Federal Reserve

Celebrating Independence Yet Enslaved To Debt

Every year when July 4th rolls around, Americans from coast to coast celebrate July 4th with cookouts, outdoor concerts and fireworks.  We love celebrating Independence Day and yet we are deeply enslaved to debt.  We like to think of ourselves as “free” and yet we have rolled up the biggest pile of debt the world has ever seen.  The people that we have borrowed all of this money from expect to be paid.  Sadly, instead of addressing the problem, we have been loading more debt on to the backs of future generations with each passing year.  What we are doing to our kids and our grandkids is so immoral that is almost defies description.  At the heart of this debt-based system stands the Federal Reserve.  It is a perpetual debt machine that was designed to trap the U.S. government in a spiral of debt permanently.  Today, the U.S. national debt is 4700 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913.  This year alone, we will add more to the national debt than we did from the presidency of George Washington to the beginning of the presidency of Ronald Reagan.  So yes, enjoy the hotdogs and the fireworks, but also remember that we will never be free as long as this constantly expanding debt problem is hanging over our heads.

If you know anyone that does not take our national debt problem seriously, please share with them the video posted below.  It is entitled “Economic Armageddon and You” and it is definitely worth the 5 minutes that it takes to watch it.  Someone out there did a really great job of explaining our debt problem in a way that almost anyone can understand….

So is there any solution to this problem?

Not under the current system.

The debt-based Federal Reserve system is designed to expand U.S. government debt indefinitely.  But of course all debt bubbles burst eventually and we are rapidly reaching that point.

It is being projected that the U.S. national debt will hit 344% of GDP by the year 2050 if we continue on our current course.  The truth is that it would never get even close to that high because the whole system would completely collapse long before then.

So what should we do?

We need to abandon our current debt-based financial system.  The way that our current system normally works, whenever more money is created more debt is also created.  Such a system is inevitably doomed to fail.

We need to transition to an entirely new system that has nothing to do with the Federal Reserve or Federal Reserve notes.  We need an entirely new system where the money is not based on debt.

But even though more Americans than ever are awake to the flaws in our monetary system, the truth is that neither major political party is remotely ready to even consider an end to the current financial system.

Many Republicans believe that if we can just cut government spending enough we can solve the problem.  Many Democrats believe that if we can just “raise enough revenue” we can solve the problem.

Neither of those solutions will work.

Many conservatives are so frustrated with the whole thing that they just want Congress to refuse to raise the debt ceiling.  I have taken a lot of heat over the past couple of days for suggesting that this is a bad idea.

If we refuse to raise the debt ceiling, our borrowing costs will absolutely explode.  Even if the U.S. government adopted a “balanced budget” by some miracle, the reality is that the federal government would still need to “roll over” very large amounts of debt every single year.  If interest rates on U.S. debt rise substantially it will be beyond catastrophic.

In 2010, the U.S. government paid $413 billion in interest on the national debt.

If interest rates were to start rising as a result of a debt default, interest on the national debt would likely double or even triple.

Look, if we want to come anywhere close to balancing the budget under our current system, it will be a whole lot easier to do if we are spending 400 billion dollars on interest on the national debt rather than 1.2 trillion dollars.

Today, the U.S. government only takes in about 2.2 trillion dollars in taxes.  How in the world are we going to have a chance if we have to pay out a trillion dollars just in interest on the national debt?

The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasuries rose from 2.86% to 3.18% just this past week.  Let us hope that this is not the beginning of a bad trend.

A refusal to raise the debt ceiling would also likely set off another recession (or worse).  The following is what a new article on CNBC says would happen if the U.S. does not raise the debt ceiling by August 2nd….

A U.S. default would not only be historic, it would also almost certainly lead to a new financial crisis. Interest rates would likely spike, equity markets would plunge along with the value of the dollar, and the country could fall back into a recession.

We have to raise the debt ceiling.

So does this mean that I am advocating “kicking the can down the road”?

No.

If you are a conservative, you can still get the same result that you want without destroying the credit rating of the United States.

All the Republicans in Congress have to do is to pledge that they will never pass anything but a balanced budget for 2012 or for any year beyond that.  Without the permission of the House of Representatives, Barack Obama and the Democrats cannot continue their deficit spending.  The sad truth is that the Republicans have been enabling and actively participating in this debt binge all along.

A balanced budget would definitely hurt the economy, but at least it would not wreck our credit rating and cause our borrowing costs to multiply.

But is that what the Republicans are shooting for?

No.

It is being reported that the Republicans and the Democrats have tentatively agreed to between $1 trillion and $2 trillion in budget cuts over the next 10 years.

So that comes to $200 billion in spending cuts a year at most.

Considering the fact that we are running budget deficits of about a trillion and a half dollars a year, that is not nearly enough.

So don’t accuse me of wanting to kick the can down the road.  I want to actually do something substantial about the national debt.  I just don’t think it is a good idea to trash our credit rating in the process.

It is the Republicans and the Democrats in Congress that are kicking the can down the road.

Trillion dollar deficits are not acceptable.  Our nation is on the road to financial ruin.

But it is not just the federal government that is in massive financial trouble.

The reality is that we have “government debt problems” from coast to coast.

Did you hear that the government of Minnesota shut down the other day?

As the financial health of almost every single state government continues to decline, this type of thing is going to become more common.

In the state of Illinois things are so bad that some income tax refunds have not been paid since 2009.  The following is a brief excerpt from an article on the Economic Policy Journal blog….

I repeat, this is no time to own state or municipal bonds. The desperation level at various states and municipalities is getting more and more intense.

With the start of a new budget year just two days away, thousands of Illinois businesses are still waiting for state income tax refunds dating back to 2009.

In a recent article entitled “Is The Economy Improving?“, I went into greater detail about the horrific financial crisis that Illinois is facing….

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Did you know that things have gotten so bad in Illinois at this point that the Illinois state government is letting bills go unpaid for long periods of time on a regular basis?

It’s true.

Right now they have billions in unpaid bills and they are facing a financial future that is so bleak that it is almost indescribable.

In one recent article, author Stephen Lendman described the horrific financial crisis that Illinois is facing right now….

With spending exceeding revenues, and obligations not postponed, unpaid bills are growing “at a frightening rate. For instance, IGPA’s Fiscal Futures Model indicates (they) could reach $40 billion by July 1, 2013, with an associated delay in paying those bills of more than five years.”

Besides its $13 billion deficit and $6 billion in unpaid bills, its pension fund is about $130 billion in the red – a red flag that state workers may lose out altogether, wiping out their promised retirement savings.

But it isn’t just the state government that is having problems.  According to Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas, the average household in Chicago would owe a whopping $63,525 if all local government debt was divided up equally among all of the households.

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How can we claim that our country is free when we are enslaved to such horrible debt burdens?

The borrower is always a servant of the lender.  As a nation, we are becoming a little bit less independent every single day.

So enjoy celebrating Independence Day while you still can.

If we continue on the path that we are currently on, nobody is going to be celebrating much of anything in the future.

Shell Game

The entire U.S. financial system has become a gigantic shell game.  While it is still in motion, a shell game can be mesmerizing to watch.  But when it ends the consequences can be painful.  So exactly what is a shell game?  According to Wikipedia, a shell game “is portrayed as a gambling game, but in reality, when a wager for money is made, it is a confidence trick used to perpetrate fraud.”  Sadly, that is exactly what is happening on the global stage today.  The Federal Reserve is like a con artist that is desperately trying to stay one step ahead of everyone else.  The folks at the Fed know that the debt that the U.S. government has accumulated is not sustainable and will eventually collapse.  They also know that the U.S. dollar is eventually going to become essentially worthless.  But for now the Federal Reserve is putting on a grand show and is trying to keep everyone believing that the game is fair and legitimate.

The Federal Reserve’s much ballyhooed “QE2” program has come to an end, and most Americans still don’t even understand what “quantitative easing” is.

Basically, what the Federal Reserve did was zap hundreds of billions of dollars into existence out of thin air and used them to buy U.S. government debt.

