Prior to the financial markets' obsession over the looming fiscal cliff, their single-minded focus was on monetary policy. Now, two months after the Federal Reserve announced its so-called QE3, its third round of quantitative easing, it appears the fuss was much ado about very little. Ben Bernanke seems to be losing his battle with deflation, observes Walter J. Zimmerman, chief technical analyst for United-ICAP. So far, the Fed's scheme announced in September to buy $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities for however long it takes to lower unemployment has little to show for it. Quite to the contrary, market prices show...
