Gartman on Central Bankers

I've been going through some old articles and quotes I sent to myself over the course of the past year, intending to post them here. While I work my way through the others, here's a great comment from Dennis Gartman, editor of the Gartman Letter, from early June, when European central bankers were truly trapped between a rock and a hard place by the issue of a potential European sovereign default.

We see the position that the European monetary authorities find themselves in at present to be quite an impossible one, for if they take the actions that most would take,… i.e., to tighten monetary policy…. It will serve only to weaken the economy there and bring out more, rather than less selling of the currency. Or if they move to ease monetary policy, the effect would be even more severely bearish, for those who’d bought the EUR predicated upon a belief that the authorities were “Bundesbanker-esque” would have no choice but to abandon their thesis, sell the EUR and turn elsewhere for investment. Or if the authorities chose to do nothing, the market will attack them for their inactivity. They are damned if they do; damned if they don’t and damned if they’ve no idea what to do. We do not envy them their position, for they lose at every turn.