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Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Making Money Through

..........and bullshit walks! Easy as that for start-ups when it comes to making up your mind about raising additional capital. Are we in a bubble? No idea but this question keeps creeping up. Those of us who went through the bubble at the turn of the century are secretly hoping we're not in another one. Those who don't remember the last one are also worried wondering whether all the old-timers are right. One way or another, it doesn't really matter.

You'll hear multiple opinions on whether to raise money at times like this. I have a very clear opinion on this. It's based on the fact that I believe the best venture backed businesses are in it for the long haul. These are companies with a real product that add value to their customers. These are businesses generating real cashflow intent on growing to significant scale. Finally, these are businesses which will use additional money to expand. Hence, here's my take on when to take money (with focus on EU based businesses):

1. Sequoia or Kleiner are on the phone. Start negotiating, get the best deal you can get and make sure to raise the money. Say what you will but Tier 1 VC's from the US will lead to a far larger exit. Specifically the top tier funds have access to management for your businesses, access to potential partners and are likely to sit on the boards of the companies that could buy you. You'd be dumb not to take money but do so wisely.

2. A tier 1 fund from Europe is interested. Find out whether there's a good fit with your businesses. I've often enough written about how to figure this out and I say to focus on the partner and not the fund when doing your due diligence. Negotiate a good deal and take the money. Tier 1 funds in Europe have learned to add value, have significantly better networks nowadays and will most likely get you bought by a US based business.

2.5. A tier 1 fund from your home country calls up. I've labeled this 2.5 because Tier 1 funds in Europe tend to only differentiate themselves based on where they are located. The rest is mostly the same. The benefit of a tier 1 locally invested in your business is the proximity. It's in your interest. You want them closer than further. If the terms are right and you have offers from abroad and locally, I'd sway towards local but the vibe has to be right. You won't be necessarily doing anything wrong taking money from a London VC verses a German VC when you are in Germany. The London VC may even be around more than the German VC. This all depends on the partner.

3. A tier 2 fund from the US calls up. Ask yourself first why they found you? Go ahead and ask. Further, research the fund and find out what they've done in the past. Have they invested in Europe before? Are they only looking to Europe because their dealflow in the US sucks? Think twice about whether they will invest the necessary time to be in Europe and invested in your business. If the deal terms are good and you are comfortable with the partner doing the deal, take the money. They can still be helpful in accessing US buyers. They are highly unlikely to open as many doors as Kleiner or Sequoia but they definitely know more people in the US than many European partners. Plus make sure you want to go to the US. They will probably eventually ask you to move the company there.

4. A tier 2 fund from outside your home region in the EU finds you. Ask yourself how the hell they found you. More importantly, if you found them, ask yourself why the Tier 1 funds from your local region aren't interested in what you are doing. Say what you will but a UK based fund prefers to invest first in the UK and then rest of Europe. A German fund in Germany and then rest of Europe, etc. Although valuations are good and the power is in your hands to some extent think twice. There are times when taking money could be detrimental to the health of your business (as well as to your equity stake). It's nice to get a higher valuation and some extra cash but make sure it doesn't ultimately cost you more than you think.

5. A tier 2 fund from your local region calls up. Again, ask yourself first why the tier 1 funds aren't interested. Don't underestimate the value of many tier 2 funds though. Maybe they aren't the best known name in the market. At the same time, maybe they are striving to become a better fund. Maybe the number two in the market will work harder than the number one for you. This may be in your interest. Maybe! Do your homework and if you are comfortable with terms, take the money. Be far more diligent in this case though. Think longer and harder about whether you really can do more with the money now or prefer to hold out a bit.

6. Some tier 3 fund you've never heard of and can't find out much about approaches you. Be really careful. There are lots of people in this business who sure won't be around in a couple years. Money from these guys can be a nightmare. At the same time, maybe your business is the nightmare and you couldn't raise money at any other time. One way or another, things aren't going right one way or another. If you need the money to survive and know you'll never get more down the road, do everything you can to raise cash now. Maybe you've just been approached by the future Kleiner or Sequoia of Europe. Maybe not.....but money talks and bullshit walks!

You'll notice a general trend from 1. through 6. above. Take the money! If you can get good terms, know how to put the money you raise to work for growth and like the partner from the funds approaching you, go for it. The getting is good right now. As a VC I'm worried about valuations and bursting bubbles, etc. but as an entrepreneur you should be optimizing for you business. Money is always good. Ignore all the crap about having too much money and being negatively swayed by this. In this post I am defaulting to the fact that I think you are a smart entrepreneur. You aren't going to raise money to get that Porsche as a company car. You're going to grow your business and become amazing. Some will say I am wrong but I'd prefer to have the cash in the bank and worry about being wrong later.

