Banksters

The Biggest Bank Robbery In History? More Quantitative Easing = Backdoor Bailouts For The Big Banks Without Having To Go Through Congress

The U.S. Federal Reserve is getting ready to conduct another gigantic bailout of the big banks, but this time virtually nobody in the mainstream media will use the term “bailout” and the American people are going to get a lot less upset about it.  You see, one lesson that was learned during the last round of bank bailouts was that the American people really, really do not like it when the U.S. Congress votes to give money to the big banks.  So this time, the financial “powers that be” have figured out a way around that.  Instead of going through the massive headache of dealing with the U.S. Congress, the Federal Reserve is simply going to print money and give it directly to the banks.  To be more precise, the Federal Reserve is going to use a procedure known as “quantitative easing” to print money out of thin air in order to purchase large quantities of “troubled assets” (such as mortgage-backed securities) from the biggest U.S. banks at well above market price.  Some are already openly wondering if this next round of quantitative easing is going to be the biggest bank robbery in history.  Most Americans won’t understand these “backdoor bailouts” well enough to get upset about them, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t be just as bad (or even worse) than the last round of bailouts.  In the end, all of the inflation that this new round of quantitative easing is going to cause is going to be a “hidden tax” on all of us.

These new backdoor bailouts are going to work something like this….

1) The big U.S. banks have massive quantities of junk mortgage-backed securities that are worth little to nothing that they desperately want to get rid of.

2) They convince the Federal Reserve (which the big banks are part-owners of) to buy up these “toxic assets” at way above market price.

3) The Federal Reserve creates massive amounts of money out of thin air to buy up all of these troubled assets.  The public is told that all of this “quantitative easing” is necessary to stimulate the U.S. economy.

4) The big banks are re-capitalized and have gotten massive amounts of bad mortgage securities off their hands, the Federal Reserve has found a way to pump hundreds of billions (if not trillions) of dollars into the economy, and most of the American people are none the wiser.

During a recent appearance on MSNBC, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone did a great job of explaining how this all works….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwhMVB0XzPU&feature=player_embedded

But this isn’t the only way that the Federal Reserve forks over massive amounts of cash to the big U.S. banks.  In a previous article, I described how the U.S. Federal Reserve lends huge quantities of nearly interest-free money to big U.S. banks which they turn around and invest in U.S. Treasuries which bring in a return of three percent or so.  In essence, it is a legalized way for the big U.S. banks to make mountains and mountains of free money.

The truth is that the Federal Reserve does whatever it can to ensure that the big U.S. banks stay fat and happy. 

So what about the small banks?  What happens to them?

Well, the vast majority of the small banks are considered “not big enough for bailouts” and they are allowed to die like dogs.

Don’t let anyone ever fool you into thinking that the U.S. banking system has a level playing field.

For weeks, Federal Reserve officials have been coming out and have been dropping hints about how important it is for them to take “action” and implement another round of quantitative easing in order to help stimulate the U.S. economy.

In fact, during his speech on Friday, you could almost hear Ben Bernanke salivating at the thought of printing more money.

But nobody ever really asks who is going to be the first to get their hands on all this money that the Fed is going to pump into the economy.

The answer, of course, is obvious.

It is going to be the big banks – the same banks that are part-owners of the Federal Reserve and that have tremendous influence over Fed policies.

But even though this is all more than a little shady, is it such a bad thing for the rest of us if the Federal Reserve bails out the big banks and brings some much needed stability back to the U.S. financial system?

After all, if “Foreclosure-Gate” could potentially cause a nightmarish financial meltdown, isn’t it better for the Federal Reserve to step in and soak up large amounts of these toxic assets?

Those are legitimate questions.

Certainly the Federal Reserve has the power to step in and smooth over all sorts of short-term problems by papering them with money, but in the end printing more money will just make our long-term problems even worse.

Whenever a new dollar is introduced into the system, every other dollar in existence loses a little bit of value.

When trillions of new dollars get introduced into the system, it has the potential to create an inflationary nightmare. 

Already, a number of top Fed officials are publicly saying that inflation is “too low” and that we need to purposely generate more inflation in order to “stimulate” the U.S. economy.

Yes, that is just as insane as it sounds, but that is what they are actually proposing.

Apparently many top Federal Reserve officials honestly believe that they can pump trillions into the economy, jack up inflation significantly, and little harm will be done.

But even before “QE2” has begun, we are already starting to see all kinds of little bubbles beginning to develop in the financial system.  For example, commodity prices are skyrocketing right now, and that will soon be affecting the price we pay for food at the supermarket.

We are already on the road to serious inflation and the Federal Reserve has not even fired up the money hoses yet.  So what is going to happen after they pump trillions more into the economy?

Printing more money and giving it to the banks is not going to solve our economic problems.  It is just going to make them worse.

But unfortunately, American voters get no say about any of this.  Our national monetary policy is in the hands of an unelected central bank that does pretty much whatever it wants.   

An economic nightmare is coming, and you had better get ready.

The Bernanke Speech

When Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gives a speech about the U.S. economy, it gets a whole lot more attention than when Barack Obama gives a speech about the U.S. economy.  Why is this true?  Well, it is because Bernanke has a whole lot more control over the U.S. economy than Obama does. It is the Federal Reserve that controls monetary policy and interest rates. It is the Federal Reserve that can create money out of thin air. It is the Federal Reserve which is going to have the most influence over whether there will be inflation or deflation. So when Bernanke gives a speech, world financial markets listen. On Friday, news of the Bernanke speech sent gold and silver soaring towards new highs and send the U.S. dollar tumbling once again.  This new Bernanke speech was yet another very strong indication that Helicopter Ben is getting ready to fire up the printing presses in an attempt to get the U.S. economy moving.   

