What Are They Smoking at Barron's?

This week's Barron's is truly daring and I'm not being sarcastic. In one article, Kopin Tan (a pretty smart reporter usually) confidently declares the long dollar slide over. The underlying rationale makes, in a matter-of-fact way, quite a few questionable assumptions as in "This week likely marks the end of the Fed's easing". That's news to me. Fed member Richard Fisher's speaking against more cuts (see this previous post) is cited as proof that the Fed is actually just about done with its rate-cutting campaign. The only problem with that argument is that Fisher was one of two dissenters at the last FOMC meeting, which means Bernanke and a majority of Fed members actually DISAGREED with him.
Another assumption the article makes is that commodity prices have seen their top levels and it's look out below from here on out, which was the crux of a previous Barron's article of a few weeks ago. This is what I thought of that opinion then and I haven't really changed my mind. The next courageous (and probably wrong) assumption is that the European Central Bank is also on the verge of a major policy change and, contrary to the Fed, is getting ready to start cutting rates as more and more evidence of a slowing European economy come in. I don't know about you but I really don't see the ECB slashing rates with oil close to $120 and food products up around 40% on average this year all across Europe.

In a second article, the daring Jack Willowghby just as confidently, because he has more than 55% of money managers to back him up, calls for a new bull market in stocks. Needless to say, some of the portfolio managers he quotes, high off the fumes of the recent 10% upward correction, are positively delirious. The chief investment officer of Vanguard, mistaking his job for that of a chief marketing officer, thinks the financial industry's troubles are just about over, the uncertainty cleared and the market cheap. He sees Dow 14,500 by year end and, throwing all caution to the wind, he predicts Dow 15,800 in June 2009.

Funny detail, one argument this wise chief investment/marketing officer uses to come up with his psychedelic prognostications: a cheap dollar.