Editor’s note: Guest author Chris Yeh is an independent angel investor and VP of Marketing for PBworks, one of his investments. He has been involved with Internet startups since 1995. His Twitter handle is @chrisyeh.

Update: This post originally referred to DST as the investor in Start Fund when it actually is Yuri Milner personally investing, along with Ron Conway’s fund SV Angel.

Update II: This has been corrected below.

The big news this morning is Yuri Milner’s announcement that he and Ron Conway will be investing $150,000 in *every* Y Combinator startup on a no-discount, no-cap convertible loan.

Many people have already weighed in with instant reactions—”It’s a bubble!” “It’s the greatest thing to happen to the US economy!” As usual, these off-the-cuff reactions focus on a single part of the story, rather than looking at the big picture.

Let’s walk through the news, step-by-step, and see what it really means. Ultimately, my take is that it’s good for Y Combinator and Milner, but bad for the rest of Silicon Valley.

1) “Yuri is a fool who believes he can sell to a greater fool.”

Many people mocked DST when it began investing in companies like Facebook at “outlandish” valuations. DST invested in Facebook at a $10 billion valuation; with the valuation now above $50 billion, I’d say Yuri is having the last laugh (for now).

If Milner is investing in YC companies on these terms, it’s because Milner believes it can make money on these terms (more on this later).

2) “I can’t believe all the money going into YC’s dipshit companies.”

Once upon a time, Y Combinator’s companies were features masquerading as companies. But anyone who still thinks that isn’t paying attention. The quality of YC companies has risen considerably; the companies graduating from YC these days are much more polished and accomplished. And with monster successes like Dropbox and AirBnB (along with Heroku’s exit), YC’s company quality is looking better and better.

3) “Finally, someone who’s willing to take risks, unlike today’s pantywaist angels and VCs!”

Now we’re getting to something more substantive. There seems to be a feeling among entrepreneurs that investors are no longer willing to take risks, and that no one is willing to invest in ideas any more. My response to that is simple—if startups are really so low-risk, why is it that only a tiny fraction of the companies that do get funded (which are presumably “no-brainer” investments for all the cautious VCs) actually return any money to investors?

Of course I try to invest in companies that I expect to be “sure things,” but I also know that history predicts that at least 60% of my investments are going to be complete financial failures. The reason Milner is willing to take on such risk is simple—in addition to the actual investment, it’s also buying option value.

Option value is what makes the VC system work—by investing in stages, investors are able to abandon companies that don’t look likely to succeed. This is why startups are so much more effective than big companies at innovation—a big company’s internal politics make it difficult to try lots of things that will probably fail. Milner has additional option value available to them that traditional angels do not because of its ability to invest at later stages. By investing in the seed round, Yuri – and DST – gets the inside track on any future financings.

Let’s say that I was lucky enough to invest in Facebook’s seed round (I wasn’t). As the company raised further rounds of funding at $100 million and $10 billion valuations, I would have to come up with increasingly large checks to maintain my ownership position. Buying 0.1% of the company is pretty easy at a $5 million valuation (that’s just $5,000). It gets harder at $100 million ($100,000) and $10 billion ($10,000,000).

For Milner, however, investing a few million in YC companies is well worth it if it gives him the inside track to do a $100 million expansion round in the future. Moreover, is Milner really making it easier for entrepreneurs to raise money? I was not under the impression that YC grads were having difficulties raising money. It’s not like Milner is giving $150K to anyone who asks—the investment is reserved for companies which pass YC’s rigorous screening process.

4) Okay, Mr. Smarty-Pants, why is this bad for Silicon Valley then?

In the TechCrunch comments, Ted Rheingold of Dogster fame says simply, “This is not going to be healthy for the ecosystem.” I think he’s right, but the reasons he’s right are subtle. Allow me to explain.

a) Independent angel investors need to be able to invest at reasonable valuations.

As I explained in (3) above, folks like me need to be able to invest at reasonable valuations. That means either priced rounds or convertibles with valuation caps, and seed round valuations of $1-3 million. We don’t have the money to stay in the game with the VCs and DSTs of the world, so if seed funding shifted to a model of no-cap convertibles, we would be priced out of the ecosystem.

