Obama: a new addiction

The Greenspan put is dead and buried. But investors seem happy to get high on the Obama largesse. Asian and European stock markets jumped as much as 8% on Monday, spurred on by the incoming US president’s vast but vague promises of fiscal stimulus. While cheap credit was still the investor drug of choice, painful economic news was taken as an invitation for a pleasing painkiller: interest rate cuts from former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. But even the finest morphine eventually lose...