It is kind of like if you are playing poker with someone and they reach under the table and pull out a gigantic pile of chips which they add to their own stack.

In the process, the big banks made a ton of money because they are the ones that the Federal Reserve was buying U.S. Treasuries from and the U.S. government was happy because all of the new government debt being issued was getting soaked up by the system.

Of course all of this is one giant Ponzi scheme, but up to this point the Federal Reserve has gotten away with it.

Meanwhile, average Americans were getting the short end of the stick because all of this new money has been causing the price of food and the price of gas to go up.

But now QE2 has come to an end.

So does that mean that  “quantitative easing” is going to be completely over?

No, not really.  The shell game continues.

The Federal Reserve has announced that it is going to continue to purchase U.S. government debt using the proceeds from maturing debt that it already owns.  It is being projected that the Federal Reserve will purchase 300 billion dollars in U.S. government debt over the next 12 months using this method.

This isn’t being called “quantitative easing”, but that is essentially what it is.  In fact, one CNN article is calling it “QE2.5”….

QE2 is just about done. But the Federal Reserve will still be buying massive amounts of long-term Treasuries.

In fact, the Fed’s purchases over the next year will likely be at least $300 billion. That’s half the size of QE2 — even if QE3 never takes place.

But “quantitative easing” is just one example of a shell game run by the Fed.  There have been lots more.

For example, during the financial crisis the Federal Reserve started loaning gigantic amounts of cash to the big banks for next to nothing.

The big banks took a lot of this cash and invested it in U.S. Treasuries.  U.S. Treasuries typically only pay a couple of percentage points, but when you can borrow massive amounts of nearly free money suddenly they become extremely profitable.

Instead of loaning out large amounts of money to all of us to get the economy rolling again, the big banks just parked huge amounts of cash in U.S. Treasuries and watched the risk-free profits come rolling in.

In this way, the Federal Reserve helped big banks make a ton of money and they supported the exploding federal government debt load at the same time.

The chart below shows that the amount of U.S. government securities owned by the banks has increased exponentially since the beginning of the financial crisis.  This is not an accident….

The Federal Reserve does lots of stuff like this.  They know that they will probably never get audited and they know that the American people don’t understand all of this financial stuff, so they get away with it.

But what if something came along and suddenly interrupted the shell games that the Fed is playing?

Well, that is exactly what this debt ceiling debate threatens to do.

If the U.S. defaults, even for a short time, all of the financial shell games and Ponzi schemes are going to be greatly jeopardized.

If Congress does not raise the debt ceiling by August 2nd, the U.S. government will start defaulting, and that would unleash a tremendous amount of chaos.

A recent USA Today article described some of the things that might happen if the government was not able to borrow any more money later this summer….

If Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, payments to defense contractors and interest payments on Treasury bonds were exempt, that would be all the government could afford for the month. No money for troops or veterans. No tax refunds. No food stamps or welfare. No federal salaries or benefits.

In addition, financial markets all over the world would be severely rattled.  If the default only lasted a couple of days it would not be bad, but if the U.S. ended up defaulting on debts for weeks or months it really would be cataclysmic.

The International Monetary Fund warned this week that a failure to raise the debt ceiling by August 2nd would be a “severe shock” to global financial markets.

In this case, the IMF is actually right.  In fact, a “severe shock” would be an understatement.

The managing director of Standard & Poor’s has told Reuters that if the U.S. starts defaulting, the credit rating on U.S. Treasury bonds that are supposed to mature on August 4th will go all the way down from AAA to D….

Chambers, who is also the chairman of S&P’s sovereign ratings committee, told Reuters on Tuesday that U.S. Treasury bills maturing on August 4 would be rated ‘D’ if the government fails to honor them. Unaffected Treasuries would be downgraded as well, but not as sharply, he said.

“If the U.S. government misses a payment, it goes to D,” Chambers said. “That would happen right after August 4, when the bills mature, because they don’t have a grace period.”

A lot of Americans believe that Congress should just refuse to raise the debt ceiling and let the whole system crash.  But the reality is that most Americans simply have no idea how much of a financial disaster that would be for the entire globe.

Yes, the U.S. national debt is completely and totally out of control.  Yes, something must be done about it urgently.

But defaulting on our debts and wrecking global financial markets is not going to solve much of anything.

Sadly, even if we do not default on our debts this year, the reality is that the U.S. government debt bubble is going to collapse one way or another eventually.

The path that we are currently on is not even close to sustainable.

Even as our debt expands exponentially, the U.S. economy is being systematically dismantled and we are becoming poorer as a nation.

As I have written about previously, jobs and businesses are leaving the United States at a staggering rate because of cheap labor overseas and because of ridiculous regulations.  The business environment in this country has become incredibly toxic.

Stanford University’s David Cheriton was instrumental in helping Sergey Brin and Larry Brin develop Google.  Now he is warning that the anti-business policies of Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress are wrecking the economy….

“When you look at, say, Larry and Sergey of Google, they made billions of dollars, but they contributed many more billions of dollars to the US economy. And so we should be empowering these people; we should be cultivating more of the next generation of those types. And yet, I think there’s almost a hostile attitude towards people who have been successful in this country.”

As I wrote about the other day, the rate of new business creation in the United States has been declining steadily since the 1980s.  We won’t have a chance at a real economic recovery until the creation of small businesses is encouraged once again.

But today businesses of all sizes are trying to avoid U.S. taxation.  Right now, the United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the entire world.  Sadly, all businesses have a great deal of incentive to avoid incorporating in the United States.

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal talked about this phenomenon….

As savvy investors and entrepreneurs search for ways to minimize the impact of the U.S. tax system, with its relatively high rates and global reach, they are increasingly incorporating overseas, tax experts say. Some private-equity firms have relocated U.S. companies or divisions to tax-haven countries. U.S. multinational companies have spun off foreign subsidiaries in tax havens. U.S. start-ups are even beginning life offshore.

Large numbers of really good companies are fleeing the United States.

What we are doing is not working.

So what is the answer?

Well, as I have said before, we need to entirely scrap the current tax system and come up with something that works in the 21st century.

But we all know that is not going to happen.

Meanwhile, our economy continues to unravel.  According to the Department of Labor, the unemployment rate rose in 210 metro areas during the month of May, and it only declined in 131 metro areas.

Consumer confidence in this country has hit a seven-month low, and average Americans are becoming increasingly anxious about the state of the economy.

Unfortunately, most of our politicians don’t seem to have any answers and the Federal Reserve is just trying to keep their shell games going.

Every single day the U.S. economy is getting weaker.  Every single day we are going into more debt.  Every single day we get closer to the collapse of the entire system.

Time is running out.

I hope you are making good use of the time you still have left.

Inflation 2011: Honey – They Shrunk Our Paychecks

Do you ever have the feeling that there are holes in your pockets?  These days our money seems to slip through our hands faster than ever.  The Federal Reserve keeps telling us that the rate of inflation in 2011 is “close to zero”, and this is causing confusion for many Americans because they are making just as much money as they did in previous years but it doesn’t seem to go nearly as far.  So what in the world is going on out there?  Well, sadly, the truth is that we really don’t even know what the government considers “inflation” to be anymore.  The way that the U.S. government calculates inflation has changed an astounding 24 times since 1978.  You see, it is always politically beneficial to have a low inflation rate, so recent administrations have been changing the formula constantly in an attempt to look good.  But these days most Americans know something is up.  All they have to do is stop at a gas station, go shopping for food or open up their bills. The reality is that inflation in 2011 is about as bad as we saw back in the 1970s, it is just that the government is much less honest about it now.

Many years ago Kenny Rogers released a song that contained the following lyrics….

You got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em
Know when to walk away and know when to run
You never count your money when you’re sitting at the table
There’ll be time for counting when the dealer’s done

Well, the U.S. middle class has been dealt a losing hand, but in the game of life you just can’t fold.

Over the past 3 decades, the average household income for the bottom 80 percent of Americans has been remarkably flat.  In fact, over the past several years we have actually seen median household income decline several times. If you do not know about how the U.S. middle class is being ripped to shreds, just read this article.  Without a doubt, America is getting poorer.

