' precipitous collapse in global commerce and credit.

2 comments:

Macon said...

Isn't NorthernTrust a recipient of TARP funds?

Paul Stokes said...

Yes. It is one of the banks that said it didn't need the funds but were obliged to take them and that it would like to return the funds.

I also believe that the person who wrote this letter was being politically correct when he appears to concede that the current government programs are what are needed to pull us out of the shorter-term situation, but I could be wrong here. He may believe it.