In today’s environment, many companies skip straight from a seed round to $20 million+ valuations, and angels simply won’t get rewarded for the extra risk they assume without priced rounds or caps.

b) The Milner/YC partnership could end up upsetting this delicate balance

As I’ve argued in the past, angel investing is a fragmented game. No one has enough power to collude on valuations. However, someone who is influential enough can influence what is and isn’t considered “standard.”

Once upon a time, there was no such thing as a convertible note with a cap. There were convertible notes, and there were priced rounds, and nothing in between. Then a few years ago, a number of prominent players in the ecosystem (YC included) began pushing the concept of a capped convertible. Today, even though there are plenty of angels who despise any kind of convertible note, capped or not, the capped convertible is pretty much the standard seed financing instrument.

Now imagine the impact of YC, the most influential incubator, standardizing on uncapped, no-discount convertibles. It’s not difficult to envision a scenario in which the entire industry moves in this direction. The problem is that this shift eliminates the incentive for independent angels to participate in the ecosystem.

Angels play an important part in the ecosystem because we are willing to take on more risk than the VCs. Some of that is non-economic behavior, but some of that is also due to the fact that we get compensated for that risk-taking with much lower valuations. Eliminating that compensation will surely reduce the number of independent angel investments.

The irony is that the Milner/YC deal didn’t have to cause problems for independent angel investors. If Milner committed to providing $150K to every YC company, at whatever terms were determined by the lead investor in the syndicate, he wouldn’t be pricing the angels out of the ecosystem.

c) Removing independent angel investors from the ecosystem is a bad idea

Naturally, angels like me will be upset about getting shut out of the ecosystem, but why is that bad for Silicon Valley? After all, between YC, TechStars, the Founders Institute, and all the other incubators and quasi-incubators, who needs us? Let the incubators pick the winners, and let the DSTs fund them.

The problem is that the chaotic, fragmented, Darwinian nature of Silicon Valley is an integral part of what makes it great. We need those random mutations to generate innovation, especially breakthrough innovation.

If we concentrate the decision-making on who does and doesn’t get funding in the hands of a small number of institutions, we hurt Silicon Valley as a whole, no matter how smart those institutions are.

I tell many people that Paul Graham is a genius. He saw the opportunity to start YC, and he’s done the Valley a huge favor by broadening the pool of company founders. But I don’t want Paul to be one of a small group of people who decides which companies get funding—not because he isn’t smart (he is) or a great guy (he is). When it comes to innovation, central decision-making is bad, no matter how good the decision-makers are.

For all our flaws, independent angels serve the important role of enabling the “genetic diversity” of the startup population. That diversity is at the heart of Silicon Valley’s success, and that’s something we don’t want to lose.

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Cable News Ratings: Top 30 Programs For January 2011 (PHOTOS)

In a way, January's cable news ratings are no surprise: Fox News overwhelmed the competition, and MSNBC beat CNN. But there were some interesting tidbits to be found in the end-of-the-month rankings.

News Corp. launches 'The Daily' iPad newspaper | iLounge News

iLounge news discussing the News Corp. launches 'The Daily' iPad newspaper. Find more iPad news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

News.Me: Here's The NY Times' Answer to The Daily

TechCrunch has an exclusive look at News.me, a new social news iPad app that keys you into what your friends are reading/linking to, while allowing you share the news you're reading as well. Will it compete with The Daily?

Friday, January 28, 2011

Money Making

Regulators at the Environmental Protection Agency got the message early.

A month before President Obama promised to review all government regulations to remove unnecessary burdens on small business, EPA lawyers asked a federal court for a 16-month delay in implementing a new rule that would limit toxic air pollution from industrial boilers. The rule had been more than a decade in the making, and was issued last June only after the agency had been forced to act by the courts.

The EPA’s initial proposal would have cost companies an estimated $9.5 billion to bring more than 2,000 heat and steam plants across the U.S. into compliance, according to the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), headed by regulation czar and Obama confidante Cass Sunstein.

However, the OIRA analysis also showed that reduced particulate matter, carbon monoxide, chlorine, mercury and dioxin emissions from the rule would prevent about 1,900 to 4,800 premature deaths, 1,300 cases of chronic bronchitis, 3,000 nonfatal heart attacks, 3,200 hospital and emergency room visits and 250,000 lost work days each year. The total health benefits, calculated at $17 billion to $41 billion a year, far outweighed the cost of the proposal, according to OIRA.

Environmentalists feared the EPA’s request was a harbinger of a new administration approach to regulation now that Republicans are in control of the House and the president is focused on creating jobs. “The EPA was running scared because the White House wouldn’t back them,” fumed Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch. “After the election things changed.”