So is it a good thing for an unelected, virtually unaccountable private central bank called the Federal Reserve to have more power over the U.S. economy than the president of the United States?

Of course not.

But that is the way our system works.

So what did Bernanke say during his speech in Boston that was so earth shattering?

Well, you can read a full transcript of what Bernanke said right here.  The following are a few key excerpts from Bernanke’s remarks….

*”Although output growth should be somewhat stronger in 2011 than it has been recently, growth next year seems unlikely to be much above its longer-term trend. If so, then net job creation may not exceed by much the increase in the size of the labor force, implying that the unemployment rate will decline only slowly. That prospect is of central concern to economic policymakers, because high rates of unemployment–especially longer-term unemployment–impose a very heavy burden on the unemployed and their families. More broadly, prolonged high unemployment would pose a risk to consumer spending and hence to the sustainability of the recovery.”

Clearly, Bernanke feels as though unemployment is way, way too high and that lowering unemployment is now the number one policy priority of the Federal Reserve.

So how will this be accomplished?  After all, interest rates are already kissing the floor and that hasn’t brought the U.S. economy back to life.

Well, as most financial analysts are anticipating, the Fed could launch a substantial new round of quantitative easing.

But wouldn’t that cause a rise in the inflation rate?

Well according to Bernanke’s speech, the U.S. economy is supposed to have a certain amount of inflation….

*”Similarly, the mandate-consistent inflation rate–the inflation rate that best promotes our dual objectives in the long run–is not necessarily zero; indeed, Committee participants have generally judged that a modestly positive inflation rate over the longer run is most consistent with the dual mandate.”

Do you understand what Bernanke is saying there? 

He is actually saying that the goal of the Federal Reserve is not to have a zero inflation rate.  Rather, he says that we should expect to always have at least some inflation and that this is normal.

In fact, in his speech Bernanke said that inflation in the United States is currently too low….

*”…inflation is running at rates that are too low relative to the levels that the Committee judges to be most consistent with the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate in the longer run.”

Inflation is too low?

Is he joking?

No, sadly he is not.

Instead, he seems ready to break out the money hoses and start showering dollars from every street corner….

*”Given the Committee’s objectives, there would appear–all else being equal–to be a case for further action.”

“Further action” being code words for the “quantitative easing” that we have all been anticipating.

The funny thing is that in the nearly 4,000 word Bernanke speech there was not a single word about the value of the U.S. dollar.

This month the U.S. dollar has been plummeting like a rock, but apparently it is not an important consideration for Bernanke.

In essence, Bernanke’s message is that the focus is on trying to “fix” the U.S. economy and if it is necessary to jack up the rate of inflation and to radically devalue the U.S. dollar then that is what we are going to do.

Bernanke also did not mention the foreclosure fraud crisis which threatens to throw the entire U.S. mortgage industry into a state of absolute turmoil.

But the rest of the financial world is definitely starting to take notice of this crisis.

All of this uncertainty is already starting to take a huge toll on U.S. bank stocks.  Several of the largest U.S. banks have seen their stock prices significantly decline in recent days.

The truth is that this could be the biggest challenge for big U.S. banks since the 2007 financial collapse.  Just consider the following very troubling signs….

*JPMorgan announced on Wednesday that it has boosted its reserves by a billion dollars in order to cover faulty mortgages that it was obligated to repurchase from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and private insurers.  In all, JPMorgan has set aside approximately 3 billion dollars for potential mortgage repurchases.

*But a few billion dollars may not be nearly enough for many of these big banks.  According to an estimate by Branch Hill Capital, Bank of America could be forced to repurchase up to $74 billion in mortgages.

*The losses from this crisis could be absolutely staggering.  Analyst Dick Bove is projecting that U.S. banks could lose a combined 80 billion dollars as a result of this foreclosure fraud crisis.

The truth is that it would be hard to understate just how much of a financial mess this foreclosure fraud crisis could possibly become.  A recent article by Nomi Prins did a great job of discussing some of the potential implications of this crisis….

If foreclosed homes couldn’t be sold because of fraudulent paperwork or had to wait for more detailed inspections, you can imagine how difficult selling assets stuffed with faulty loans might be. If it’s tough to find a title for a foreclosed home, think how tough it is to back the related loan out of a pyramid of securities sitting on top of it.

See, the loan that might be analyzed in a foreclosure situation could be part of a chain connecting the underlying home to 20 or 50 different securitized assets, all depending on it for either the interest payments the loan was supposed to provide, or the value of the foreclosure property if those payments stopped (in Wall Street speak, the “recovery value”). If a foreclosed property isn’t selling, it’s not recovering any money back to any asset waiting for it. Think what that can do to the value of toxic assets living at the Fed and the Treasury Department.

This foreclosure fraud crisis is extremely complicated, but the reality is that this could be the thing that breaks the back of the U.S. financial system.  For much more on the specifics of this crisis, please check out the following articles that I have previously posted….

#1 Foreclosure-Gate

#2 Foreclosure Fraud: 6 Things You Need To Know About The Crisis That Could Potentially Rip The U.S. Economy To Shreds

#3 The Real Horror Story: The U.S. Economic Meltdown

The truth is that the U.S. economy is headed for extreme danger and what Bernanke wants to do is douse it with gasoline and light it on fire.

Once the Federal Reserve starts down the road of trying to “stimulate inflation” in order to get the U.S. economy going, it is going to be really hard to turn back around again.

But the truth is that this is what the U.S. Federal Reserve has always done.  They have always destroyed the value of the U.S. dollar.  The U.S. dollar has lost over 95 percent of its value since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, and now Bernanke says that we need to actually accelerate the pace of the destruction of the dollar in order to “help” the economy.

