Dee Finney's blog
start date July 20, 2011
today's date September 15, 2012
page 300
TOPIC ANOTHER BANKER BAILOUT
Latest move represents huge transfer of wealth from the middle class to the elite
Alex Jones & Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Friday, September 14, 2012
While Ben Bernanke’s announcement that the Federal Reserve will embark on an open ended scheme to purchase $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities each month has been touted by the establishment media as the beginning of “QE3″ it is in fact nothing less than another banker bailout in disguise.
While many have rightly attacked the Fed’s policy of printing money as a band aid that does little to solve the economy in the long term, this new move isn’t even about that. The policy announced yesterday will merely see the Fed use taxpayer money to purchase more bad debt in the form of junk mortgage-backed derivative based securities that have been sold over and over again.
This has nothing to do with getting the economy going again and will only serve as yet another huge wealth transfer from the middle class to the elite.
While the fed claims the move will facilitate more lending it will do nothing of the sort. As the China Securities Journal reports today, “QE3 is not likely to result in more loans.”
“The truth is that it isn’t as if banks are hurting for cash to loan out,” writes Michael Snyder. “In fact, right now banks are already sitting on $1.6 trillion in excess reserves. Just like with the first two rounds of quantitative easing, a lot of the money from QE3 will likely end up being put on the shelf.”
Indeed, after the TARP bailout back in 2008, the Federal Reserve paid the big banks to withhold loans, because the bailouts are not about reinvigorating the real economy, they are about propping up the stock market for the rich while the real economy goes to the dogs.
QE1 and QE2 both did absolutely nothing to rescue the economy. Despite a massive injection of quantitative easing over the last four years, the unemployment rate in the United States has barely improved.
In addition, the “wealth gap” between rich and poor has vastly increased. This again illustrates how actions such as the one announced yesterday have nothing to do with helping the little guy get back on his feet and everything to do with the concentration of financial power into fewer hands.
As George Washington’s Blog points out, “This is just another bailout for the big banks. (If the government had instead given money directly to the consumer, we would be out of this economic slump by now).”
“Bernanke claims that the main justification for QE3 is to boost employment. This is slightly ironic, since Bernanke’s policies are largely responsible for creating high unemployment in the first place. The real justification is to try to artificially prop up asset prices. But that approach has been proven to be an absolute failure.”
Indeed, the Federal Reserve admits that its new program will do little to alleviate the suffering of jobless Americans.
“I want to be clear — While I think we can make a meaningful and significant contribution to reducing this problem, we can’t solve it. We don’t have tools that are strong enough to solve the unemployment problem,” Bernanke said yesterday.
The fact that we haven’t seen massive inflation since the start of the Fed’s so-called quantitative easing policies illustrates how the money is not even being pumped back into the economy. The only real inflation has been in the luxury sector because the rich are getting richer and spending more while the poor continue to live on or below the poverty line.
QE3 is merely another massive wealth transfer and a tool of waging economic warfare on the poor and middle class, another manifestation of neo-feudalism to destroy America and have the global bankers pose as the saviors.
The economy is being destroyed by design so that the elite can exploit the fear and chaos caused by the collapse in order to centralize power and control. This can also be seen over in Europe where Jose Manuel Barroso is exploiting the crisis in a bid to turn the EU into a “federation”.
Bernanke’s latest move is merely a continuation of the engineered takeover of the U.S. economy and will achieve nothing aside from enriching the wealthy to an even greater degree while ensuring the rest of us continue to see outliving standards decline on the path to economic serfdom.
*********************
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.
Last update: Sep. 14, 2012
We're tracking where taxpayer money has gone in the ongoing bailout of the financial system. Our database accounts for both the broader $700 billion bill and the separate bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
For each entity, we provide a “Net Outstanding” amount, which shows how deep taxpayers are in the hole after accounting for any revenue the government has received (usually through interest or dividends).
Companies that failed to repay the government and resulted in a loss are shaded red. You can see a list of those investments here. All other investments either returned a profit to the government or might still be repaid. Recipients of aid through TARP’s housing programs (such as mortgage servicers and state housing orgs) received subsidies that were never intended to be repaid, so we don’t mark those as losses..
Note: Subsidies are listed separately from the investment programs. So, for instance, Bank of America is listed twice – both as a mortgage servicer and as a bank.
Want just the numbers all in one place? See the detailed view here.
Search for
a recipient
926
Recipients
$603.8B
Total disbursement
$340.4B
Total returned
$87.2B
Total revenues from dividends, interest, and other fees
$-176.2B
Total net to date
Zero Hedge
Sept 14, 2012
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!”
