Lars Schall interviewed Peter Boockvar, Managing Director and Chief Market Analyst of The Lindsey Group in Washington DC. They’ve discussed, inter alia, the increasing credibility problem of the U.S. Federal Reserve, the prospects for gold, and the anger of the American people in this election year.
By Lars Schall
The following interviews was conducted for and originally published here – with a full transcript – by Matterhorn Asset MGMT in Zürich.
Peter Boockvar is Managing Director and Chief Market Analyst of The Lindsey Group, and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Bookmark Advisors. He worked previously as a macro analyst and portfolio manager at Omega Advisors. Before this, he was partner at Miller Tabak & Co. As a market analyst he also worked at Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette in their corporate bond research department, after he graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.B.A. in Finance from George Washington University.
I was not particularly impressed by the analysis of your guest. As I listened to the interview I felt I was listening to a government bureaucrat who was more concerned about toeing the party line than he was about providing cogent financial commentary.
His analysis of the recent meeting between Mssrs. Obama and Biden and Ms. Yellen struck me as rather weak. A meeting called in such haste would most unlikely have been about what interest rates were going to do over the short or medium term, as your guest suggested. That your guest didn’t offer alternative possibilities for the meeting’s agenda as part of his analysis was disappointing, in my opinion.
While I’m hardly an expert, it struck me as far more likely that the meeting had to do with the Puerto Rico bond default and its potential consequences to the capital markets, as the bond event happened shortly after the meeting. Or perhaps the meeting had to do with the financial condition of one of the TBTF banks with significant exposure to Puerto Rican debt. Or the topic could have been something else altogether; but regardless of what the meeting actually concerned itself with, one would think that your guest would have provided more insight into this odd meeting based on evidence.
Another weak point, in my view, was his analysis apropos of gold. Your guest seemed to take as a matter of faith the size of the stock of gold held by the US; but his acknowledgment of Germany’s failed attempt to repatriate its gold from the US is evidence of US gold stocks not being what they’re advertised to be. Nowhere, however, did this seeming inconsistency enter into his analysis.
I did, however, enjoy your questions. Perhaps your next interview should be with me! I feel I could provide more satisfying answers. We could call the interview „An Interview for Everyone and No One,“ paraphrasing from the subtitle of „Also Sprach Zarathusrtra,“ written by my namesake. We could keep your usual theme music (as it is most befitting of your personality), although I have a concern that many of your readers will complain – after hearing my sage and prophetic commentary – that the music should have been a certain tone poem by Richard Strauss (i.e., Also Sprach Zarathustra).
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nice proposal, fritz!