The January 18 executive order and memorandum outlining the administration’s new regulatory policy seemed to confirm that analysis. Again in his State of the Union address Tuesday evening, the president pledged to weed out unnecessary and duplicative rules and promised to halt any rules that stood in the way of small business’ ability to create jobs.

“When we find rules that put an unnecessary burden on businesses, we will fix them,” Obama said. “But I will not hesitate to create or enforce common-sense safeguards to protect the American people.”

The administration has moved quickly to cozy up to business. In the past week, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration withdrew two rules that had angered business lobbyists, one a proposed rule that would reduce noise pollution in workplaces and the other that would make companies keep records on musculoskeletal injuries in the workplace."Hearing loss caused by excessive noise levels remains a serious occupational health problem in this country," said OSHA chief David Michaels, whose agency often bears the brunt of small business antagonism toward government regulation.

During the Bush administration, Michaels, then a professor at George Washington University, frequently criticized OSHA and other regulatory agencies for failing to follow science when setting rules for protecting workers and public health. “It is clear from the concerns raised about this proposal that addressing this problem requires much more public outreach and many more resources than we had originally anticipated,” he said as he withdrew the noise rule.

Regulation has always been at the heart of corporate and Republican concerns about the direction the federal government takes under Democratic control. Long before there was a “job-killing” health care bill, there was the job-killing EPA, the job-killing Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the job-killing Mine Safety and Health Administration and any number of agencies that stand accused of undermining economic growth when they enforce laws designed to protect America’s air and water, food and drugs, and working and housing conditions.

Industry lobbyists invariably play the job-killing theme in public when lobbying against proposed rules, even as they use scientific arguments, which they must, while making their case before regulatory agencies. But that gets industry only so far. Science and economic analysis usually support tighter rules as more becomes known about the health effects of hazards and the cost of pollution-control technology drops.

For instance, the EPA’s clean air scientific advisory committee, a panel of outside experts that evaluates scientific evidence presented by stakeholders, had endorsed the tougher standards contained in the EPA’s original rule on industrial boilers.

The Council of Industrial Boiler Owners fought back. It commissioned a report that claimed the EPA’s June rule would put 338,000 jobs at risk and cost twice as much as the EPA/OMB estimate. “There are so many things that have to be changed (in the rule) to make it economically viable. They need to provide some flexibility,” said Robert D. Bessette, president of the Council, whose membership includes most of the nation’s largest chemical and paper products manufacturers. Their industrial boilers are among the largest stationary sources of air pollution outside the electricity generating and oil refining industries.

Earlier this month, the District of Columbia federal court turned down the EPA’s request for a delay and gave the agency until mid-February to come up with a final rule. “We are working to complete the final rules now,” a spokeswoman said.

“Congress will be closely monitoring the final rules when they are released next month and considering what steps can be taken to protect jobs and prevent reckless regulation,” said Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI). “The EPA will come up with a rule that I’m sure will make no one happy,” predicted Bessette. “Either the enviros or us will petition for a reconsideration.”

The final industrial boiler rule doesn’t just have economic significance, it could signal the future direction of Obama administration policy on major regulatory issues. A number of major decisions coming down the pike will either please or enrage some of most powerful lobbying organizations in Washington, whether on the industry or environmental side. They include administration plans for regulating greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide; coal-burning electricity generating plants whose emissions cross state lines, the so-called clean air transport rule; and the next round of automobile fuel standards, which will go into effect in 2016.

Those major decisions, not skirmishes over minor or duplicative rules, will determine how far the administration is willing to go to please business. “We’re hoping that the agencies and Cass Sunstein will be doing a lot more cost-benefit analysis and offer more regulatory flexibility,” said Susan Eckerly, senior vice president for federal policy at the National Federation of Independent Businesses, a small- business lobbying group. “Those big EPA decisions might not impact small businesses right away, but they will affect our energy costs.”

Environmentalists and other public interest groups are getting ready to push back. “We want 60 miles per gallon by 2025 and a 6 percent decrease in emissions,” said Ann Mesnikoff, director of the green transportation campaign at the Sierra Club. “California shows the technologies are there to get there very cost effectively.”

With unemployment stuck at 9.4 percent, environmentalists recognize the general public is concerned about getting the economy humming again, so they are touting the job-generating potential of green technologies. Much of the intellectual muscle for their new approach is coming out of California, which has taken the lead on regulating greenhouse gases.

