The moon is upside down and the madness is everywhere.

I was taken aback by an opinion published in the Wall Street Journal. A certain Andrew Huszar, former manager of the US FED QE program (which buys 85 billion $ of bonds every month), wrote a piece titled 'Confessions of a Quantitative Easer". Although I knew most of what he wrote, it is still a big reality check. QE did not and is not working... except for Wall Street that has made huge profits thanks to it. 2009 (with the financial crisis in full swing) was the most profitable year for Wall Street. 4 trillion$ of QE generated 0,25% of GDP growth (equivalent to 40 billion $ -> that's a return on investment of 1%), 0,2% of the US banks control 70% of US bank assets (who said 'too-big-to-fail' was a problem?). And still the FED and Wall Street continue claims that QE is necessary and helps Main Street. Madness. Read the full opinion piece here, please do so it is worth it.

The moon is upside down, it's the end of Spring, the wine is Tasmanian and the beer from the Western Territories. Other than that there is not much difference between my country and Down Under. Whilst fighting my jet lag on Wednesday I listened to the news  about a discussion in the Aussi Parliament to raise the debt ceiling from 300 to 500 billion AUD. I can only conclude that no matter how far one travels from home, there is no hiding. The madness is everywhere.

Thinking about all of this one song came to mind: "Baggy Trousers" a Madness classic: "All I learnt at school was how to bend not break the rules"