Well, not the top 1 percent, but the vast majority of the rest of us sure are.

Meanwhile, prices have started to rise with a vengeance.

According to an article in the Daily Mail, a Memorial Day cookout will cost you 29 percent more this year than it did last year.

That doesn’t sound good.

Will it be 29 percent more expensive again next year?

Perhaps some of us will just have to stop having Memorial Day cookouts because we can’t afford them anymore.

The price of gas is also digging into our paychecks big time.

A gallon of gas costs about a dollar more than it did a year ago, but we can’t avoid buying gas.  All of us have got to get to work and drive to the store.

Sadly, each time the price of gasoline goes up 50 cents it takes about $70 billion out of the U.S. economy (on a yearly basis).

A recent article in USA Today described the kind of impact these high gas prices are having on average American families….

For every $10 the typical household earns before taxes, almost a full dollar now goes toward gas, a 40 percent bigger bite than normal.

Households spent an average of $369 on gas last month. In April 2009, they spent just $201.

But don’t worry, according to Ben Bernanke we barely have any inflation at all in 2011.

Some companies are trying to avoid raising their prices by reducing their package sizes.  A recent article posted on Marketwatch entitled “Inflation diet: same price, less product” explored this phenomenon in detail.  Millions of Americans are going to the supermarket and are finding that many of their favorite products are now 10 or 20 percent smaller and yet they are paying the same price as before.

Another thing that is happening is that product quality is going down.  Have you noticed how things just don’t seem to be made the way that they used to?  This is not a coincidence.

According a recent article on CNBC, retailers are skimping on quality as a way to deal with rising costs….

According to Global Hunter Securities Macro and Consumer Strategist Richard Hastings, retailers have been collaborating with their production contractors for about two years. They are trying to push back on the total volume, cost and weight of every unit.

“Along the way, the consumer barely noticed. By now, everybody knows something is wrong,” said Hastings. “If we had to put a number on it, it’s probably a 7.5% decline in total quality and durability of products compared to a bigger increase in the cost of production per unit made outside of the U.S.”

But no matter how hard companies try to hide it, at some point the American people are going to wake up and they are going to realize that they aren’t getting as much for their money as they were before.

This is why so many people get upset when the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government devalue our money.  Inflation is a “hidden tax” on every single one of us.  When our dollars don’t buy as much stuff, that means that we are all poorer than we were before.

All of this inflation is coming at a time when the economy is really struggling.  Personally, I am seeing all kinds of signals that the economy is really starting to slow down once again.

What is going to make things even worse is all of the government austerity that is going to be implemented over the next couple of years.

Once upon a time, a government job was the safest kind of a job you could have.  Sadly, as a recent Reuters article noted, those days are long gone….

Around 450,000 people who work for U.S. states, counties, cities, towns and villages could get pink slips in fiscal 2012, sharply up from the 300,000 positions shed this year, a report said on Monday.

So should we, as many of our liberal friends insist, tax the rich so that we can pay for all of those government workers?

Well, the truth is that the wealthy are already being taxed into oblivion.  If you doubt this, just read this editorial in The Wall Street Journal: “A 62% Top Tax Rate?”

Most of the “ultra-wealthy” have learned how to avoid most of this taxation by moving their wealth offshore.  In fact, as I have written about previously, it is estimated that a third of all the wealth in the world is now held in “offshore” tax havens.

So why are we seeing so much inflation right now?

Well, I covered that in my previous article entitled “When Faith In U.S. Dollars And U.S. Debt Is Dead The Game Is Over – And That Day Is Closer Than You May Think“.

The Federal Reserve and our politicians in Washington D.C. have been very naughty.  They have been systematically destroying the value of our dollars.

Someday when you are using your money as toilet paper because toilet paper is actually much more valuable than dollars are you will wish that the American people had stood up and insisted on a different path.

Don’t laugh – during the hyperinflation that the Weimar Republic experienced in the 1920s, German citizens were actually burning stacks of money in their furnaces in order to keep their homes warm.

100 years ago, a U.S. dollar had more than 20 times the purchasing power than it has today.

Sadly, we are now in a terminal phase of dollar devaluation.  It is only going to get worse from here.  Someday we will look back and long for the days of “low inflation” that we had back in 2011.

Even Ben Stein Is Warning That An Economic Collapse Is Coming

He sure has come a long way since “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”.  During a recent television segment for CBS, Ben Stein declared that “the tea leaves are ominous” and he warned that an economic collapse may be coming.  In particular, Ben Stein is deeply concerned about inflation.  During his recent appearance on CBS, Stein proclaimed that the Federal Reserve is “just shoving money out the door as fast as it can” and that this could have horrific consequences for the U.S. financial system.  Sadly, Ben Stein is exactly right on this point.  The Federal Reserve has already injected enough money into the financial system to create an inflationary disaster.  Fortunately most of this liquidity is still being held by the banks (this will be further explored below), but once all of that money starts getting released into the financial system it is going to unleash economic chaos.

In the video that you are about to watch, Ben Stein states that “when serious inflation hits, it hits everyone”.

And that is absolutely true.  Inflation is a hidden tax on ever single dollar that each one of us holds.  Nobody can cheat that hidden tax and nobody can escape from it.

You may have noticed that the price of gas is going up.

In fact, just the other day UPI reported that the price of gas at one station in the Washington D.C. area was up to 5 dollars a gallon.

Can it get much worse?

Well, actually yes it can.

Richard Hastings, a strategist at Global Hunter Securities, recently told CNBC that he believes that we could potentially see $6 gas at some point this summer.

Do you think that a lot of American families will rethink their summer vacations if that happens?

You betcha.

Perhaps Americans will just fly instead.

Well, that is rapidly becoming more expensive as well.  Just check out what one recent CNN article had to say about rising airfares….

Late Tuesday, Southwest Airlines raised all of its round-trip fares by $10. Delta (DAL, Fortune 500) initiated this latest round of price increases on Monday, and as of midday Wednesday American Airlines (AMR, Fortune 500), JetBlue (JBLU) and United Airlines (UAL) had matched it.

As Ben Stein also notes in the video below, food prices are soaring as well.  Rampant money printing by the Federal Reserve and serious crop problems all over the globe have created a “perfect storm” for agricultural commodities.  In the video, Stein sounds downright apocalyptic as he describes crop failures around the world….

But now, we are getting serious crop shortfalls in China – an enormously important agricultural producer and consumer. U.S. crop forecasts are also disappointing. There are huge problems in Australia, South America, and Russia. Corn, wheat, rice and other foodstuff prices are just going wild.

And you know what?

Ben Stein is right.

In a recent article about the global food crisis, I detailed some of the agricultural commodity price increases that we have seen….

*According to the World Bank, the global price of food has risen 36% over the past 12 months.

*The commodity price of wheat has approximately doubled since last summer.

*The commodity price of corn has also about doubled since last summer.

*The commodity price of soybeans is up about 50% since last June.

*The commodity price of orange juice has doubled since 2009.

But it isn’t just food and gas that are going up.  We are seeing inflation everywhere.  The value of virtually all “hard assets” is going up.

Investors are running to precious metals such as gold and silver in a desperate attempt to preserve their wealth.  Gold and silver have been absolutely skyrocketing.  The price of gold set another brand new all-time record high this week.  The price of silver hit a 31-year high today.

So why is this happening?

One of the biggest reasons for all of this is that the Federal Reserve has been flooding the system with new money.  In the video below, Ben Stein points to quantitative easing as the primary reason why we are seeing so much inflation….

But most important of all, the Fed is just shoving money out the door as fast as it can, creating piles of cash in banks.

The Federal Reserve had hoped that economic growth would be sparked by all of this new cash, but that is only happening to a minimal degree.

Instead, what Ben Stein believes all of this new money is going to bring about is a situation known as “stagflation”.

Do you remember the 1970s and the “misery index”?

Well, we seem to be headed for a repeat of those days.

In a previous article, I defined stagflation….

Stagflation exists when inflation and unemployment are both at high levels at the same time.

Up to this point, we have had high unemployment but relatively low levels of inflation.