Charles Cicchetti of the Pacific Economics Group, a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California and a Republican, recently issued a report that said the coal plant and industrial boiler rules would create one million jobs by generating $150 billion in new capital investment in the nation’s aging energy infrastructure.

“These are real jobs that can be generated right now,” he said. “The technology exists; the capacity to produce it is sitting idle; and the electricity industry can self-finance anything… This is a far more effective way of creating jobs than the stimulus bill since the feds won’t have to borrow money and go further into debt.”

This post originally appeared at The Fiscal Times.

Not making money as a YouTube partner? Here are some tips from YouTube itself

YouTube hosted a live event today to help partners get the most out of their YouTube revenue.

Phil Farhi of YouTube, began the event by telling partners about a few of the new initiatives that YouTube is working on, to help make partners as successful as possible. He started by bringing us through the history of advertising on YouTube.

Phil mentioned that just 3 short years ago, YouTube began using in-video and overlay ads, the first step in monetizing videos. And following the first format of ads, YouTube brought Ad Sense ads, enabling smaller advertisers/customers to get on board, allowing YouTube to capture a broader range of advertisers.

Next came in-Stream Ads (mid and pre-roll ads), a format that was launched about two years ago. YouTube said this has been popular because advertisers will pay more for ads that are similar to the format on TV. At almost the same time, promoted ads were introduced and it was proven to drive traffic to videos that were featured using the ‘promoted video’ format.

A few months ago, a new ad format for partners called TrueView was rolled-out. This format lets users watching a video skip the ad after five seconds. An ad format that YouTube says is less interruptive and doesn’t risk annoying your audience because it gives them the chance to hit stop.

Phil asked the question “ What makes a movie a successful?” Using the movie industry as an analogy, he went on to explain that there are many factors that come into play that make up the overall picture; ticket prices, seats filled, distribution etc. It’s the same with YouTube as he pointed out. Partners shouldn’t look at one aspect such as RPM (revenue per thousand page views) or CPM (cost per thousand, as an example $1 or $5 per thousand views), they should look at everything including geography.

A few points to take away

Good partners focus on overall revenue and aren’t fixated on “ticket price”. They also work hard at building a strong audience as well as trying to increase views. Good partners look at geography, RPM and CPM.

Bad partners look at the wrong metrics and don’t build up their audience. Partners who only focus on RPM might think everything is fine however, it’s critical that users concentrate on CPM as well and continue to build audience loyalty.

YouTube says advertisers are creating content that competes with user content, and millions of users are watching advertisements on the site. Think about the popularity of Superbowl ads.

Keep experimenting! Compare ad formats by type and geography and play around with different scenarios. Try enabling ads after your loyal audience has seen them or try it in reverse. Play with different recipes and see what happens when ad formats are enabled/disabled. There is a wide variety of ways to make revenue.

Take a good look at revenue break downs and compare formats; True View, in-Stream, etc.

Better reporting for ad formats coming soon. YouTube admits that partners don’t have the best reporting feature right now.

YouTube will be adding an option for partners to opt-in to just TrueView Ads without needing to be signed up with other formats.

Ensure the metadata on videos have the correct information and enough words to help YouTube’s algorithm bring the best targeted ads to your videos

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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

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CBS News Finds North Korea-Like Approval for SOTU

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Z on TV: Fox News dominates in SOTU cable ratings - TV show critic ...

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President Obama to Propose Partial Budget Freeze and Earmark Ban ...

Pursuing a path of deficit reduction and government reform, President Obama will tonight in his State of the Union address call for a ban on earmarks and he will propose a five year budget freeze on non-security related discretionary ...

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Monday, January 24, 2011

The Importnace of online reputation management

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Making Money System

Last night, we pointed out that as a part of their countdown to 10 billion app downloads, Apple actually revealed the top all-time app downloads for paid iPhone apps, free iPhone apps, paid iPad apps, and free iPad apps. The top results seemed pretty straightforward, with a few oddities here or there. And there may be a good reason for such oddities. The system appears pretty easy to game.

Well, technically, it’s probably not really “gaming” the system. At least not yet. It just appears that Apple is being a little sloppy in populating their lists. After speaking to a few top app developers, it seems that Apple is counting total download numbers in aggregate, regardless of if an app switched between being free and paid.

In other words, to boost yourself on the top paid app lists, all you would have to do is go free for all but one of the days, then switch to paid, and all those downloads would be counted towards your total as a paid app, it seems.