In the end, this whole thing is going to fall apart.  In the end, all of the juggling and fancy financial moves by the Fed are going to fail. 

The U.S. financial system is a pyramid of fraud built on a mountain of debt.  By definition it is unsustainable.  At some point it is going to dramatically collapse.  The only real question left to answer is when it will happen.

Federal Reserve Officials: Americans Are Saving Too Much Money So We Need To Purposely Generate More Inflation To Get Them Spending Again

Some top Federal Reserve officials have come up with a really bizarre proposal for stimulating the U.S. economy.  As unbelievable as it sounds, what they actually propose to do is to purposely raise the rate of inflation so that Americans will stop saving so much money and will start spending wildly again.  The idea behind it is that if inflation rises a couple of percentage points, but consumers are only earning half a percent (or less) on their savings accounts, then there will be an incentive for consumers to spend that money as the value of it deteriorates sitting in the bank.  Yes, that is how bizarre things have gotten.  It is not as if U.S. consumers are even saving that much money.  Several decades ago, Americans typically saved between 8 and 12 percent of their incomes, but over this past decade the personal saving rate got down near zero a number of times as Americans were living far beyond their means.  Once the recession hit, Americans very wisely started saving more money, and so now the personal saving rate has been hovering around the 5 to 7 percent range.  This is well below historical levels, but the folks at the Fed apparently are eager for Americans to pull that money out and start spending it again.

In an article entitled “Fed Officials Mull Inflation as a Fix“, Wall Street Journal columnist Sudeep Reddy described this bizarre new economic approach that some over at the Federal Reserve are now advocating….   

“But as the U.S. economy struggles and flirts with the prospect of deflation, some central bank officials are publicly broaching a controversial idea: lifting inflation above the Fed’s informal target.”

Does increasing inflation as a way to stimulate the economy sound like a good idea to any of you?

These are supposed to be some of the brightest economic minds that our nation has produced.

Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the folks running the Federal Reserve do not have a clue about sound economic policy.

Anyone who lived through the “stagflation” days of the 1970s should know that inflation does not spur economic growth.

But now some of the most prominent Fed officials are publicly proposing that we should purposely generate more inflation so that “real interest rates” (interest rates with inflation factored in) will go down.

For example, during a recent interview the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Charles Evans, made the following statement….

“It seems to me if we could somehow get lower real interest rates so that the amount of excess savings that is taking place relative to investment needs is lowered, that would be one channel for stimulating the economy.”

If you truly grasp what Evans is proposing here, your jaw should be dropping.

He is basically coming right out and saying, “Hey, let’s go out and crank up the inflation rate so that American consumers will start recklessly spending their money again.”

So are Americans really saving too much money?

Of course not.

Just take a look at the chart below.

Americans are actually still saving far, far less than they used to.  As you can see from the chart, in the 1960s and 1970s Americans would usually save somewhere between 8 to 12 percent of their incomes.

Today, we are still well below that level.  But we have made some progress from the reckless days of five to ten years ago when Americans were living far, far, far beyond their means and basically saving next to nothing….

So now some top Fed officials want to undo all that.  They apparently want Americans to grab their credit cards and to run out to the stores and spend wildly like they did a few years ago.

But spending recklessly is not going to repair our economy.  In order to have a healthy, balanced economy you need to have a healthy personal saving rate.  Encouraging Americans to spend every last nickel they have may boost economic figures in the short-term, but it will make our long-term problems even worse.

But it is not just Federal Reserve officials that are advocating this kind of nonsense.  Just a few months ago, IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard suggested that it might be a good thing if western nations doubled their inflation targets from two percent to four percent. 

It seems like almost everyone is in an inflationary mood these days.

The Federal Reserve keep dropping hints that it is ready to print lots more money and unleash another huge round of quantitative easing.

Just this past week, the Bank of Japan shocked world financial markets by cutting interest rates even closer to zero and by setting up a 5 trillion yen quantitative easing fund.

In fact, nations all over the world have become increasingly eager to devalue their national currencies in an attempt to gain an edge in international trade.

So after years of relatively low inflation, it looks like our leaders are almost eager to tangle with the inflation tiger once again.

But it might not be so easy to tame the next time.

Once a really bad inflation spiral gets going it is really hard to stop.

But in the end, it is not going to be Barack Obama or the U.S. Congress that is going to decide if we pursue these inflationary policies or not. 

Ultimately, these decisions are in the hands of the unelected, unaccountable Federal Reserve.

If you don’t like it, too bad.  When was the last time a U.S. president or the U.S. Congress really stood up to the Federal Reserve?  It just doesn’t seem to happen.

The Federal Reserve is going to do what the Federal Reserve wants to do, and the rest of us are going to have to live with it.

Of course we could all try to elect candidates who would demand more accountability from the Federal Reserve this fall, but unfortunately those kind of candidates are few and far between.

The sad reality is that at this point, the Federal Reserve is pretty much completely and totally out of control.  The U.S. dollar has already lost over 95 percent of its value since 1913, and now the Federal Reserve is giving every indication that inflation is going to get even worse in the years to come.

But flooding the system with more paper money is not going to solve anything.  Instead, it is just going to make it even harder for average American families to buy milk and bread and to put gas in the car.

Inflation is a hidden tax on every single dollar that we already own.  It is a destroyer of wealth and a wrecker of currencies. 

But now some of the top officials at the Fed see inflation as a key tool in creating “economic growth”. 

With such a clueless collection of idiots running our economy (and the Federal Reserve does run our economy) do any of you actually believe that there is hope for the U.S. economic system in the long run?