But now we are going to get to enjoy high unemployment and high inflation at the same time.

Oh goody!

Video of Ben Stein’s recent appearance on CBS is posted below.  You can read a transcript of his remarks here.  It is amazing that a mainstream news outlet would allow this much truth to get out….

Look, the reality is that you cannot pump this much money into the financial system without there eventually being very serious consequences.

For decades the Federal Reserve has been systematically debasing the U.S. dollar, but what the Fed has been doing to the money supply over the past couple of years is absolutely unprecedented.  Just check out the chart below….

So why hasn’t all of this new cash caused chaos in the economy already?

Well, because most of it is still trapped in the financial system.  Banks have been reluctant to loan it out.  Instead, they seem content to keep most of it on reserve at the Fed.

But if all of this new money starts leaking out into the economy it is going to drive prices up.  When you have lots more money chasing roughly the same number of goods and services it is inevitable that inflation will result.

Robert Wenzel of EconomicPolicyJournal.com believes that more quantitative easing is not even necessary to turn the U.S. economy into a hyperinflationary nightmare.  In fact, Wenzel says that there are enough excess reserves at the Fed right now to turn us into another Zimbabwe….

With over $1.4 TRILLION in excess reserves, Bernanke never has to resort to QE style monetary operations ever again, to print money. If those excess reserves leak into the system, Bernanke has enough sitting there to make Zimbabwe look like a model of prudent money management. As per usual, Bernanke has most of the media and Fed watchers looking at the wrong card.

Forget about QE3, keep your eye on excess reserves. Excess reserves are funds that are not in the system bidding up prices, but when they enter the system by banks using them to make loans, have the potential to result in a multiple of their size, when they impact the money supply. Because of this potential for multiple size impact, excess reserve entering the economy are considered high-powered money.

We would have never even been in this position if we had never allowed the Federal Reserve to be created and had never gotten 14 trillion dollars in debt.  But now America has a debt problem that can never be solved under the current system.  We are locked into a debt spiral from which there is no escape.

Last year, the U.S. government spent more on interest on the national debt than on the following departments combined….

*The Department of Health and Human Services

*The Department of Energy

*The Department of Veterans Affairs

*The Department of Justice

*The Department of Homeland Security

*The Department of Agriculture

*The Treasury Department

*The Department of Labor

Ouch!

But right now the U.S. is still able to borrow tons of money at super low interest rates.

So what happens if interest rates go up?

It could potentially be catastrophic.

That is why the decision by S&P to downgrade its outlook on U.S. government debt was such a big thing the other day.  The U.S. still has a “AAA” rating, but S&P is warning that the AAA rating is in danger.

So what would it mean if the U.S. lost the AAA rating that it currently holds?

The Washington Post recently described it this way….

A credit rating downgrade for the United States would spell even more financial trouble for the U.S. government, hampering its ability to borrow money as investors demand higher yields to make up for the increased risk. That would cause its national debt to balloon further and increase the need to hike taxes or make even more painful cuts in spending.

But the U.S. government continues to borrow money like there is no tomorrow and Ben Bernanke and his friends at the Fed continue to recklessly print money.

As bad as things may seem for many of you right now, the truth is that what we are experiencing at the moment is a “false bubble of prosperity”.  Things are eventually going to get much, much worse.

Enjoy this time of economic peace and stability while you still can.  Our leaders have absolutely destroyed our economic future and we are going to want to have some good memories to hold on to while we are living through economic hell in the years ahead.

19 Reasons Why The Federal Reserve Is At The Heart Of Our Economic Problems

Most Americans do not understand what the Federal Reserve is or why it is at the heart of our economic problems.  When Americans get into discussions about the economy, most of them still blame either the Democrats or the Republicans for inflation, for the housing crash, for our rampant unemployment and for the national debt.  But the truth is that the institution with the most power over our economic system is the Federal Reserve.  So exactly what is the Federal Reserve?  Most people would say that it is an agency of the federal government.  But that is absolutely not true.  In fact, the Federal Reserve itself has argued in court that it is not an agency of the federal government.  Rather, the Federal Reserve is a privately-owned banking cartel that has been given a perpetual monopoly over our monetary system by the U.S. Congress.  This privately-owned central bank has been destroying the value of the U.S. dollar for decades, it has run our economy into the ground and it has driven the U.S. government to the brink of bankruptcy.  The Federal Reserve operates in great secrecy, it has never been subjected to a comprehensive audit and it is not accountable to the American people.  Yet the decisions that the Federal Reserve makes have a dramatic impact on the lives of every single American citizen.

If you really want to understand what is causing our economic problems, it is absolutely crucial that you understand exactly what the Federal Reserve system is and how it is systematically destroying our economy.  Once you understand the truth about the Federal Reserve, you will view economic issues a whole lot differently.

The following are 19 reasons why the Federal Reserve is at the very heart of our economic problems….

#1 The Federal Reserve system is a debt-based financial system.

The way our system is designed, normally no money comes into existence without more debt being created.

But this creates a huge problem, because when a new dollar is created, the interest owed to the banking system on that dollar is not also created at the same time.

Therefore, the amount money that is created is not equal to the larger amount of debt that is also created.

This is a Ponzi scheme that is designed to drain wealth from the American people and transfer it to the banking system.

Today, the amount of debt in our economic system is far, far, far greater than the total amount of money.

The only way to keep the game going is to create even more money which creates even more debt.

#2 The Federal Reserve and the bankers have a monopoly on the creation of this debt-based money.

In the United States today, the only people that can create money are the bankers.

You cannot create money.

You would go to jail if you tried.

Even the U.S. government cannot create money.

Although the U.S. Constitution specifically gives Congress the power to create money, the U.S. Congress has given that power to the Federal Reserve and to the banking system.

This gives them an enormous amount of power.

So how does money creation actually work?

Most Americans don’t understand this.

As I have written about previously, the way our system is designed is that all money is supposed to originally come into existence as government debt….

When the government wants more money, the U.S. government swaps U.S. Treasury bonds for “Federal Reserve notes”, thus creating more government debt.  Usually the money isn’t even printed up – most of the time it is just electronically credited to the government.  The Federal Reserve creates these “Federal Reserve notes” out of thin air.  These Federal Reserve notes are backed by nothing and have no intrinsic value of their own.

The Federal Reserve then sells these U.S. Treasury bonds to investors, other nations (such as China) or sometimes they “sell” them back to themselves.  In fact, the Federal Reserve has been gobbling up a whole lot of U.S. Treasuries lately.  Some refer to this as “monetizing the debt”, but that is not quite an accurate statement.

When the Federal Reserve creates money this way, it does not also create the money to pay the interest on the debt that has been created.  Eventually this puts pressure on the U.S. government to borrow even more money to keep the game going.  So what this creates is a spiral where the U.S. government must keep borrowing increasingly larger amounts of money, where the money supply is endlessly expanding and where the value of the U.S. dollar is destined to continue going down forever.

Once “Federal Reserve Notes” are in circulation, there is another way that money is created.

It is called “fractional reserve lending”.

Once you or I deposit money into a bank, the bank is only required to keep a very small amount of it actually in the bank.  The rest of it the bank can loan out to others (at interest of course).  This process can be repeated over and over and over, creating more money and an even larger amount of debt.

But the important part to take away from all this is that normally money is only created when debt is created, and the amount of debt to be paid back is always larger than the amount of money created.

This entire system is designed to drain our wealth and to put it into the hands of the bankers.

#3 The power of money creation and debt creation is in the hands of private individuals – not the government.

The Federal Reserve claims that it is an “entity within the government, having both public purposes and private aspects.”

That sounds so reasonable, but the truth is that the Federal Reserve is a legalized banking cartel that is privately-owned.

In fact, the Federal Reserve is about as “federal” as Federal Express is.

In defending itself against a Bloomberg request for information under the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Reserve objected by declaring that it was “not an agency” of the U.S. government and therefore it was not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.  It is kind of funny how Fed officials are always talking about how important their “independence” is, but whenever anyone starts criticizing them for being private they start stressing their ties with the government.

