Those who regularly visit Usually Right already know... or should know... that the following is gospel truth.
To those who happen to just "stumble upon" this "featured newsbite," please understand, not knowing this stuff does hurt you and it will hurt your children and grandchildren as America continues competing with "Old Europe" in this race to the bottom we're caught up in.
Damn the politicians. Damn them to hell!
By James A. Dorn, monetary specialist at the Cato
Institute; as published in Forbes Magazine:
While some members of Congress and Republican presidential
hopeful Mitt Romney want to label China a “currency manipulator,” little is
said about the Federal Reserve’s role as an interest-rate manipulator.
(*PENSIVE NOD*)
Interest rates are relative prices that should be freely
determined in private capital markets, not manipulated by the central bank. The
Fed is now an allocator of credit, not a trustee of sound money.
INDEED, THE FED SEEKS INFLATION SO AS TO MONETIZE OUR
DEBT!
In 2008, the Federal Reserve started on a path that has
resulted in a near-zero Fed funds target, which is expected to last through
2014.
DISASTER...
(*SIGH*)
The Fed has also engaged in two rounds of quantitative
easing that have more than doubled the size of its balance sheet, acquiring
more than $2.5 trillion of Treasury debt and mortgage-backed securities.
Most recently, the Fed extended its “Operation Twist,” in
which it sells short-term Treasuries and buys longer-term securities with the
goal of reducing long-term rates.
Although the stated intention of the Fed’s low-interest
policy is to stimulate economic growth, the U.S. economy is still sluggish and
unemployment stubbornly high.
AS THOSE OF US WHO KNOW WHAT THE HELL WE'RE TALKING
ABOUT PREDICTED IT WOULD BE!
A more politically motivated goal is to assist the
Treasury in funding the massive U.S. public debt, which is expected to increase
by nearly $10 trillion over the next decade.
JEEZUS...
Last year the Fed bought more than 60% of newly issued
Treasury securities.
FOLKS... THIS IS ANALOGOUS TO COUNTERFEITING... AT
BEST... ANALOGOUS TO MONEY LAUNDERING. IT'S NOT REAL! IT'S A SCAM!
The Fed’s dual mandate requires gearing monetary policy
toward maintaining full employment and price stability, but the Fed is ill-equipped
to have much influence on real GDP growth, which is best left to entrepreneurs
and markets.
AGAIN... WHAT'S WRITTEN DOWN ON PAPER AND WHAT'S
REALITY ARE TWO VERY DIFFERENT THINGS. BERNANKE AND MOST FED GOVERNORS WANT
INFLATION!
Indeed, common sense tells us that printing money does
not create new wealth — just look at what happened in Zimbabwe. Moreover, a host of economic research has
shown there is no long-run (and perhaps no short-run) tradeoff between
inflation and unemployment. Instead, the
stagflation of the 1970s revealed that high and variable inflation causes
unemployment to rise and growth to slow.
YEP. AND WE HAVE STAGFLATION TODAY, FOLKS - ONLY THE
LIBERAL MEDIA REFUSES TO REPORT IT AS SUCH! NO "MISERY INDEX" TO VEX
THEIR BELOVED PRESIDENT OBAMA!
In its statement from the June 19th-20th meeting of the
Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed reported that “to support a stronger
economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at the rate
most consistent with its dual mandate, the Committee expects to maintain a
highly accommodative stance for monetary policy.” By which the FOMC meant
keeping the Fed funds rate at “exceptionally low levels . . . at least through
late 2014.” The Fed also stated that it was “prepared to take further action as
appropriate to promote a stronger economic recovery.” The only dissenting
member was Jeffrey M. Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of
Richmond.
REMEMBER THAT NAME, FOLKS! JEFFREY M. LACKER - THE ONLY
DISSENTING MEMBER. IF ROMNEY WINS AND DOESN'T IMMEDIATELY FORCE BERNANKE OUT
AND APPOINT LACKER CHAIRMAN... WELL... THAT WILL TELL YOU EVERYTHING YOU NEED
TO KNOW ABOUT ROMNEY.