Paul’s reaction to more Federal Reserve stimulus:
“It should not surprise anybody, but it is still astounding. To me, it is so astounding that it does not collapse the markets. [Bernanke] said, ‘We are in very big trouble. We are going to do something unprecedented and we believe it will not hurt the dollar.’ And yet the stocks, they say ‘we love this stuff.’ But the dollar didn’t do so well today and the real value of the dollar is measured against gold, and gold skyrocketed from its very low to its highest. It means we are weakening the dollar. We are trying to liquidate our debt through inflation. The consequence of what the Fed is doing is a lot more than just CPI. It has to do with malinvestment and people doing the wrong things at the wrong time.Believe me, there is plenty of that. The one thing that Bernanke has not achieved and it frustrates him, I can tell—is he gets no economic growth. He doesn’t do anything with the unemployment numbers. I think the country should have panicked over what theFed is saying that we have lost control and the only thing we have left is massively creating new money out of thin air, which has not worked before, and is not going to work this time.”
On potential unintended consequences:
“The biggest unintended consequence is what we need is a restoration of confidence. If the Fed is expressing a lack of confidence and they do not know what to do, it does not do anything to restore confidence. People might restrain from doing anything. ‘Interest rates are low. I do not have to buy my house this year. I will wait until next year. It might be a little easier. Prices might come down.’ So people are restrained and it is the opposite of when you expect that housing prices are going up, and you are afraid interest rates are going up. That is why the market rate of interest is so crucial. The rate of interest should give the businessman, the entrepreneurs, the investors and the savers information. But there is no market to interest rates. That is why there is such gross distortion and why we do not have a market economy. We have a rigged economy through central economic planning by central banking. The system is failing, it was doomed to fail and we have to wake up to that fact.”
On whether the Federal Reserve needs discipline:
“Short of getting rid of the Fed, which is not going to come and I wouldn’t do that overnight anyway, I would say that Congress has the authority to say, do not buy debt. Do not buy any debt. The Congress can yell and scream and pander to the people. They can say the deficits are terrible and terrible. But nobody wants to cut overseas spending or food stamps for the poor. They say, ‘we cannot do it without the Fed. The Fed has to buy this debt.’ That is a moral hazard for the politician. If the Fed couldn’t buy the debt, and interest rates would rise all of the sudden the burden would be on the Congress to get their house in order to restore confidence. Even that would panic a lot of people because live within your means? We do not like that. We like this idea that we can give people anything they want for free, so we can get reelected. Well, all of this is coming to an end.”
On whether Bernanke should be pulling back liquidity and raising interest rates right now instead:
“Liquidity should be determined by the market. I don’t think he should raise rates. He should just get out of rigging rates. The system is so biased. It helps the bankers who get free money and then they buy government debt. What about the people who are frightened, they do not like the stock market and they are frugal and want to take care of themselves? What do they get—1% on a CD? That is unfair. It’s bad economics. You want to let the market determine interest rates and let it sort it out. People get so nervous, because we have lived so long with a Keynesian economic model of fixing interest rates and intervening in the market.”
On whether Romney would do the right thing with the Federal Reserve if elected:
“So far, I have not heard that he would, but he has changed his mind before. If he gets to be president, we will keep our fingers crossed.”
| Part of a series on Government |
| Public finance |
|---|
 |
Quantitative easing (QE) is an unconventional[1][2] monetary policy used by central banks to stimulate the national economy when conventional monetary policy has become ineffective. A central bank implements quantitative easing by buying financial assets from commercial banks and other private institutions with newly created money, in order to inject a pre-determined quantity of money into the economy. This is distinguished from the more usual policy of buying or selling government bonds to keep market interest rates at a specified target value.[3][4][5][6] Quantitative easing increases the excess reserves of the banks, and raises the prices of the financial assets bought, which lowers their yield.[7]
Expansionary monetary policy typically involves the central bank buying short-term government bonds in order to lower short-term market interest rates (using a combination of standing lending facilities[8][9] and open market operations).[10][11][12][13] However, when short-term interest rates are either at, or close to, zero, normal monetary policy can no longer lower interest rates. Quantitative easing may then be used by the monetary authorities to further stimulate the economy by purchasing assets of longer maturity than only short-term government bonds, and thereby lowering longer-term interest rates further out on the yield curve.[14][15]
Quantitative easing can be used to help ensure inflation does not fall below target.[6] Risks include the policy being more effective than intended in acting against deflation – leading to higher inflation,[16] or of not being effective enough if banks do not lend out the additional reserves. [17]
Ordinarily, a central bank conducts monetary policy by raising or lowering its interest rate target for the inter-bank interest rate. A central bank generally achieves its interest rate target mainly through open market operations, where the central bank buys or sells short-term government bonds from banks and other financial institutions.[11][13] When the central bank disburses or collects payment for these bonds, it alters the amount of money in the economy, while simultaneously affecting the price (and thereby the yield) for short-term government bonds. This in turn affects the interbank interest rates.[18][19]
