My beloved business partner of 20 years kept a few cartoons on her office door. The top one had a living room scene with a middle-aged couple on a sofa and opposite chair. The wife is speaking, and her caption: “Harold, I married you for your money. Where is it?”
All financial markets are, from time to time, victims of media stories saying that liquidity has dried up. Or the obverse of the coin: sellers are overwhelming the supply of buyers. One example: For decades, scaremongers have described the disaster which would follow liquidation of the hoard of Treasurys held by Japan or China, but in the currency instabilities of the last year, a couple of trillion-worth have been sold to defend overseas currencies from an overstrong dollar — with no noticeable harm here at all.