Is The Federal Reserve Out Of Control? Markets Across The Globe Brace For Impact As The Federal Reserve Powers Up The Printing Presses

What in the world is going on over at the Federal Reserve?    Has it gotten to the point where the Federal Reserve is completely and totally out of control?  There is increasing speculation in the financial community that the Federal Reserve is on the verge of unleashing another round of quantitative easing.  In fact, at their September meeting, Federal Reserve officials hinted very strongly that quantitative easing is very much on their minds when they stated that the Federal Open Market Committee “is prepared to provide additional accommodation if needed to support the economic recovery and to return inflation, over time, to levels consistent with its mandate.”  You might want to reread that quote a couple of times just to let it sink in.  Do you see what the Fed is saying there?  The Fed is actually saying that it has a mandate to maintain a certain level of inflation.  Not that this is a secret to anyone that has seriously studied the Federal Reserve.  Since 1913, inflation has constantly gone up, U.S. government debt has increased exponentially and the U.S. dollar has lost over 96 percent of its value.  But for Federal Reserve officials to openly state that a certain amount of inflation is part of their mandate is absolutely stunning.

Even though the U.S. economy is still in pretty decent shape at this point (for the moment at least), the Federal Reserve still seems obsessed with trying to stimulate it.

In the past, the Federal Reserve would just cut interest rates whenever the economy needed a bit of a boost, but at this point the Fed has cut rates to nearly zero.  There just isn’t any more room to cut rates.

So what else can the Federal Reserve do?

Well, it can create money out of thin air and use it to buy U.S. Treasuries, mortgage-backed securities and other assets.  This is known as quantitative easing, and many analysts fear that it is quickly becoming more than just an emergency measure.

Back in March 2009, the Federal Reserve announced that it would purchase $1.7 trillion worth of U.S. Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities over the next 6 to 9 months.  That was the first round of quantitative easing and Fed officials believe that it helped the U.S. economy avoid an even worse downturn.

But now Federal Reserve officials are talking about making quantitative easing a regular thing.  An article in the Wall Street Journal recently described the current thinking inside the Fed…. 

Rather than announce massive bond purchases with a finite end, as they did in 2009 to shock the U.S. financial system back to life, Fed officials are weighing a more open-ended, smaller-scale program that they could adjust as the recovery unfolds.

Quantitative easing that is open-ended?

What kind of insanity is this?

Is quantitative easing going to become a permanent part of our financial system?

And what does “smaller-scale” actually mean?

Well, according to James Bullard, the president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, “small-scale” is actually pretty darn large.  According to the Wall Street Journal, a “small-scale” quantitative easing program would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 billion a month….

Under a small-scale approach, Mr. Bullard says, the Fed might announce some still-undecided target for bond buying—say $100 billion or less per month. It would then make a judgment at each meeting whether continued action was needed.

If the Fed injected $100 billion a month into the economy through quantitative easing, that would mean that by the end of the year over 1 trillion dollars would have been created.

That does not sound like “small-scale” to me.

In fact, if the Federal Reserve purchased $1 trillion in U.S. Treasuries next year that would be an amount nearly equal to the total amount of new debt that the U.S. government plans to issue during the year.

Can anyone say Ponzi scheme?

When we get to the point where the Federal Reserve is “buying” a large percentage of new U.S. debt with money that is created out of thin air there is simply no denying the fact that the Fed is running a massive Ponzi scheme. 

But the truth is that the U.S. government is in so much debt and the U.S. economy is in so much trouble that something must be done.  It is really tempting to “inflate away” the debt and to pump up GDP figures with a flood of paper money, and Helicopter Ben Bernanke has certainly shown that he is not shy about pulling the trigger.

Of course more debt, more paper money and more inflation will only make our long-term economic problems even worse.

But right now Federal Reserve officials appear to be absolutely obsessed with the short-term.

And without a doubt world financial markets are certainly expecting a new round of quantitative easing to begin soon.

CNBC recently polled 67 economists, strategists and fund managers about what they think is going to happen.  The following is a summary of what CNBC found…. 

The Federal Reserve will boost its balance sheet by about half a trillion dollars over a six-month period beginning in November and keep it inflated for up to a year, according to a survey of leading markets participants by CNBC.

But many analysts believe that the Fed will take even more substantial action than that.  According to the Wall Street Journal, economists at Goldman Sachs are projecting that the Federal Reserve will end up buying at least another $1 trillion in assets during this next round of quantitative easing.

Stephen Stanley of Pierpont Securities in convinced that it will be even worse than that.  Stanley believes that the Fed will add another $3 trillion to its balance sheet by next August.  The following is what he recently told CNBC….

“If the Fed pulls the trigger, they will go big.”

In an interview with the Economic Times of India, Marc Faber painted an even bleaker picture….

“I believe that if the S&P in the US drops 15-20% to around 900-950, the Fed would come out not with this quantitative easing No. 2, but with quantitative easing No. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 until the asset markets go up again. They are going to print and print and print.”

It seems like almost everyone is anticipating that the Federal Reserve is going to fire up the printing presses.

Now, even some of the Federal Reserve’s staunchest defenders are now abandoning them.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, perhaps the most respected financial columnist in the U.K., recently penned an article entitled “Shut Down the Fed (Part II)” in which he absolutely lambasted Bernanke and other Federal Reserve officials for considering another round of quantitative easing….

I apologise to readers around the world for having defended the emergency stimulus policies of the US Federal Reserve, and for arguing like an imbecile naif that the Fed would not succumb to drug addiction, political abuse, and mad intoxicated debauchery, once it began taking its first shots of quantitative easing.

In fact, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is now openly accusing the Federal Reserve of being out of control….

So all those hillsmen in Idaho, with their Colt 45s and boxes of krugerrands, who sent furious emails to the Telegraph accusing me of defending a hyperinflating establishment cabal were right all along. The Fed is indeed out of control.

