The Bernanke Strangle

I found the worry back at the beginning of January over the Fed unwinding quite laughable. But such market anticipation, however wrong in the end, is rational and necessary.

It is exactly through such fear that the Fed will be forced to delay the unwind. If the market sees through this and goes on with its blissful recovery, then the Fed would be forced to unwind in a well-publicized yet totally surprising move -- thus killing that recovery. It's a delicious play of game theory resulting in an unintended Catch-22.

Why does the Fed have to unwind? After all, the Bank of Japan bought a huge amount of its own sovereign debt and kept it or 20 years. The difference is that Japan can rely on its massive domestic savings while the U.S. must rely on foreign investors.

True, currently these foreign investors have no other real options, for the same reason as Japanese domestic investors. But they have been looking hard. Keeping the balance sheet bloated equates to a gamble on foreign investors not being able to find alternatives in time.

>>Read "What Americans Really Think About the U.S. Economy" on TheStreet

So the best case scenario is the eurozone and Abe-nomics (as in the Japanese prime minister) don't blow up and China recovers, making the U.S. recovery more sustainable. Then the Bernanke Strangle kicks in and keeps us in limbo.

In other words, The Lost Decade, U.S. edition, as I wrote in SeekingAlpha back in 2010.

To be fair, as I said back then, this should not be considered a failure on the Fed's part. Without making hard choices in fiscal policy, it's the best Fed can achieve. Also, it's not painful at all for society -- until the eventual unwind and collapse.

In the shorter term, the Great Rotation, which is the bond bubble deflating as discussed above, may have to take a pause soon. The series of mandated federal budget cuts known as the sequester is set to kick in on March 1.

As congressional Republicans supposedly regroup in the aftermath of the national election, as reported by the Associated Press, we may expect more of a real fight than what took place over the "fiscal cliff." Regardless of the end result, a certainty is more risk for government and business spending over the next few weeks.

As this drags on, I expect Fed-speak to shift back toward the dovish side, which would end the joke of the Great Rotation before it really started. I'd be ready to abandon ship if I were long stocks, such as through the SPDR S&P 500 Index Trust ETF (SPY), and remain comfortable in my long-term holding of gold through SPDR Gold Trust ETF (GLD).

At the time of publication the author had a position in GLD.

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This article was written by an independent contributor, separate from TheStreet's regular news coverage..

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