Last week was the new year, a very important demarcation for people looking to lose weight, quit biting their fingernails or start training for a marathon.

More important for those of us covering mutual funds, though, was the turning over of a new month, an important demarcation for people who love to read Pimco [profile] guru Bill Gross' investment outlooks!

This month's piece, called "Money for Nothin': Writing Checks for Free," is a take on US fiscal policy, specifically the idea of printing more money to prevent inflation.

It was Milton Friedman, not Ben Bernanke, who first made reference to dropping money from helicopters in order to prevent deflation. Bernanke’s now famous “helicopter speech” in 2002, however, was no less enthusiastically supportive of the concept ... “Like gold,” he said, “U.S. dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply. But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”

One thing is missing from this month's outlook that MFWire particularly looks forward too: literary or cultural references. Sadly, no Moby Dick allusions this month.

The article is available here, or can be downloaded as a podcast for those of you who want listen to the dulcet tones of Mr. Gross. 

Edited by: Ben Geier


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