So who owns the Federal Reserve?

As the Federal Reserve’s own website describes, it is the member banks that own it….

The twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks, which were established by Congress as the operating arms of the nation’s central banking system, are organized much like private corporations–possibly leading to some confusion about “ownership.” For example, the Reserve Banks issue shares of stock to member banks. However, owning Reserve Bank stock is quite different from owning stock in a private company. The Reserve Banks are not operated for profit, and ownership of a certain amount of stock is, by law, a condition of membership in the System. The stock may not be sold, traded, or pledged as security for a loan; dividends are, by law, 6 percent per year.

In particular, as we will see below, the banks of the New York Federal Reserve have the most influence over the system.

So who owns the member banks?

Well, when you trace the ownership of the member banks to the very top you find that the international banking elite are very strongly represented.

#4 The Federal Reserve itself is not much of a profit-making institution.  Rather, it is a tool that enables others to make obscene amounts of money.

There are many that think of the Federal Reserve as an evil profit-making machine.  But the truth is that the Fed doesn’t make that much money.  Rather, the system was set up so that others could make an obscene amount of money from U.S. government debt.

Many of those opposed to the Federal Reserve point to the record $80.9 billion in profits that the Federal Reserve made last year as evidence that they are robbing the American people blind.  But then those defending the Federal Reserve will point out that the Fed returned $78.4 billion to the U.S. Treasury.

In the end, those numbers are not nearly as important as the hundreds of billions of dollars in interest that are made off of U.S. government debt each year.

If the U.S. government had been issuing debt-free money all this time, the U.S. government would likely not be spending one penny on interest payments.  Instead, the U.S. government spent over 413 billion dollars on interest on the national debt during fiscal 2010.  This is money that belonged to U.S. taxpayers that was transferred to the U.S. government which in turn was transferred to wealthy international bankers and other foreign governments.

This is where the magic of the Federal Reserve system is.  It is in getting the U.S. government enslaved to debt and using that debt to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars of our wealth into the hands of others.

As interest rates go up, this phenomenon is going to become even more brutal.  Right now it is being projected that the U.S. government will be paying 900 billion dollars just in interest on the national debt by the year 2019.

As you fill out your tax return this year, just keep in mind that vast quantities of our money is going to pay interest on debt that the U.S. government never needed to become enslaved to.

There are some very happy people out there that are becoming fabulously wealthy at our expense.

What a system, eh?

#5 The Federal Reserve is a perpetual debt machine.

As mentioned above, the U.S. government is enslaved to debt.

So how did it get enslaved?

Well, instead of printing up and spending the money that it needs, the U.S. government borrows it through the Federal Reserve system at interest.

In fact, as noted above, the U.S. government cannot create a single new dollar without borrowing it.

But each new dollar that the U.S. government borrows creates more than a dollar of new debt.

As a result, the government eventually has to collect more in taxes than what it has borrowed.

This phenomenon creates an endless debt spiral.

And is that not what we have in the United States today?  In fact, you see this in almost every nation on earth where a similar central banking system has been established.

Did you know that the U.S. national debt is more than 5,000 times larger than it was 100 years ago?

That’s right – back in 1910, prior to the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, the national debt was only about $2.6 billion.

The only way that the U.S. government can inject more money into the economy is by going into more debt.  But when new government debt is created, the amount of money to pay the interest on that debt is not also created.  In this way, it was intended by the international bankers that U.S. government debt would expand indefinitely and the U.S. money supply would also expand indefinitely.  In the process, the international bankers would become insanely wealthy by lending money to the U.S. government.

However, things did not have to turn out this way.

If the Federal Reserve had never been created, and the U.S. government had been issuing debt-free currency all this time, it is entirely conceivable that we would have absolutely no federal government debt at this point.

Unfortunately, we are now trapped in a debt-based system.

The U.S. national debt simply cannot ever be paid off.  U.S. government debt has been mathematically designed to expand forever.  It is a trap from which there is no escape.

Sadly, we have now gotten to a terminal phase of the debt spiral.  The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that U.S. government debt held by the public will reach a staggering 716 percent of GDP by the year 2080.  Remember when I used the term “debt spiral” earlier?  This is what a debt spiral looks like….

#6 The Federal Reserve system is designed to cause inflation.

As U.S. government debt expands at an exponential pace, it inevitably causes inflation.

Most Americans believe that inflation is a fact of life, but the truth is that the United States has only had a major, ongoing problem with inflation since the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913.

Sadly, the U.S. dollar has lost well over 95 percent of its value since the Federal Reserve was created.

If the Federal Reserve did not exist, it is theoretically conceivable that we could have an economy with little to no inflation.  Of course that would greatly depend on the discipline of our government officials (which is not very great at this point), but the sad truth is that our current system is always going to produce inflation.  In fact, the Federal Reserve system was originally designed to be inflationary.  Just check out the inflation chart posted below.  The U.S. never had massive problems with inflation before the Fed was created, but now it is just wildly out of control….

#7 The Federal Reserve has decided to play bizarre games with our money supply.

In a desperate attempt to revive the dying U.S. economy, the Federal Reserve has resorted to chucking gigantic quantities of cash into the financial system.

Remember how earlier I explained that normally whenever new money is created that more debt is created?

Well, lately the Fed has been resorting to a trick called “quantitative easing”.  What “quantitative easing” means is that the Federal Reserve zaps massive amounts of money into existence out of thin air and starts spending it on anything that it wants to buy.  Lately, this has primarily been done to buy up U.S. government debt.

But isn’t that “monetizing the debt”?

Of course it is, and it is a blatant Ponzi scheme.

However, what is even more alarming is what this is doing to our money supply.

Just look at what has happened to our monetary base since about mid-2008….

Does anyone in their right mind believe that this is not going to cause horrible inflation?

Right now most of the new cash is tied up in the financial system, but once it gets out into the regular economy watch out!

#8 The Federal Reserve is undemocratic.

In a previous article, I asked the following question:

“So what makes the central economic planning that the Federal Reserve does different from the central economic planning that communist China does?”

In both cases, a bunch of unelected elitists run the economy and make important economic decisions for the rest of us.

So what really is the difference?

#9 The Federal Reserve runs the U.S. economy.

Most Americans want to blame Obama or Bush or the U.S. Congress for the state of the economy.

But the truth is that it is the Federal Reserve that sets interest rates, it is the Federal Reserve that determines the money supply, it is the Federal Reserve that sets the “target rate” of inflation, it is the Federal Reserve that determines if unemployment is too high or too low and it is the Federal Reserve that watches over all of our banks.

Yes, Obama, Bush and the U.S. Congress all have things to answer for as well.

But none of them have the direct power over the economy that the Federal Reserve does.

#10 The Federal Reserve favors the big banks.

Not all financial institutions are treated equally by the Fed.

The truth is that the big banks (particularly those on Wall Street) are treated with great favor by the Federal Reserve.

If the Federal Reserve did not exist, the big Wall Street banks would not have such an overwhelming advantage.  Most Americans simply have no idea that over the last several years the Federal Reserve has been giving gigantic piles of nearly interest-free money to the big Wall Street banks which they turned right around and started lending to the federal government at a much higher rate of return.  I don’t know about you, but if I was allowed to do that I could make a whole bunch of money very quickly.  In fact, it has come out that the Federal Reserve made over $9 trillion in overnight loans to major banks, large financial institutions and other “friends” during the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009.

Wouldn’t you like to be able to zap trillions of dollars into existence and loan it out to your friends at very favorable terms?

Sadly, most of the “help” from the Federal Reserve always seems to go to the big boys.

When “small enough to fail” banks need assistance, they are usually told to go sell themselves to one of the big banks.

#11 The worse the debt problems caused by the Federal Reserve become, the more money the IRS needs to collect from the rest of us.

If the U.S. government could issue debt-free money, it is conceivable that we would not even need the IRS.  You doubt this?  Well, the truth is that the United States did just fine for well over a hundred years without a national income tax.  But about the same time the Federal Reserve was created a national income tax was instituted as well.  The whole idea was that the wealth of the American people would be transferred to the U.S. government by force and then transferred into the hands of the ultra-wealthy in the form of interest payments.

