No Holds Barred

For those who still aren't convinced that Washington and Wall Street are leading them up the garden path with all their talk of "green shoots" and "'V'-shaped recoveries," I suggest you listen to what Ken Langone, the co-founder of Home Depot and a venture capitalist, had to say in an interview with Bloomberg Television recorded earlier today.

Need more encouragement? Below is just a sampling of Mr. Langone's no-holds-barred insights:

On today's disappointing jobs report --

It's reality. This is where we are.

On the notion that economic recovery is just around the corner --

If we did in business what the government's doing about saying "it's getting better, it's getting better," we'd go to jail for manipulation or fraud. It's not getting better and it shouldn't get better.

On the seven-month rally in the stock market --

I'm confused. All of the people that I respect as investors and as people...are all scratching their heads saying "we don't get it"...All the businesses that I talk to -- I spend a lot of my time now reaching out to people that are running companies, running businesses -- I'm getting it back from everybody: it's terrible, it's getting worse, September was worse than August...I think this [rise in share prices] is a reflection of the fact that you get nothing in the way of rate of return in the bond market....

Click here to watch the (20-minute) video, entitled "Kenneth Langone Says U.S. in `Horrible Economic Storm,'" posted at Bloomberg's website.

(Hat tip to The Pragmatic Capitalist.)

Comments

[roger]

Now, here is a man that was successful in his venture.
His assessment of the horrible economic storm is right
on target, but he makes a lot of contradictory statements,
makes you wonder,how smart is he?

[mthomas]

Interesting commentary by Mr. Langone. From the colleagues and friends that I talk to, they share a similar view. But this is the market's job, to confuse as many people as possible. That is why I feel that longer term investors should have minimal allocations to equities on the long or short side, because there is way too much govt intervention and accounting rule changes to determine a fair price for most stocks. Fortunately though I think gold will continue to outperform most other asset classes because of all the fundamentals that align in its favor. I just read a really good article at http://www.goldalert.com/stories/Gold-Price-Up-Dollar-Down-Does-it-Really-Matter that discusses the Fed's role in creating many of the monetary problems in our country, and how the gold price and gold mining companies should benefit from the Fed's money printing efforts to fight deflation. There are many unintended consequences of the Fed's unprecedented actions that have the potential to cause even further damage to fiat currencies.