"The American financial establishment has an incredible ability to
celebrate the inconsequential while ignoring the vital. Last week, while
the Wall Street Journal pondered
how the Fed may set interest rates three to four years in the future (an
exercise that David Stockman rightly compared to debating how many angels could
dance on the head of a pin), the media almost completely ignored one of the
most chilling pieces of financial news that I have ever seen. According to a
small story in the Financial Times,
some Fed officials would like to require retail owners of bond mutual funds to
pay an "exit fee" to liquidate their positions. Come again? That such
a policy would even be considered tells us much about the current fragility of
our bond market and the collective insanity of layers of unnecessary
regulation."
