increasingly disturbed by the Fed's direct purchase of US Treasury bonds.
"I must have been asked about that a hundred times in China. I was asked
at every single meeting about our purchases of Treasuries. That seemed to be
the principal preoccupation of those that were invested with their surpluses
mostly in the United States," he told the Wall Street Journal.
His recent trip to the Far East appears to have been a stark reminder that
Asia's "Confucian" culture of right action does not look kindly on
the insouciant policy of printing money by Anglo-Saxons.
Mr Fisher, the Fed's leading hawk, was a fierce opponent of the original
decision to buy Treasury debt, fearing that it would lead to a blurring of
the line between fiscal and monetary policy – and could all too easily
degenerate into Argentine-style financing of uncontrolled spending.
However, he agreed that the Fed was forced to take emergency action after the
financial system "literally fell apart".
Nor, he added was there much risk of inflation taking off yet. The Dallas Fed
uses a "trim mean" method based on 180 prices that excludes
extreme moves and is widely admired for accuracy.
"You've got some mild deflation here," he said.
The Oxford-educated Mr Fisher, an outspoken free-marketer and believer in the
Schumpeterian process of "creative destruction", has been running
a fervent campaign to alert Americans to the "very big hole" in
unfunded pension and health-care liabilities built up by a careless
political class over the years.
"We at the Dallas Fed believe the total is over $99 trillion," he
said in February.
"This situation is of your own creation. When you berate your
representatives or senators or presidents for the mess we are in, you are
really berating yourself. You elect them," he said.
His warning comes amid growing fears that America could lose its AAA sovereign
rating.
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