Fleckenstein is Bearish, Blah,Blah,Blah

Bill Fleckenstein is bearish about the market and the economy. That is not exactly news since Fleckenstein has been bearish since I started in the business and he makes his living as a short seller. Fleckenstein always makes some good points in his commentaries and his view of the Fed is not that different than mine, but his permanent bearishness is getting old. Here's an excerpt from his latest commentary:

Given that backdrop, I believe the chance of Bernanke raising interest rates is essentially zero. I think the Fed's next move will be to ease rates, though I don't know if that will be three months or six months from now.

What I do know is that Bernanke is not really serious about containing inflation, as is obvious by how far the Fed has let it climb. He cares only about avoiding a downturn. So, when it looks like push has come to shove, Bernanke will ease again.

Push is coming to shove, and there's nothing he can do to stop that.

Certainly, Bill is in the minority in the view that the Fed will ease again. I like to take the contarian view too, but sometimes the majority is right. I don't expect the Fed to cut again; doing so after all the recent rhetoric to the contrary would do great damage to their credibility. And that is more important than the GDP growth rate.