In announcing QE3, Ben Bernanke's words betrayed not the slightest doubt that this is the right thing. More Fed bond purchases, combined with three more years of zero interest rates, he said, will quicken economic growth and cause unemployment to fall. And the punditry class all nodded in unison.
I know that this is government and such officials have to pretend to be infallible. It's their way. The slightest indication of doubt can cause the whole propaganda apparatus to unravel. ... (more)
Welcome to Capital Account. The Fed gave the QE-addicted markets another dose of its stimulus drug today as it announced another securities purchase program. The Fed launched an open-ended program to buy $40 billion in mortgage backed securities each month, a program that will continue until the labor market improves. The Fed also committed to record low interest rates... (more)
The instant the Fed announced QE3, an unlimited program of bond buying with fake money until the end of time, the speculation about what it would mean went viral.
Does this mean that recovery is around the corner? Or does it signal a coming hyperinflation? Or perhaps more deflation stemming from liquidation?
The reaction of the leaping gold market gives a clue. But let's ask some more fundamental questions and return to the Fed's actions when we are finished. ... (more)
Back in December of 2010, banking analyst Meredith Whitney went on 60 Minutes and famously declared that a wave of municipal defaults was set to strike the U.S. in 2011. Alas, her prediction did not come to pass as municipal bonds have actually performed very well over the past two years. At the time, her warning made sense since most municipal governments are reliant on p... (more)
George Soros describes in the following video how we need a “New Financial World Order,” on the pretext that the current system is “broke” and creating huge trade imbalances. Although he is correct about the massive trade imbalances being incurred worldwide, he nevertheless chooses to ignore the reasoning behind the trade imbalance in the first place. The reasoning given for a new global currency is a false illusion and will only further undermine the economy, as I will point out below.
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What took Ben Bernanke sixty minutes of mumbling about tools, word-twisting, and data-manipulating to kinda-sorta admit - that in fact he is lost; Ron Paul eloquently expresses in 25 seconds in this Bloomberg TV clip. Noting that "we are creating money out of thin air," Paul sums up Bernanke's position perfectly "We've Lost Control!"
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Imminently, the Fed's Open Markets Operations desk will commence buying $40 billion in MBS per month, or about $10 billion each week. Concurrently, the Fed which is continuing Operation Twist, will still purchase $45 billion in "longer-term" Treasurys, sterilized by the $45 billion or so in 1-3 years Bonds it will sell until the end of the year at which point it runs out of short-term paper to sell.
New numbers that have just been released show that things are getting worse for American families. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income declined to $50,054 in 2011. That is a 1.5 percent decline from the previous year, and median household income has now fallen for 4 years in a row. In fact, after adjusting for inflation median household income has not been this lo... (more)
Perhaps no better example of the two camps of perspectives on the market's performance and the Fed's expectations was on display this afternoon on CNBC. In the 'we need some destructive asset clearing in order to get back to any sort of growth trajectory and the Fed is feeding an inflationary monster with its band-aid upon band-aid money-printing' camp is Peter Schiff; while the other side of the investing octagon is Ron Insana who sees a '100% rise in stocks as evidence of something and that th... (more)
Earlier this week, former U.S. president Bill Clinton gave the keynote address to the Democractic National Convention in an effort to lend some of his popularity to Barack Obama. With the unemployment rate still stubbornly high at 8.1%, Obama has lost many of the enthused voters who put him into the Oval Office in 2008. Clinton was tapped to deliver the speech ... (more)
Philip DeFranco, the Host of the Philip DeFranco Show on YouTube, on redistribution of wealth by the government. Is redistribution stealing, like Newt said? Is it legalized theft? Part 1.
I hate the inconsistency of minarchism. Phil seemed interested in the idea of a taxation free society, Jan shut that line of thought down though with his saying he supports certain forms of taxation. - Chris
Please note, this article is full of errors and is complete bunk, I only posted it because it was an update on this old case which was pure straightforward theft by the government, I only posted it because people in the comments were rightly destroying it.
For example, it says Theodore Roosevelt took us off the gold standard, it was actually FDR. It says all the coins were stolen, first off that's a lie, the government said they can't prove they weren't stolen, second the government ordered 445,000 of these coins to be seized and melted down, it was part of the biggest robbery in history when FDR ordered everyone's gold to be seized and everyone was left with the receipt (paper dollars which were merely titles to physical gold).
Not turning your gold in to be stolen is not theft, it's the opposite. This case was about as legitimate as an IRS audit where you have to prove all your income, yet it was an IRS audit of the family's long deceased grandfather almost a century ago.
If you want the real history on this case see this article here. - Chris