On behalf of those who believe that the Federal Reserve is “a hyperinflating establishment cabal”, I accept Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s apology.

The truth is that the Federal Reserve is out of control.

The Federal Reserve system was designed to get the U.S. government into a perpetually expanding spiral of debt.  Wealth is slowly but surely transferred from the American people to the U.S. government (when we pay taxes) and ultimately into the hands of those who own U.S. government debt.

As long as the Federal Reserve system exists, U.S. government debt will keep going up, the value of the U.S. dollar will keep going down and wealth will be slowly transferred into the hands of the ultra-wealthy.

And why in the world would the American people allow an unelected, privately-owned central bank to run the U.S. economy, control the money supply, set interest rates and print all U.S. currency?

It simply does not make any sense.

The Federal Reserve has not been shy about declaring that it is “not an agency” of the U.S. government and not directly accountable to the American people.

So why do the American people put up with this kind of nonsense?

The truth is that the Federal Reserve has become far too powerful.  U.S. Representative Ron Paul recently told MSNBC that he believes that the Federal Reserve is actually 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.”

The truth is that the U.S. economy will never be fundamentally “fixed” simply by electing another “Bush” or another “Obama”.  Something needs to be done about the Federal Reserve system, but right now our politicians in Washington can’t even muster enough support to pass a bill to audit the Fed. 

So what do you think about the Federal Reserve?  Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts….

Helicopter Ben Bernanke Says Everything Is Going To Be Okay

Don’t worry everybody. Federal Reserve Chairman “Helicopter Ben” Bernanke says that the U.S. economy is going to be just fine, and that if it does slip up somehow the Federal Reserve is ready to rush in to the rescue. That was essentially Bernanke’s message to an annual gathering of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming on Friday. Bernanke insisted that even though the Federal Reserve has already cut interest rates to historic lows it still has plenty of tools that could be used to stimulate the U.S. economy if necessary. Well, considering Bernanke’s track record, the “don’t worry, be happy” mantra is just not going to cut it this time. After all, if Bernanke and his team were such intellectual powerhouses the “surprise” financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 would not have caught them with their pants down. The truth is that just before the “greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression” Bernanke was telling everyone that the economy was just fine. So are we going to let him fool us again?

But Bernanke insists that this time is different.  This time the Federal Reserve really has got a handle on things.  During his remarks at Jackson Hole, Bernanke said that the Fed will adopt “unconventional measures if it proves necessary, especially if the outlook were to deteriorate significantly.”

Unconventional measures?

Could that be a thinly veiled way of saying that Helicopter Ben and his pals will do as much “quantitative easing” as they feel is necessary to keep the economy moving forward?

Unfortunately, most Americans have absolutely no idea what quantitative easing is.

Basically, when quantitative easing takes place the Federal Reserve creates money “ex nihilo” (out of thin air) and uses that money to buy stuff like U.S. government bonds and mortgage-backed securities.  By pumping money into the economy like this, the hope is that banks will start lending more and people and businesses will have more money to spend. 

As far back as 2002, Bernanke has been openly advocating “easy money” policies as a way to stimulate the U.S. economy out of troubled times….

“The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at no cost.”

Now, before we go on and discuss some of the problems with quantitative easing, it must be noted that the statement by Bernanke above is absolutely rife with errors. 

It is absolutely frightening that someone like Bernanke has more power over the U.S. economy than any member of Congress or even the president of the United States.

First of all, the U.S. government does not issue our dollars.  They are issued by the Federal Reserve.

Just pull out a dollar bill right now.  It says “Federal Reserve Note” on it right at the top.

Secondly, the U.S. government cannot produce as many dollars as it wants.  Whenever it wants more U.S. dollars it has to give U.S. Treasuries to the Federal Reserve in exchange.

If the U.S. government could produce as many dollars as it wants, it could just print up $13 trillion and pay off the national debt tomorrow. 

But under the current system, it cannot do that.  The Federal Reserve controls the currency, and the truth is that the Federal Reserve is a private central bank that is about as “federal” as Federal Express is.

Thirdly, there is always a cost for producing more dollars.  We’ll talk about inflation in a moment, but first it must be noted that any time “the printing presses are fired up” the U.S. government goes into more debt, and every time the U.S. government goes into more debt, more interest must be paid on that new debt.

So there is a very high cost involved in the creation of more dollars.

In addition, every time a new U.S. dollar is created, every other U.S. dollar becomes a little bit less valuable.  Essentially, the more dollars there are in existence, the less purchasing power each dollar is going to have.  This phenomenon can be masked or delayed for a while, but inflation will always triumph in the end when the money supply is constantly expanded.

The U.S. dollar has lost over 95 percent of its value since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913.  This has not been a mistake.  The Federal Reserve system is designed to slowly but surely inflate the U.S. dollar.  What they do want to avoid, however, is doing it too quickly.

And this is exactly what is in danger of happening in the years ahead.  As the U.S. money supply dramatically expands in response to the exploding U.S. national debt we are eventually going to be dealing with some very, very serious inflation.

Right now, the Bush and Obama administrations have been getting the United States into so much debt that there aren’t enough buyers in the world to absorb it all (at least at the current super low interest rates on U.S. government debt).  So, instead of raising interest rates to a point where U.S. debt would be suitably attractive to investors, the Federal Reserve is stepping in and is “buying” (once again with money created out of thin air) all the excess U.S. Treasuries that don’t sell.  This is essentially a Ponzi scheme and it keeps interest rates on U.S. Treasuries artificially low.

In addition, the Federal Reserve has been handing gigantic sacks of cash to very large banks and financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup at almost zero percent interest and those big banks and financial institutions have been turning around and investing a large percentage of that cash in U.S. Treasuries.  This has created a gigantic U.S. Treasury carry trade bubble, and it has enabled many of these giant financial monsters to make massive piles of essentially risk-free cash.  This is another Ponzi scheme.

