Enjoy the immediate knee-jerk QE 3 market rally as there are reasons for it not lasting, particularly in the Australian market as the US continues to debase its currency.

Super Mario might have a bazooka, but Big Ben Bernanke’s open-ended quantitative easing is a Gatling gun: it promises to just keep firing until it brings down US unemployment rates - whatever it takes, so to speak, with rates lower for longer to boot.

The debate about what QE actually achieves also is open-ended. QE 1 and 2 came and went and the US remains in the doldrums. And the market enthusiasm for QE2 wore off quicker than it did for QE1. With Wall Street’s multi-year highs already seeming to have priced in QE3, you might wonder just how long this sugar hit will sustain the bulls.

What we do know is that open-ended quantitative easing will continue to weaken the greenback, something that delights gold bugs and depresses Australian exporters of good denominated in US dollars – which is most of the key stuff.