And they succeeded, so far. The Papier-mâché market has soared to gasping heights. But, I firmly believe the day of reckoning cannot be avoided.
Not if they are objects of government policy, whom the government wants to screw for non-marketarian reasons.
Examples: People who hedged against dollar inflation in 2008 by diversifying into international funds and precious metals. Messrs. Bush, Bernanke, and the Bernanke co-conspirators at Goldman and Morgan, Stanley set out to break those people off and discourage others from seeking non-dollar stores of value. They killed everybody in the commodities space.... Like a scene out of a Punisher movie.... And that had certain, ah, consequences, one of which was the Lehman Bros. crash (they were hosed when their commodities fund disappeared up its own hoohah).
The panic selling of commodities was accomplished by a new rule-making requiring that derivatives trades be settled in dollars, even in Europe, creating an extra push of demand for dollars that moved the leveraged hedgers to start selling off their positions to raise dollars for settlement in a cascade of selling. Everything non-dollar suffered as overextended (and suddenly broken-off-in-them) traders and investors (some were 30:1 or so) in commodities spaces started getting margin calls, and the slaughter was on. They started dumping winning positions and safe preferred issues to raise cash. Everything went to hell except the dollar, which was exactly what the Fed wanted.
Second example, motives similar to first example, was the sudden tidal wave of Fed funny-money that fueled the 2009 bounce off bottom. Which wasn't a bottom, so it wasn't a bounce but a command levitation exercise. The idea was to monetize the market artificially and reward Lehman and Morgan Stanley for playing along and using the Fed money to create a short-covering panic, by giving them the Bears to eat, figuratively speaking.
The Fed's motive in the second event was similar to the first: to drive large numbers of investors back into the stock and bond markets, to pump up the balance sheets of the big (broke) banks and restore confidence in the markets and the dollar.
"Jesus saves, Moses invests..... But, sitting at the Fed's elbow, Goldman harvests. "
And they succeeded, so far. The Papier-mâché market has soared to gasping heights. But, I firmly believe the day of reckoning cannot be avoided.