If the Federal Reserve was shut down, it is entirely possible that we would be able to shut down the IRS as well.

But the only way that the current system works is if massive amounts of wealth continue to be drained from the American people.

#12 The Federal Reserve creates artificial financial bubbles.

When you look back over the last several decades, you will find financial bubble after financial bubble.

So who created all of those bubbles?

It was the Federal Reserve.

The ridiculous policies of Greenspan and Bernanke have wrought disaster after disaster and yet most of our politicians still will not even consider major changes to the Federal Reserve.

#13 The Federal Reserve is anti-free market.

In a true free market system, the marketplace would determine what interest rates are.

In a true free market system, the marketplace would determine which financial institutions survive.

In a true free market system, artificial financial bubbles would be far less likely.

But we don’t have a true free market system.

#14 The Federal Reserve tells the rest of the our banks what to do.

Most Americans don’t understand just how much power the Federal Reserve actually has over our local banks.

For example, just last year Federal Reserve officials walked into one bank in Oklahoma and demanded that they take down all the Bible verses and all the Christmas buttons that the bank had been displaying.

#15 The people currently running the Federal Reserve pretty much have no idea what they are doing.

In case anyone has not noticed, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has a very long track record of incompetence.  Nearly every major judgment that he has made since taking over that position has been dead wrong.

If one of us could go down the street and appoint the manager of the local Dairy Queen as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, it is very doubtful that person would do a worse job than Bernanke has done.

#16 Even though the Federal Reserve has such extraordinary power over the financial system, the American people are not permitted to examine their books.

The Federal Reserve claims that they are regularly audited, but when some members of Congress attempted to push through a true comprehensive audit of the Fed last year Federal Reserve officials threw a hissy fit.

The truth is that the Federal Reserve has never undergone a true comprehensive audit since it was created back in 1913.

Whenever the subject of an audit comes up, Bernanke and others at the Fed keep repeating the mantra of how important “the independence of the Federal Reserve” is.

Sadly, Ron Paul’s proposal to audit the Federal Reserve last year, which had previously been co-sponsored by 320 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, ultimately failed by a vote of 229-198.

Instead, a very, very limited examination of Fed transactions that occurred during the recent financial crisis was approved.

So what did that limited examination reveal?

Well, the Federal Reserve was forced to reveal the details of 21,000 transactions stretching from December 2007 to July 2010 that combined were worth trillions of dollars.  It turns out that the Federal Reserve was just handing out gigantic piles of nearly interest-free cash to their friends at the largest banks, financial institutions and corporations all over the globe.

Many members of Congress were absolutely stunned by these revelations.

So what would a more comprehensive audit reveal?

#17 The Federal Reserve has way too much power.

If the Federal Reserve did not exist, we would not have an unelected, unaccountable “fourth branch of government” running around that has gotten completely and totally out of control.  Even some members of Congress are now openly complaining about how much power the Fed has.  For example, Ron Paul told MSNBC last year that he believes that the Federal Reserve is now more powerful than Congress…..

“The regulations should be on the Federal Reserve. We should have transparency of the Federal Reserve. They can create trillions of dollars to bail out their friends, and we don’t even have any transparency of this. They’re more powerful than the Congress.”

#18 The Federal Reserve is dominated by Wall Street and the New York banks.

The New York representative is the only permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee, while other regional banks rotate in 2 and 3 year intervals.  The former head of the New York Fed, Timothy Geithner, is now U.S. Treasury Secretary.  The truth is that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has always been the most important of the regional Fed banks by far, and in turn the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has always been dominated by Wall Street and the major New York banks.

The cold, hard reality of the matter is that the Federal Reserve is just another one of the tools that the Wall Street banking elite use to dominate all the rest of us.

#19 The Federal Reserve has brought us to the brink of economic collapse.

If the Federal Reserve had never been created, the American people would not be so enslaved to debt.  At the very core of our economic problems is debt.  American consumers are swamped with debt, state and local governments are facing horrific debt problems from coast to coast and the federal government has piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.

We are living in an absolutely massive debt bubble, and when it bursts the world is going to experience financial chaos like it has never seen before.

Things did not have to turn out this way.  We did not have to adopt a debt-based financial system.  We did not have to allow the bankers to enslave us with debt.

But that is what happened.

Sadly, most Americans and the vast majority of our politicians are still clueless about these issues.

In 1922, Henry Ford wrote the following….

“The people must be helped to think naturally about money. They must be told what it is, and what makes it money, and what are the possible tricks of the present system which put nations and peoples under control of the few.”

Hopefully this article will help people understand our debt-based financial system a little bit better.

Until we fundamentally change our system, many of the economic and financial problems we are currently experiencing will never go away.

Thankfully, it does appear that some Americans are waking up.

According to a recent Bloomberg National Poll, the number of Americans that would like to see the Federal Reserve held more accountable or even completely abolished is increasing….

Asked if the central bank should be more accountable to Congress, left independent or abolished entirely, 39 percent said it should be held more accountable and 16 percent that it should be abolished. Only 37 percent favor the status quo.

Those are very exciting numbers.

Hopefully we can awaken many more Americans to the dangers of a debt-based economy.

In the book of Proverbs, it tells us the following….

The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.

Well, by allowing ourselves to become enslaved to debt, we have become the servants of the international banking system.

Not only that, we have also sold our children and our grandchildren into perpetual debt slavery.

Thomas Jefferson tried to warn us about this.

He believed that when the government borrows money in one generation which must be paid back by future generations it is equivalent to stealing….

And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

In fact, Thomas Jefferson said that if he could add one more amendment to the U.S. Constitution it would be a ban on all government borrowing….

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.

Where would we be today if we had listened to Thomas Jefferson?

The amount of government debt that we have racked up is a great evil.  We have stolen the future away from our children and our grandchildren.  We have put them in a position where they will spend the rest of their lives paying off our debts to the bankers.

We owe it to future generations to fix the problems that we have created.

That is why so many of us believe that it is time for the U.S. Congress to shut down the Federal Reserve.  Our current financial system is a complete and utter failure and we need to start over.

How Is The Central Economic Planning That The Federal Reserve Does Different From The Central Economic Planning That Communist China Does?

Most Americans believe that we still live in a capitalist system and that free markets primarily determine the growth and development of our economy.  But is that really the case?  No, sadly it is not.  The truth is that the U.S. Federal Reserve does a tremendous amount of central economic planning.  So what makes the central economic planning that the Federal Reserve does different from the central economic planning that communist China does?  Yes, in China it is the government that does the central planning and in the United States it is a private central bank that does the central planning, but other than that are there any huge differences?  And if our economy is centrally planned, then how can we continue to claim that we still have a free market capitalist system?

Certainly China goes into greater detail in their economic planning, but that does not mean that the economic planning that the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government do is not similar.

After all, free markets do not set interest rates in this country – the Federal Reserve does.

The Federal Reserve also determines what the money supply will be.

The Federal Reserve is the one that decides if inflation is too high or too low.

The Federal Reserve is the one that decides if unemployment is too high or too low.

In addition, the Federal Reserve has a tremendous amount of regulatory power over U.S. banks and the entire financial system.  Most Americans simply do not realize how much power the Federal Reserve has over our banks.  Just last year Federal Reserve officials walked into one bank in Oklahoma and demanded that they take down all the Bible verses and the Christmas buttons that the bank had been displaying.

Like the communist Chinese, the Federal Reserve is not elected and it is essentially accountable to nobody.

Like the communist Chinese, the Federal Reserve also picks winners and losers.  You see, not all financial institutions are treated equally by the Fed.  For example, some have access to the Fed’s discount window and others do not.

How is that fair?

Certainly the Federal Reserve does not do all of the central economic planning in this country.  The U.S. government loves to get involved in economic planning as well.  For example, the U.S. government has decided that there are certain types of light bulbs that we are allowed to buy and certain types of light bulbs that we are no longer going to be allowed to buy.  It doesn’t matter that the new light bulbs are far more dangerous to children or that most of us would still like to have the choice to buy the old light bulbs.

