The Great Reflation

From: The Montreal Gazette

So, led by the U.S. federal reserve, most major economies have launched a massive "reflation" project. Politicians fear deflation more since modest inflation helps them by making their rising debts less onerous.

Did I say "massive" reflation? I should have written "Great" as in The Great Reflation, the title of an excellent book published in May by New Jersey-based Wiley & Sons.

The focus is America, but it was written by well-known Canadian investment professional J. Anthony Boeckh, founding editor of the Bank Credit Analyst Research Group. Boeckh, 70, co-founded BCA in 1949, and this is the first book of which he is sole author.

But it's not certain this experiment will succeed in a world based on what he dubs Alice in Wonderland economics. Witness the world's second largest economy, Japan (before China passed it), where two decades of reflation and zero interest rates didn't create sustainable recovery.

Reflation is the new environment for wary investors