But these Ponzi schemes are not sustainable and they cannot last forever.  Right now Bernanke and his cohorts have been able to finance trillions in U.S. government debt and still keep interest rates on U.S. Treasuries and inflation very, very low.  At some point, their juggling act will come to an end and we will have a gigantic mess on our hands.

But for right now, Bernanke seems quite please with himself.  The following is how Bernanke concluded his speech at Jackson Hole….

As I said at the beginning, we have come a long way, but there is still some way to travel. Together with other economic policymakers and the private sector, the Federal Reserve remains committed to playing its part to help the U.S. economy return to sustained, noninflationary growth.

In Bernanke’s fantasy world, the U.S. economy is going to roar back to life and will soon be stronger than it ever has been.

But don’t you believe him.

The truth is that every single month the U.S. economy is seeing large numbers of jobs leave the country.

The truth is that thanks to our exploding trade deficit, the U.S. economy is poorer at the end of every single month than it was at the beginning.

The truth is that every single month the U.S. government (along with the vast majority of state and local governments) gets even deeper into debt.

The United States economy is not on the road to prosperity.

The United States economy gets poorer and deeper in debt every single month and is slowing bleeding to death.

Ben Bernanke can run around all he wants and try to convince us that “the sky isn’t falling”, but at some point the American people are going to wake up and simply not believe him anymore.

Bancor: The Name Of The Global Currency That A Shocking IMF Report Is Proposing

Sometimes there are things that are so shocking that you just do not want to report them unless they can be completely and totally documented.  Over the past few years, there have been many rumors about a coming global currency, but at times it has been difficult to pin down evidence that plans for such a currency are actually in the works.  Not anymore.  A paper entitled “Reserve Accumulation and International Monetary Stability” by the Strategy, Policy and Review Department of the IMF recommends that the world adopt a global currency called the “Bancor” and that a global central bank be established to administer that currency.  The report is dated April 13, 2010 and a full copy can be read here.  Unfortunately this is not hype and it is not a rumor.  This is a very serious proposal in an official document from one of the mega-powerful institutions that is actually running the world economy.  Anyone who follows the IMF knows that what the IMF wants, the IMF usually gets.  So could a global currency known as the “Bancor” be on the horizon?  That is now a legitimate question.

So where in the world did the name “Bancor” come from?  Well, it turns out that “Bancor” is the name of a hypothetical world currency unit once suggested by John Maynard Keynes.  Keynes was a world famous British economist who headed the World Banking Commission that created the IMF during the Breton Woods negotiations.

The Wikipedia entry for “Bancor” puts it this way….

The bancor was a World Currency Unit of clearing that was proposed by John Maynard Keynes, as leader of the British delegation and chairman of the World Bank commission, in the negotiations that established the Bretton Woods system, but has not been implemented.

The IMF report referenced above proposed naming the coming world currency unit the “Bancor” in honor of Keynes.

So what about Special Drawing Rights (SDRs)?  Over the past couple of years, SDRs have been touted as the coming global currency.  Well, the report does envision making SDRs “the principal reserve asset” as we move towards a global currency unit….

“As a complement to a multi-polar system, or even—more ambitiously—its logical end point, a greater role could be considered for the SDR.”

However, the report also acknowledges that SDRs do have some serious limitations.  Since the value of SDRs are closely tied to national currencies, anything affecting those currencies will affect SDRs as well.

Right now, SDRs are made up of a basket of currencies.  The following is a breakdown of the components of an SDR….

*U.S. Dollar (44 percent)

*Euro (34 percent)

*Yen (11 percent)

*Pound (11 percent)

The IMF report recognizes that moving to SDRs is only a partial move away from the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency and urges the adoption of a currency unit that would be truly international.  The truth is that SDRs are clumsy and cumbersome.  For now, SDRs must still be reconverted back into a national currency before they can be used, and that really limits their usefulness according to the report….

“A limitation of the SDR as discussed previously is that it is not a currency. Both the SDR and SDR-denominated instruments need to be converted eventually to a national currency for most payments or interventions in foreign exchange markets, which adds to cumbersome use in transactions. And though an SDR-based system would move away from a dominant national currency, the SDR’s value remains heavily linked to the conditions and performance of the major component countries.”

So what is the answer?

Well, the IMF report believes that the adoption of a true global currency administered by a global central bank is the answer.

The authors of the report believe that it would be ideal if the “Bancor” would immediately be used as currency by many nations throughout the world, but they also acknowledge that a more “realistic” approach would be for the “Bancor” to circulate alongside national currencies at first….

“One option is for bancor to be adopted by fiat as a common currency (like the euro was), an approach that would result immediately in widespread use and eliminate exchange rate volatility among adopters (comparable, for instance, to Cooper 1984, 2006 and the Economist, 1988). A somewhat less ambitious (and more realistic) option would be for bancor to circulate alongside national currencies, though it would need to be adopted by fiat by at least some (not necessarily systemic) countries in order for an exchange market to develop.”

So who would print and administer the “Bancor”?

Well, a global central bank of course.  It would be something like the Federal Reserve, only completely outside the control of any particular national government….

“A global currency, bancor, issued by a global central bank (see Supplement 1, section V) would be designed as a stable store of value that is not tied exclusively to the conditions of any particular economy. As trade and finance continue to grow rapidly and global integration increases, the importance of this broader perspective is expected to continue growing.”

In fact, at one point the IMF report specifically compares the proposed global central bank to the Federal Reserve….