But getting back to the Federal Reserve, how “democratic” or how “capitalist” is it to have 12 unelected people sitting around a table deciding the economic direction of this country?

The truth is that we live in a system that simply does not trust free markets and that believes that our economy needs to be “managed”.

I have to admit that my thinking on these issues was stimulated when I recently read an excellent article by Vitaliy Katsenelson in which he asked the following question….

It is a fundamental tenant of American capitalism that central planning of economies doesn’t work in the long term, whether in Soviet Union historically or in China today. But I often wonder: How is the Fed’s Board of Governors – the proverbial 12 guys in a room – any different than the 24 guys in a room who make up the Chinese politburo?

Is Katsenelson not right about this?

How in the world is the Fed’s Board of Governors all that much different from the Chinese Politburo?

In both cases, a group of unelected elitists makes the major economic decisions for all the rest of us.

That certainly does not sound like “capitalism” to me.

Would the free markets really produce worse results for our economy than the Federal Reserve does?

Would America ever have gone through the Great Depression if the Federal Reserve had not been created in 1913?

Would we have experienced the financial crash of 2008 if the policies of Greenspan and Bernanke had not created tremendous bubbles in the financial system?

Would the U.S. dollar have lost over 95 percent of its value since 1913 if the Federal Reserve was not around to constantly inflate our currency?

Would the U.S. government have the largest debt in the history of the world if we were not using the debt-based monetary system imposed upon us by the elite international bankers?

Now that the total debt of the U.S. government is $14,228,193,126,138.72, it is getting really hard to deny that the federal government is drowning in debt.

Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher unknowingly indicted the very system he serves when he recently made the following statement….

“If we continue down on the path on which the fiscal authorities put us, we will become insolvent, the question is when.”

If the Federal Reserve had never been created, and the U.S. government had been issuing debt-free currency all this time, it is entirely conceivable that we would have absolutely no federal government debt at this point.

But defenders of the Federal Reserve tell us that if not for the brilliant people over at the Fed, America would be an economic basket case by now.

Oh really?

In case anyone has not noticed, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has a very long track record of incompetence.  Nearly every major judgment that he has made since taking over that position has been wrong.  If one of us could go down the street and appoint the manager of our local Dairy Queen as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, it is very doubtful that person could do a worse job than Bernanke has done.

Unfortunately, most Americans do not understand this.  Most Americans are still convinced that “the greatest economy on earth” will just keep roaring along forever.  Most Americans are spending and partying as if everything is going to be just fine.

Sadly, as Richard Daughty recently pointed out, most Americans will not wake up and realize just how bad our economic problems really are until it is too late….

In fact, to use an analogy, the economy is like a group of overpaid people, milking the government for every dollar and benefit they can get, on a chartered airplane that has been certified as “unsafe,” where one minute everybody is having fun, drunk as skunks, laughing and telling dirty jokes, and the next minute the plane is plunging out of the sky, out of fuel, one wing is in flames, the engines are dead, the entire electrical system is kaput, and, worst of all, the beverage cart is completely empty of cold beer and those little bottles of different kinds of tasty liquors. Uh-oh!

Most Americans have become so “dumbed down” that they still won’t even understand what is happening even after the economy has collapsed.  Newsweek recently found that 63 percent of Americans do not know how many justices are on the Supreme Court and 29 percent of Americans cannot even name the current Vice-President.

America today is rapidly degenerating in many of the same ways that the Roman Empire once did.  Tens of millions of Americans are lazy, slothful and absolutely addicted to entertainment.  It is frightening to see just how many Americans did not show any empathy during the recent crisis in Japan or when we started launching missiles on Libya.  The following mini-documentary that was recently posted on YouTube does a beautiful job of making this point….

So is there any hope for America?

Let us hope that people wake up, because there are going to be even more economic disasters coming our way.  Right now a large percentage of the American people don’t even know enough to realize what the real problems are, much less what the solutions may be.

When most Americans talk about economics, they instantly start blaming “Obama” or “Bush” and a lot of them never even bring up the Federal Reserve.

But it is the Federal Reserve that has the most power over our economy.

If Americans want to blame someone in Washington D.C. for the economic mess that we are in, the number one culprit is the Federal Reserve.

Yes, Obama, Bush and virtually every member of Congress has played a role in our economic nightmare as well.  But it is the Federal Reserve that is actually “managing” our economy.

We would have been much better off if we had allowed free markets to “manage” our economy all this time, but very few Americans actually seem to still believe in free markets anymore.

Debt Problem: Who In The World Is Going To Buy The Billions Of Dollars Of Debt The U.S. Government Is Constantly Pumping Out Now?

Is the U.S. government on the verge of a massive debt problem?  For years, the U.S. government has been able to borrow all the money that it has wanted to at extremely low interest rates.  But now many of the lending sources that the U.S. government has been depending on are drying up.  Even before this recent crisis in Japan, a number of big players were moving away from U.S. Treasuries and the U.S. Federal Reserve was having to step in to pick up the slack.  But now this debt crunch is about to get a whole lot worse.  For years, many had feared that it would be China that would start dumping U.S. government debt, but now it turns out that Japan is going to be the real problem.  Right now, Japan is the second largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt.  Japan currently holds about $882 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds and they are likely going to have to liquidate much of that in order to fund the rebuilding of their nation.  So needless to say they won’t be accumulating any more U.S. government debt.  But the U.S. government still needs to borrow a trillion and a half dollars from someone every single year.  So where in the world are they going to get it?

This is called a debt problem.  Have you ever gotten to the point where you are in debt up to your eyeballs and nobody wants to lend you any more money?

Well, the U.S. government is rapidly reaching that point.

Even before the crisis in Japan, several of the big boys had starting moving away from U.S. government debt.

PIMCO, the biggest bond fund on the entire globe, recently acknowledged that they are dumping all of their U.S. Treasuries.

So if foreign nations like Japan are not gobbling up U.S. government debt and big bond funds like PIMCO are not buying any of it, then who in the world is going to be purchasing the massive amounts of debt that the U.S. government is constantly pumping out?

Well, many of you already know that answer.

The Federal Reserve is going to step in of course.  The Federal Reserve knows that if the U.S. government cannot borrow gigantic quantities of money at super low interest rates it will go broke.  So the Federal Reserve is just going to keep buying up most new U.S. government debt.  It is just that simple.

But isn’t that a Ponzi scheme?

Of course it is.  Let’s not mince words here.  It is a total scam.

And it is a scam that cannot go on indefinitely.

The truth is that the Ponzi Scheme of the U.S. Treasury issuing bonds and the Federal Reserve buying them up cannot last forever as PIMCO’s Bill Gross noted in his March newsletter….

“Basically, the recent game plan is as simple as the Ohio State Buckeyes’ “three yards and a cloud of dust” in the 1960s. When applied to the Treasury market it translates to this: The Treasury issues bonds and the Fed buys them. What could be simpler, and who’s to worry? This Sammy Scheme as I’ve described it in recent Outlooks is as foolproof as Ponzi and Madoff until… until… well, until it isn’t.”

Gross also noted in his recent newsletter that the Federal Reserve is currently buying up about 70 percent of all new U.S. government debt.

So now that Japan is out of the picture, how high will that figure go now?

80 percent?

90 percent?

Over the past several weeks there has been all kinds of speculation about whether “quantitative easing” will be extended past June or not.

Well, whether they call it “quantitative easing” or not, the truth is that the Federal Reserve is going to have to continue to “buy” most new U.S. government debt or the system will crash.

We have gotten to the point where the U.S. federal government cannot continue to function without Federal Reserve monetization of the debt.

This is a sign that we are rapidly approaching the financial endgame.

So why doesn’t the U.S. government just stop spending so much stinking money and stop getting us all into so much debt?

Well, because there isn’t enough political will in Washington D.C. to do any real budget cuts, and if our politicians did balance the budget at this point it would crash the economy.

Just the other day, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution to fund the federal government that would cut 6 billion dollars from U.S. government spending.

