Michael Burry commente sur les agissements de la Fed

Le légendaire investisseur Michael Burry, qui a fait une fortune lors de la crise de 2008 en pariant que plusieurs des hypothèques à risque octroyées par les banques lors de la bulle immobilière feraient défaut, critique le rôle de la Fed dans l'économie dans cette entrevue du Business Week:

Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Michael Burry, the former hedge-fund manager who predicted the housing market’s plunge, said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is trying to use “poison as the cure” by pumping more cash into the economy to spur growth.

Bernanke’s Fed pledged this week to use $600 billion in additional Treasury purchases to help lower a 9.6 percent unemployment rate, close to a 26-year high, and to avert deflation.

The attempt to bolster growth is reminiscent of Alan Greenspan’s actions to revive the economy after 2001, Burry said in a telephone interview from Cupertino, California. The former Fed chairman helped create an unsustainable boom in U.S. property prices with his policies, leading to the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression, he said.

Il voit des possibilités d'investissement dans les terres arables et l'or:

Burry, who now manages his own money after shuttering his fund in 2008, said in a Sept. 6 interview with Bloomberg Television that he was investing in farmable land and gold, as well as small technology companies. He said yesterday he hasn’t changed his tactics as a result of recent events, including the Fed’s second round of so-called quantitative easing, dubbed QE2.

“I’ve expected Bernanke to act as he’s acting,” he said. “So with QE2, anything I was doing I expect will work even better.”

Il explique que la meilleure chose à faire serait de réduire immédiatement les dépenses gouvernementales afin de combler les énormes déficits budgétaires, même si la douleur serait inévitable à court terme:

While it would damage the economy in the short-term, Burry said he would focus on curbing government spending to prevent harsher measures later.

“It was the problem with the housing bubble, when do you prick it? The earlier you pricked it, the better it would have been for all of us,” he said.

Burry isn’t necessarily a supporter of the so-called Tea Party movement, which helped Republicans gain control of the House this week and whose goals include trimming the size of government.

“I’m not a big fan of populism at either the extreme right or extreme left,” he said. “Hard choices can’t be made when everyone is screaming at each other.”