“The global central bank could serve as a lender of last resort, providing needed systemic liquidity in the event of adverse shocks and more automatically than at present. Such liquidity was provided in the most recent crisis mainly by the U.S. Federal Reserve, which however may not always provide such liquidity.”

So is that what we really need? 

A world currency administered by an international central bank modeled after the Federal Reserve?

Not at all.

As I have written about previously, the Federal Reserve has devalued the U.S. dollar by over 95 percent since it was created and the U.S. government has accumulated the largest debt in the history of the world under this system.

So now we want to impose such a system on the entire globe?

The truth is that a global currency (whether it be called the “Bancor” or given a different name entirely) would be a major blow to national sovereignty and would represent a major move towards global government. 

Considering how disastrous the Federal Reserve system and other central banking systems around the world have been, why would anyone suggest that we go to a global central banking system modeled after the Federal Reserve?

Let us hope that the “Bancor” never sees the light of day.

However, the truth is that there are some very powerful interests that are absolutely determined to create a global currency and a global central bank for the global economy that we now live in. 

It would be a major mistake to think that it can’t happen.

5 Trillion MORE Dollars To Fix Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac???

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have become gigantic financial black holes that the U.S. government endlessly pours massive quantities of money into.  Unfortunately, if the U.S. government did allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to totally implode, both the mortgage industry and the housing industry in the United States would completely collapse.  So essentially the U.S. government finds itself between a rock and a hard place.  Prior to the financial crisis of the last few years, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were profit-seeking private corporations that also had a government-chartered mission of expanding home ownership in America.  But now that they have been officially taken over by the U.S. government, they have become gigantic bottomless money pits.  It is hard to even describe just how much of a mess Fannie and Freddie are in.  However, the unprecedented intervention by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the mortgage market over the past couple of years has been about the only thing that has kept it from plunging into absolute chaos.  So what does the future hold for Fannie Mae and for Freddie Mac?  Well, according to one estimate, it could take another 5 trillion dollars to “fix” Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac.

Yes, you read the correctly.  According to an article in the Christian Science Monitor, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are facing $5 trillion dollars in liabilities that the federal government is going to have to deal with one way or another….

An exit strategy could involve adding Fannie and Freddie’s roughly $5 trillion in obligations, in effect, to a federal balance sheet that already includes $13.3 trillion in federal government debts. The GSE obligations would be a different animal, because those liabilities would need to be covered by taxpayers only if things went bad in the housing market.

It is hard to even put into words how much money that is.  If you were alive when Jesus was born, and you spent one million dollars every single day since then, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.

But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not a one trillion dollar problem.

They are a five trillion dollar problem.

And if the housing market gets even worse (which it will), that figure could rise substantially.

Of course the U.S. government should have never gotten into the mortgage business in the first place, but these days the U.S. government is intervening in virtually every industry.

And don’t expect U.S. government support for the mortgage industry to stop any time soon.  In fact, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says that the U.S. government plans to continue to play a prominent role in back-stopping mortgages in order to keep the U.S. economy stabilized.

But if the only thing keeping the U.S. housing industry from plunging into the abyss is unprecedented intervention by the U.S. government, what does that say about the overall health of the U.S. economy?

Mortgage defaults and foreclosures continue to set new all-time records even with all of this government intervention.  In fact, major U.S. banks wrote off about $8 billion on mortgages during the first 3 months of 2010, and if this pace continues it will even exceed 2009’s staggering full-year total of $31 billion.

Not only that, but construction of new homes in the U.S. and applications to build new homes in the U.S. both declined to their lowest levels in more than a year during July.

And things are rapidly getting even worse for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Mortgages held by Fannie and Freddie are going delinquent at a very alarming pace as the Christian Science Monitor recently explained….

As of March 31 this year, 6.3 percent of mortgages held by Fannie and Freddie are either seriously delinquent or in foreclosure. Although that’s down slightly from the figure three months earlier, it represents a big one-year rise (from 3.9 percent in early 2009).

An increase in delinquencies of over 50 percent in just one year?

That is not a promising trend.

If the U.S. housing market takes another big dive in the next few years, and things certainly look very ominous at the moment, what in the world is that going to do to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?

So what is the solution?

Well, on Tuesday the Obama administration invited prominent banking executives to offer their thoughts on the mortgage market.

So what was the consensus?

It was something along the lines of this: “Please, oh please, oh please continue propping up the 11 trillion dollar mortgage market.”

So much for capitalism, eh?

When even the banksters are begging for massive ongoing government intervention you know that the game has changed.

Adam Smith must be rolling over in his grave.

But this is where we are at.

We are on the verge of a horrific economic collapse, and it is only enormous intervention by the U.S. government that is holding things together.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration backed approximately 90 percent of all home loans made during the first half of 2010.

So where would we be without the government?

Of course we could let the whole thing collapse and allow housing prices to eventually settle at a level where people could actually afford them, but what fun would that be?

No, for now the U.S. government will continue to endlessly spend billions of dollars to prop up a system that is artificially inflated and that is destined to collapse one way or another.

The truth is that the American middle class is slowly being wiped out and they just can’t afford to pay $300,000, $400,000 or $500,000 for their houses anymore.

Without good jobs, the American people are not going to be able to afford hefty mortgages.  Unfortunately, millions upon millions of middle class jobs are being offshored and outsourced every single year and they are not coming back.

There simply will never be a recovery in the housing market without jobs.  But in the new global economy, American workers have been put in direct competition with the cheapest labor in the world.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that jobs are going to be taken away from American workers and given to people who are willing to work for less than ten percent as much.

So, no, the housing market is never going to fully recover.  Things got dramatically out of balance over the past couple of decades, and the housing market is going to try to restore that balance regardless of what the U.S. government does. 

The U.S. government can continue to throw billions (or even trillions) of dollars at the problem, but in the end the underlying economic fundamentals are simply not going to be denied.

