Sunday, February 8, 2009

Liquidity never there when you need it


"Of the maxims of orthodox finance none, surely, is more anti-social than the fetish of liquidity, the doctrine that it is a positive virtue on the part of investment institutions to concentrate their resources upon the holding of ‘liquid’ securities. It forgets that there is no such thing as liquidity of investment for the community as a whole."
 
- Keynes in the General Theory speaking about liquidity. 

 In all of his talk about the liquidity and credit crisis, reflecting on comments by Keynes is useful. Everyone cannot have liquidity at the same time especially if everyone starts to grow the same conclusions about an investment. There need to be differences of opinion and enough diversity so that markets will have two-way flow. Global markets will never have liquidity for everyone.

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