Bill Gross on point about the economy

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http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/IO/2009/IO+Gross+Jan+09+Andrew+Mellon+vs+Bailout+Nation.htm

2008 was the year when the United States led the charge of bailout nations, lending and literally guaranteeing trillions of dollars of private liabilities in an effort to avoid the advent of another Great Depression. Nothing, with the possible exception of George Bush’s IQ was the subject of greater debate. To begin with, the rescue plan itself was controversial even amongst its implementers: Congress voted against it, then a week later voted for it; Treasury Secretary Paulson designated it “TARP” (short for “Troubled Asset Relief Program”), then a month later did a 180°, refusing to buy subprime mortgages and asserting his right to change his mind because the facts themselves had changed. But the broader question reached beyond politics and into the realm of the dismal science itself. Was it necessary and productive to mutate 21st century American-style capitalism into a thinly disguised knock-off of the New Deal?

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Still, while such a transformation is, to put it mildly, undesirable, the policies are necessary. As outlined in these pages, the U.S. and many of its G-7 counterparts over the past 25 years have become more and more dependent on asset appreciation. Under the policy-endorsed cover of technology and somewhat faux increases in financial productivity, we became a nation that specialized in the making of paper instead of things, and it fell to Wall Street to invent ever more clever ways to securitize assets, and the job of Main Street to “equitize” or, in reality, to borrow more and more money off of them. What was not well recognized was that these policies were hollowing, self-destructive, and ultimately destined to be exposed for what they always were: Ponzi schemes, whose ultimate payoffs were dependent on the inclusion of more and more players and the production of more and more paper. Bernie Madoff?
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William H. Gross
Managing Director