Will Quantitative Easing By The Federal Reserve Unleash Economic Hell?

Prior to the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, the Federal Reserve could always count on being able to stimulate the U.S. economy with a quick cut to interest rates.  But now with interest rates just barely above zero, the Federal Reserve is searching for other ways to pump life into a U.S. economy that is staggering about like a drunken college student.  One of the ways that the Federal Reserve can do this is through something called “quantitative easing”.  In essence, what happens is that the Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air and starts buying things like U.S. Treasuries, mortgage-backed securities and corporate debt.  But many economic analysts are now warning that further rounds of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve could end up setting off a series of events that could ultimately unleash economic hell.  In fact, there are quite a few high profile commentators who now believe that hyperinflation in the United States is absolutely inevitable.

For those not familiar with quantitative easing, Wikipedia has a pretty good definition….

The term quantitative easing (QE) describes a form of monetary policy used by central banks to increase the supply of money in an economy when the bank interest rate, discount rate and/or interbank interest rate are either at, or close to, zero.[citation needed] A central bank does this by first crediting its own account with money it has created ex nihilo (“out of nothing”).[1] It then purchases financial assets, including government bonds, mortgage-backed securities and corporate bonds, from banks and other financial institutions in a process referred to as open market operations.

But is it really a good idea for a privately-owned central bank to have the power to create money out of nothing and to do whatever it wants with it outside of U.S. government control?

Of course not, but we dealt with those issues in another article.

What we will concern ourselves with in this article are the negative effects that could be unleashed as the Federal Reserve further abuses this power.

Now keep in mind that disasters don’t usually happen overnight.  They usually build over time.  When the Federal Reserve begins new rounds of quantitative easing, it will take time for the effects to be felt.

And so far, the new quantitative easing measures that the Federal Reserve has implemented have been relatively mild….

*The Federal Reserve has announced that it will “continue to roll over the Federal Reserve’s holdings of Treasury securities as they mature”.

*The Federal Reserve has also announced that it has decided to reinvest principal payments on mortgage holdings into U.S. Treasury securities.

*The Federal Reserve Bank of New York announced on Wednesday that it will purchase $18 billion in U.S. Treasury securities between now and mid-September.

But most analysts are expecting quantitative easing by the Fed to accelerate – especially if the U.S. economy continues to flounder.

So is there a reason we should be concerned about all of this?

Well, yes there is.

Marc Faber, the author of “The Gloom, Boom and Doom Report”, recently warned CNBC that all of this intervention by the Federal Reserve is going to create a “final crisis” that will destroy the U.S. financial system….

“Investors should have listened to me already six months ago when I wrote that the Fed will continue to monetize … they will print and print and print until the final crisis wipes out the whole system.”

In a recent article, Bob Chapman of the International Forecaster described some of the financial gymnastics that our “financial authorities” go through just to keep the current shell game going….

But first, we ignore things like monthly hundred billion plus mathematical discrepancies between the amount of the government’s deficits and the amount of treasury bonds being sold.  Then we give the proceeds from the bogus excess treasury sales to foreign countries, foreign central banks and sovereign wealth funds as well as Cayman Island hedge funds so they can do what with it?  Why, so they can buy US treasury paper and agency paper, among other things.  Yep, we set up the straw men, fund them with counterfeit money illegally created out of thin air beyond what is needed to fund the ever-increasing deficit being created by the drunken sailors running the US government, and we then magically create categories of new mega-buyers in our financial reports to show everyone how our treasury paper is just as “beloved” as in the old days.  Why, even the totally bankrupt UK has magically created $180 billion for the express purpose of buying up those treasuries to keep the whole rip-off party going.

What a mess they have created.

Things have gotten so bad that even CNN is publishing articles that openly acknowledge the crisis.  In a recent article on CNN entitled “Is This Finally The Economic Collapse?”, Keith R. McCullough warned that the Federal Reserve openly buying large amounts of U.S. government debt is a very dangerous threshold to cross….

Now that the US can’t cut interest rates any lower, the only option left on the table is what the Fed just announced it would start doing — buying Treasury debt. And that could lead the country to the brink of collapse: According to economists Carmen Reinhart & Ken Rogoff, whose views we share, crossing the 90% debt/GDP threshold is the equivalent of crossing the proverbial Rubicon of economic growth. It’s a point from which it’s almost impossible to return.

And that is the crux of the problem – the U.S. government has a debt that is absolutely spiralling out of control.  This is a problem that has been building for decades and there simply is no quick fix for it. 

But the truth is that it was seen as far back as 1835.  In his article for CNN, Keith R. McCullough included a very appropriate quote by Alexis De Tocqueville, the author of Democracy in America….

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”

Today, approximately 57% of the U.S. government budget is spent on direct payments to American citizens or is money that is spent on behalf of individual American citizens. 

For decades, the “Congress critters” have been bribing the American people (and each other) with massive payouts and have been getting away with it.

But now we are starting to pay the price.

The truth is that the U.S. government has become an expert on wasting money.  Most of the folks populating Congress are so incompetent that they should not even be hired to mop the floors of a Dairy Queen, and yet they control how trillions of our tax dollars are spent. 

The end result is that we have a financial mess that is absolutely unprecedented.

The U.S. financial system is doomed.  The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve will probably end up trying to save it with a massive flood of paper money, and in the end that will likely result in the collapse of the U.S. dollar and hyperinflation.

But hopefully all of that is still a while away yet.  For now, the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are trying to play a very delicate balancing act and are trying to keep this giant house of cards from collapsing.

As incompetent as they are, let’s hope that they can keep things together for at least a while longer, because when things really fall apart we are all going to be feeling the pain.

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