Once bullish, contrarian Jim Grant likes cash now

...Though detractors say he's far too negative, he's been praised for some timely calls. In the 1980s, he warned of an overheated junk bond market before it collapsed. He foretold of the bursting of the tech bubble in the late 1990s, and revealed the false alchemy of Wall Street's mortgage packaging business before housing crashed four years ago...

are excerpts, edited for clarity, from a wide-ranging conversation in which he lit into the Federal Reserve for our current troubles, warned of 10 percent inflation and waxed nostalgic for a time when Washington had the courage to let prices fall in crises rather than goose them up and prolong our agony....

It does seem improbable that the inflation rate would ever get beyond 3.5 percent, let alone knock on the door of 10 percent. But I'm here to tell you it's going to 10 percent....

Link: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/05/20/general-health-care-us-jim-grant-q-amp-a_8477138.html

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