[T]he Fed is creating another asset bubble, this time in
the bond markets. Treasury yields are at historic lows. The quest for higher
yields is inflating a bubble in junk bonds, and investors are taking on more
risk as they try to improve their performance.
AND YET...???
(*SHRUG*)
FOLKS... UNDERSTAND... EITHER THE BASTARDS ARE TOTALLY
INCOMPETENT AND SIMPLY DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING... OR... IT'S DELIBERATE.
John B. Taylor, an economist at Stanford University, has
been an outspoken critic of Fed policy, arguing that the central bank held
interest rates too low for too long from 2003–05, which helped fuel the
subprime crisis, and that today’s ultra-low rates threaten to repeat earlier
mistakes.
WELL, DUH!
By suppressing long-run interest rates, the Fed is
distorting asset prices, including housing prices that need to fall to restore
long-run equilibrium.
YES...!!!
Shifting investors into riskier assets should not be the
role of the Fed; yet it has become so since the 2008–09 financial crisis. As
former Fed vice chairman Donald L. Kohn stated in a speech at Northwestern
University in November 2009, one of the goals of the low interest rate policy
“is to induce investors to shift into riskier and longer-term assets.”
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
(*SIGHING*)
(*TEARING UP*)
Investors have relied on the Fed to prop up prices when
economic news is dismal. The “Bernanke put” has replaced Greenspan’s. The
longer the Fed waits to normalize rates, the more costly the final adjustments
to market realties will be.
(*SIGH*) (*NOD*)
While Bernanke and company try to "stimulate"
the economy by allocating credit and holding rates low, U.S. savers are being
fleeced and induced to take on more risk. A “high-yield savings account” now
pays 0.85%; certificates of deposit from a year to 30 months all pay 1%; the
average annual total return on T. Rowe Price’s Prime Reserve Fund is 0.01%. Conservative
investors have an incentive to become less so.
AND... THIS... IS... ALL... DELIBERATE... POLICY...!!!
The Fed has also upset the monetary transmission mechanism
by paying interest on excess reserves. Banks now park their funds at the Fed
rather than lend them to private investors, while the Fed buys government debt
to fund public over-consumption.
IT MAY NOT TECHNICALLY BE A PONZI SCHEME... BUT IT'S
THE SAME GENERAL SCAM. AND THOSE AT THE TOP... THEY'RE RACKING IN BIG BUCKS...
BIG BONUSES... THOSE WITH "ACCESS" PROFIT FROM THE SCAM. THE REST OF
US? WE GET FLEECED.
The underlying problem, of course, is that in a world of
pure government fiat monies and no monetary rule, the Fed and other central
banks are subject to political pressure to “stimulate” the economy — a goal
that is unattainable via money creation or interest-rate manipulation.
FORGET THIS "POLITICAL PRESSURE" NONSENSE.
NO. IT'S AS I WROTE ABOVE... A SCAM WHERE THE INSIDERS GAIN POWER AND WEALTH
AND THE TAXPAYER/CITIZEN GETS FLEECED.
Getting rid of the Fed’s dual mandate, eliminating
interest on excess reserves, moving away from interest-rate targeting and
toward directly controlling the monetary base, and focusing on long-run price
stability would be a start.
Getting rid of monopolistic central banks and moving toward
a rules-based system of competitive “free banking” would offer an alternative
that is consistent with a liberal economic order.
Liberalism - in the sense of limited government,
individual freedom, and responsibility - requires sound money.
Central banks always pose a threat to liberty.
Today, in Zambia, the central bank has outlawed all
transactions using foreign currencies (mostly U.S. dollars). Those who disobey
face a prison term of up to 10 years. Monetary freedom cannot be ensured while
central banks have a monopoly on money.
The dollar’s long-run status will depend on adhering to
long-run principles, not manipulating interest rates to achieve short-run
results.
This spring while U.S. interest rates were at historic
lows, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner was busy criticizing China
for holding deposit rates too low, depriving savers of higher returns. Since
that time, the People’s Bank of China has relaxed interest-rate controls and
now allows the deposit rate to exceed the benchmark rate by up to 10%.
Meanwhile... the Fed continues to fleece U.S. savers by
keeping rates abnormally low.
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