Obviously, free apps tend to be downloaded more than paid ones. So if you had a popular app and went free, then went back to paid, this could be a great way to jack your stats.

And several apps have done this switch from time to time (though we’re not saying they did it to jack their stats — they probably didn’t know that Apple would rank this way — instead it was just a nice offer to customers). Top apps like Traffic Rush and a few of the Tap Tap Revenge games are good examples of this.

One developer we spoke to, John Casasanta of TapTapTap, said that he found the numbers fishy because they’ve done multiple apps and Apple’s rankings don’t line up with their actual separated numbers. But if you take into account free and paid downloads for one app, things begin to align.

We’ve reached out to Apple about the issue, and will update if we hear back. In the meantime, be a bit wary of some of the top paid apps on that list — they may not be making as much money as it may seem given their position.

Products of the past…doomed…

Chinese President Hu Jintao: the US dollar-based monetary system is a “product of the past.”

He is right about that. And last week two major US credit agencies – Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s – underlined the point. They said America’s triple A credit rating would be lost if the nation continues to borrow so much money.

Amen to that, brother…

But how can the US borrow less?

Ben Bernanke says the US economy will probably grow between 3% and 4% this year.

Pretty good, huh? We can stop worrying, huh?

Wait a minute. We don’t know if the US economy will grow this year…and neither does Ben Bernanke. But even if it were to grow at 3% to 4%…would that mean we were enjoying a genuine recovery? Could the US dollar-based monetary system hold up after all? Could it surprise the Chinese and be a product of the future as well as of the past?

Let’s see how the present economic model works. You spend $10 trillion on bailouts and stimulus. This puts the whole country on course for bankruptcy…where the Chinese are telling you that your money is history…and the rating agencies are threatening to take you down a notch or two. But for your trouble you get, say, 4% growth.

Hmmmm…4% growth is equal to about $560 billion more GDP. But don’t look too closely. Much of this extra GDP is debt-fueled government boondoggling which adds nothing real to the nation’s wealth.

But in order to keep this “growth” going, you have to continue to run deficits – of about a trillion dollars a year. Hold on…what kind of business is Ben Bernanke running?

It costs more in deficit spending than you get in positive GDP growth.

Well, maybe you lose money every year…but you can make it up in the long run!

Hold on… The deficits are expected to run 5% to 10% of GDP for years. Maybe forever. If the growth rate is only in the 3%-4% range, it will mean that debt always outgrows growth. In fact, that is exactly what almost every economist projects.

Then, what’s the point? Well, maybe deficits can be cut…and the growth rate will pick up? Hey, anything is possible. And since we’re starting out in 2011 with a positive attitude…we’re ready to believe anything.

And maybe that’s what gold speculators were thinking on Friday. They sold gold – taking the price down $26 an ounce. Gold rises as confidence in the financial system falls. If gold is falling, it must mean the confidence in the Bernanke, Geithner team is increasing.

Based on the evidence so far, we’d have to take the other side of that bet. If Bernanke & Co. have any idea what they are doing it is not apparent from the public record. Even now, in the 5th year of the Great Correction, they still seem unable to see what is going on.

Bernanke:

“We got in trouble in the first place by making too many bad loans, right. So you’ve got to make good loans. We’ve got to have credit worthy borrowers.”

It may be that, in private, Bernanke has a clearer view of things. But we cannot tap his phone or channel his dreams. All we have to go on is what he says…and does. So far, he has said or done nothing that gives us confidence in the man.

He’s right: we got into trouble by making too many bad loans. But why did “we” do that? Because the Fed lent money too cheaply! It encouraged speculation and risk taking – especially by the banks, who must have known that they would be bailed out if they got into trouble.

And how could the Fed remedy the situation? Easy. It could raise rates – just as Paul Volcker did. It could put the squeeze on speculators. It could raise reserve requirements. It could allow the banks to go bust…send them a message they wouldn’t forget.

But what has Bernanke done? Just the opposite. He has rewarded the reckless speculators by buying up their bad bets (adding $1.7 trillion in trashy mortgage backed securities to the Fed’s core holdings). He has cut rates even more…bringing the effective rate down to zero for privileged borrowers. And he has created the illusion of “recovery” – by goosing up prices of stocks and commodities.

Bad policies. Bad in the short run. Worse in the long run.

Bill Bonner

for The Daily Reckoning

The US Deficit Recovery Program and Other Fallacies originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, offers a uniquely refreshing, perspective on the global economy, investing, gold, stocks and today's markets. Its been called "the most entertaining read of the day."

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