Over the past several years, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government have tried everything that they can think of to stimulate this dead horse of an economy but nothing has worked. The Fed has slashed the federal funds rate to record low levels, mortgage rates have been pushed to all-time lows and the U.S. government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars in an effort to get the economy going. But despite all these of these extraordinary efforts, the U.S. economy continues to just lie there like a dead corpse. Never before have the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government done more to try to stimulate the economy and never before have their efforts produced such poor results. Home sales continue to set new record lows, more than 14 million Americans continue to be unemployed, foreclosures continue to soar, personal bankruptcies continue to soar and an increasing number of Americans continue to sign up for food stamps and other anti-poverty programs. All of the things that once worked so well to stimulate the U.S. economy seem to be doing next to nothing here in 2010, and the American people are becoming increasingly frustrated by economic problems that just keep getting worse. (Read More....)
When the mainstream media told the American people that the Federal Reserve was going to "help" the housing industry by buying up hundreds of billions of dollars worth of toxic mortgage backed securities, very few people probably even stopped to wonder where all of that money was going to come from. Well, the truth is that it did not come from anywhere. It was made up out of thin air. In fact, a total of 1.3 trillion dollars was just "printed into existence" so that the Fed could soak up these problematic securities (and help their buddies down on Wall Street in the process who were desperate to dump them). During a recent Joint Economic Committee hearing on Capital Hill, U.S. Representative Ron Paul directly confronted Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke about this 1.3 trillion dollars. As Ron Paul described how this 1.3 trillion was just created out of thin air, all Bernanke could do was nod his head. Why? Because it was the truth. (Read More....)
When you watch the mainstream news, how often do you hear them identify the Federal Reserve as the ultimate source of all of our financial problems? Never? Well, there is a good reason. The Federal Reserve was created and continues to benefit the elite international bankers that are raping the United States blind financially. Many of the same financial powers own large interests in the 6 gigantic media companies that dominate U.S. mainstream media. So you won't hear the truth from them. On this website we go on and on about how bad the U.S. national debt is. And it is really, really, really bad. But rarely do you hear from anyone who we owe all of this money to. Yeah, we owe large amounts to Japan and China and a bunch of other nations, but the biggest holder of our debt by far is the Federal Reserve. Just like the owner of your mortgage or your car loan, they expect to be paid back - with interest. (Read More....)
Up until now, the United States has operated under a "fractional reserve" banking system. Banks have always been required to keep a small fraction of the money deposited with them for a reserve, but were allowed to loan out the rest. But now it turns out that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke wants to completely eliminate minimum reserve requirements, which he says "impose costs and distortions on the banking system". At least that is what a footnote to his testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services on February 10th says. So is Bernanke actually proposing that banks should be allowed to have no reserves at all? (Read More....)
Most Americans who closely follow economics understand that all money in the United States comes into existence as debt. Either the Federal Reserve creates it when the U.S. government borrows money, or private banks create it when they use fractional reserve banking to make loans to customers. If lending increases, it is going to create new money and increase the money supply. But if lending declines, it is going to take money out of the system and will decrease the money supply. So why is this important? It is important because without sufficient lending, the U.S. economy will seize up and grind to a standstill. Unfortunately, we have created an economic system that is fueled by credit, and without enough credit businesses can't expand or hire more workers, individuals can't buy homes and cars and there will not be any hope that the U.S. economy will function at previous levels. (Read More....)
