Does End of Quarter Institutional Window Dressing Turn Into an Undressing?
Excerpt from Raymond James strategist Jeffrey Saut’s latest essay (published Monday, March 22nd): …[W]ith the passage of (the healthcare) bill the government becomes even a larger component of the economy as it offers us more “free corn.” Yet Milton Friedman once stated, “There are no free lunches,” and there will most certainly be a price to pay for the policies of the past year. As the must read folks at the GaveKal organization write (as somewhat paraphrased by me): “The best example of the long-term damage to an economy done by overtly interventionist policies can probably be found looking at the United Kingdom [UK]. This for a very simple reason: the UK economic policy was Keynesian from 1966 to 1979, supply-side driven from 1979 to 1998, and Keynesian again under the wise guidance of Mr. Brown. And the results speak for themselves. In the (nearby) chart, the top red line represents the ratio between central government expenditures and GDP, on an inverted scale. In other words,
