Friday, September 12, 2008

The Real Reason Commodities Are Tumbling.

Mish is skeptical, see below.
From the Globe and Mail:

To hear Donald Coxe tell it, the commodity selloff ripping through Canada's stock market is no accident. It is the result of a deliberate, brilliantly executed plan hatched at the highest levels of the U.S. Federal Reserve and Treasury.

Mr. Coxe is no paranoid conspiracy theorist. As the chairman and chief strategist of Harris Investment Management in Chicago, he is one of the most respected investment authorities in North America. He also happens to have lost about 10 per cent of his personal wealth in the commodity rout, which came at the worst possible time for his Coxe Commodity Strategy Fund that started trading in June.

“This has done more damage to my personal wealth than anything in the last 20 years,” he said in an interview yesterday. But he has too much respect for how the U.S. authorities engineered the collapse in commodities – a move he said was necessary to shore up the global financial system – to be bitter.

“My attitude is, goddamn it, they're good … it was brilliant.”

To understand why commodities are plunging now – the S&P/TSX plummeted another 488 points yesterday – you have to go back to mid-July, when the U.S. Federal Reserve and Treasury first announced steps to support mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac....MORE

HT: Mish's Global Economic Economic Trend Analysis who writes:

...While it is true the Treasury is guilty of blatant manipulation when it comes to the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the dollar did not rise nor did oil or commodities drop because of it.

Let's take a look at charts of the US dollar and crude in the aforementioned 5 days around July 11 when crude started to plunge....MORE