On that exact same day, the official U.S. national debt figure rose by 72 billion dollars.

Now the debt normally does not go up that much on a typical day.  But what this example does show is the losing battle that our politicians are fighting.

On Wednesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warned a House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee that they should not even think about not raising the debt ceiling….

“Congress has to do it. There’s no alternative.”

The truth is that the U.S. government has to keep going into more debt.  Under the current system the alternative would be to collapse the economy.

But the debt that we have already piled on to the backs of future generations is absolutely criminal.

How mad do you think future generations are going to be with us for heaping 14 trillion dollars of debt on to their shoulders?

Talk about a debt problem!

But this is what we get for allowing a private central bank to run our financial system.  This debt-based system was designed to fail from its very inception.

The man supposedly “in charge” over at the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, has a track of record of incompetence that is absolutely staggering.  It is a mystery why our representatives in Washington D.C. are not howling for his resignation.

Instead, most of our politicians continue to express blind faith in our current financial system and they continue to insist that everything is going to be okay.

Well, everything is not going to be okay.  The Obama administration is projecting that the federal budget deficit for this fiscal year will be an all-time record 1.65 trillion dollars.

Of course they are also trying to convince us that budget deficits will go down in future years, but by now we should all know not to trust the rosy future projections of government officials.

After all, it was only a few short years ago that Bush administration officials were promising that we would be swimming in huge budget surpluses by now.

The truth is that the government has been lying about all of this for a long time.  For now, the Federal Reserve is just going to keep monetizing U.S. government debt for as long as it can.

This Ponzi scheme will keep on working and working and working until someday it simply doesn’t anymore.

When that day arrives, the U.S. government debt problem is going to unleash hell on world financial markets.

Inflation Is Here – Just Open Up Your Eyes And Look At These 5 Financial Charts!

Despite what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says, rampant inflation is officially here.  The federal government is constantly monkeying with the numbers to keep the “official” rate of inflation below 2 percent, but it is becoming very difficult to deny that the cost of almost everything is really going up these days.  The American people are not stupid.  They notice the difference when they go to the grocery store or stop at the gas station.  The dollar is losing value rapidly now.  The price of gold set another new all-time record today and is currently hovering just above $1430 an ounce.  The price of West Texas crude has moved above 100 dollars several times recently and the price of Brent crude is currently above 116 dollars.  These higher oil prices are really starting to be felt in the United States.  The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the United States has now reached $3.38.  There are some gas stations in the U.S. where the price of a gallon of gas is already over 4 dollars.  But it is not just the American people that are feeling the pain.  The global price of food recently hit a new record high and almost every major agricultural commodity has absolutely skyrocketed in price over the past 12 months.  Meanwhile, Ben Bernanke just told the Senate Banking Committee that he really isn’t concerned about inflation at all.

When it comes to inflation, the key is not to look at the official U.S. government numbers (they are highly manipulated) or how the U.S. dollar is performing against other major currencies (because they are all being devalued as well).  Instead, you can get a truer sense of what is really happening to inflation by looking at what the U.S. dollar is doing against precious metals, commodities and other hard assets.

So are we experiencing rampant inflation right now?  Well, just open up your eyes and look at these 5 charts….

1 – The price of oil is racing back up to record levels.  The chart below from the Federal Reserve is a couple weeks out of date.  As noted above, the current price of West Texas crude is about $100 a barrel….

2 – The price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States seems destined to hit a brand new all-time record at some point this year.  Was it really just a few short years ago when the average price of gas in this country was about a dollar a gallon?….

3 – The value of most precious metals is very consistent over time.  So when you see precious metals go up dramatically in price, it means that the dollar is being devalued.  The price of gold just set another new all-time high and it seems destined to keep going even higher….

4 – The chart below from the Federal Reserve is a measure of the price of all commodities.  These price increases are inevitably going to be passed along to consumers in the United States….

5 – After a couple of years of stable food price, the price of food is starting to take off yet again….

In fact, many analysts are warning that we could experience a major food crisis over the next couple of years.  The global demand for food continues to grow at a very brisk pace, but all of the crazy weather we have been having around the world has caused some very bad harvests.

Unfortunately, the global price of food has gone up substantially in recent months and it is likely to keep going up very rapidly.  Just consider the following five facts….

#1 The United Nations says that the global price of food hit another new all-time high during the month of January.

#2 The price of corn has doubled in the past six months.

#3 The price of wheat has roughly doubled since the middle of 2010.

#4 According to Forbes, the price of soybeans is up about 50% since last June.

#5 The United Nations is projecting that the global price of food will increase by another 30 percent by the end of 2011.

Ouch.

But isn’t there some good economic news?

Yes, there is, but before we cover it, it is important to keep in mind that in an inflationary environment almost all economic numbers go up.

For example, during the recent hyperinflation in Zimbabwe stocks went up like crazy and “economic growth” statistics were very impressive.

Why?

Because those numbers were measured in currency units that were being devalued at a blinding pace.

So please keep that in mind when you hear “good economic statistics” on the evening news.

The truth is that in an inflationary environment such as we have now entered into almost all economic numbers should be going up.

So what is the good news?

Well, last month all three major U.S. car companies reported strong sales gains.  Sales of GM vehicles were up 49%, sales of Chrysler vehicles were up 13%, and sales of Ford vehicles were up 10%.

But just because a few pieces of good economic news come floating our way does not mean that we should forget all of the horrific long-term economic trends that are tearing this country apart.

The truth is that we are still a nation that is absolutely drowning in debt.

For example, it was just announced that China now owns 1.16 trillion dollars of U.S. government debt.

The borrower is the servant of the lender.  We should never forget that.

Also, the U.S. economy is slowly but surely becoming of less importance on the global stage.

In 1985, America’s share of global GDP was 33%.  Today, it is just 24%.

Our nation is rapidly being deindustrialized and we are becoming deeply dependent on industrial production from other nations.

Did you know that the new World Trade Center that is being constructed on the site of the September 11, 2001 attacks is going to be made from German steel and Chinese glass?

That says a lot about where we are at as a country.

We have allowed so much of our industrial infrastructure to be exported to China where workers slave away in almost unbelievable conditions.

A reader named Rish recently described what things are like over there….

As a product developer I went to china and saw the way the factory workers lived and worked in person. 50$ a month is about right, but if you are a skilled quality control expert you might make as much as 150$. at least this was true about 2 years ago the last time I went. The barracks were pretty meager, bunk beds with just plywood, no mattresses, if you wanted you could go to a store just outside the factory gate and buy a thick comforter that they sell as a “mattress” .

It will be interesting to see how the next few years changes the face of the USA. Who knows? if the unemployment rate and lack of jobs keeps going and enough people become homeless, we might become the next Bangladesh, and people will be lining up of the 30 cents an hour corporate factory jobs, and living in barracks just like those…

The only way the U.S. has been able to “thrive” during this deindustrialization is by borrowing gigantic amounts of money.  But all of this borrowing is slowly but surely destroying the U.S. dollar, and we are getting closer to the point of absolute catastrophe.

Peter Schiff recently shook folks up when he talked about these issues during a recent interview on CNBC….

But it is not just the United States that is printing tons and tons of money.  All of the major industrialized nations have been firing out gobs of currency.  That is a huge reason why so many investors have been racing to get into hard assets recently.

Now Ben Bernanke and other top Federal Reserve officials have been dropping hints that more quantitative easing may be necessary.

Unfortunately, just like with any other addiction, once you give in a few times it becomes easier and easier to engage in destructive behavior.  Now that the Fed has gotten a taste for quantitative easing it is going to be really hard to stop.

Nor can the Fed stop at this point.  If they did it would be disastrous for the U.S. economy.  But if the Fed continues on this reckless course it will make the eventual collapse of our economy even worse.

Under our current debt-based system there is no way out.  The Federal Reserve can attempt to put off the inevitable for a while by pumping up the debt bubble even more, but at some point it is going to burst.

When that happens we are going to be facing a financial crisis which will blow what happened in 2008 completely out of the water.

So enjoy these good economic times while you still can.  This is about as good as things are going to get from here on out.

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