If the nominal interest rate is at or very near zero, the central bank cannot lower it further. Such a situation, called a liquidity trap,[20] can occur, for example, during deflation or when inflation is very low.[21] In such a situation, the central bank may perform quantitative easing by purchasing a pre-determined amount of bonds or other assets from financial institutions without reference to the interest rate.[5][22] The goal of this policy is to increase the money supply rather than to decrease the interest rate, which cannot be decreased further.[23] This is often considered a "last resort" to stimulate the economy.[24][25]
Quantitative easing, and monetary policy in general, can only be carried out if the central bank controls the currency used. The central banks of countries in the Eurozone, for example, cannot unilaterally expand their money supply, and thus cannot employ quantitative easing. They must instead rely on the European Central Bank (ECB) to set monetary policy.[26]
 |
The neutrality of this section is disputed. (July 2012) |
The original Japanese expression for quantitative easing (量的金融緩和, ryōteki kin'yū kanwa), was used for the first time by a Central Bank in the Bank of Japan's publications. The Bank of Japan has claimed that the central bank adopted a policy with this name on 19 March 2001.[27] However, the Bank of Japan's official monetary policy announcement of this date does not make any use of this expression (or any phrase using "quantitative") in either the Japanese original statement or its English translation.[28] Indeed, the Bank of Japan had for years, including as late as February 2001, claimed that "quantitative easing … is not effective" and rejected its use for monetary policy.[29] Speeches by the Bank of Japan leadership in 2001 gradually, and ex post, hardened the subsequent official Bank of Japan stance that the policy adopted by the Bank of Japan on March 19, 2001 was in fact quantitative easing. This became the established official view, especially after Toshihiko Fukui was appointed governor in February 2003. The use by the Bank of Japan is not the origin of the term quantitative easing or its Japanese original (ryoteki kinyu kanwa). This expression had been used since the mid-1990s by critics of the Bank of Japan and its monetary policy.[30]
Quantitative easing was used unsuccessfully by the Bank of Japan (BOJ) to fight domestic deflation in the early 2000s.[14][31][32][33] The Bank of Japan has maintained short-term interest rates at close to zero since 1999. With quantitative easing, it flooded commercial banks with excess liquidity to promote private lending, leaving them with large stocks of excess reserves, and therefore little risk of a liquidity shortage.[34] The BOJ accomplished this by buying more government bonds than would be required to set the interest rate to zero. It also bought asset-backed securities and equities, and extended the terms of its commercial paper purchasing operation.[35]
More recently, similar policies have been used by the United States, the United Kingdom and the Eurozone during the Financial crisis of 2007–2012. Quantitative easing was used by these countries as their risk-free short-term nominal interest rates are either at, or close to, zero. In US, this interest rate is the federal funds rate. In UK, it is the official bank rate.
During the peak of the financial crisis in 2008, in the United States the Federal Reserve expanded its balance sheet dramatically by adding new assets and new liabilities without "sterilizing" these by corresponding subtractions. In the same period the United Kingdom also used quantitative easing as an additional arm of its monetary policy in order to alleviate its financial crisis.[36][37][38]
The European Central Bank has used 12-month and 36-month long term refinancing operations (LTRO) (forms of quantitative easing without referring to them as such[39]) through a process of expanding the assets that banks can use as collateral that can be posted to the ECB in return for euros. This process has led to bonds being "structured for the ECB".[40] By comparison the other central banks were very restrictive in terms of the collateral they accept: the US Federal Reserve used to accept primarily treasuries (in the first half of 2009 it bought almost any relatively safe dollar-denominated securities); the Bank of England applied a large haircut.
During its QE programme, the Bank of England bought gilts from financial institutions, along with a smaller amount of relatively high-quality debt issued by private companies.[23] The banks, insurance companies and pension funds can then use the money they have received for lending or even to buy back more bonds from the bank. The central bank can also lend the new money to private banks or buy assets from banks in exchange for currency. These have the effect of depressing interest yields on government bonds and similar investments, making it cheaper for business to raise capital.[41] Another side effect is that investors will switch to other investments, such as shares, boosting their price and thus encouraging consumption.[23] QE can reduce interbank overnight interest rates, and thereby encourage banks to loan money to higher interest-paying and financially weaker bodies.
Nevin argued that QE failed to stimulate recovery in the UK and instead prolonged the recession between 2009 and 2012 as it caused a collapse in the velocity of circulation, or rate at which money circulates around the economy. This happened because QE drove down gilt yields and annuity rates and forced pensioners, savers and companies to hoard cash to counter the negative impact of QE on their investment income[42] .
The US Federal Reserve held between $700 billion and $800 billion of Treasury notes on its balance sheet before the recession. In late November 2008, the Fed started buying $600 billion in Mortgage-backed securities (MBS).[43] By March 2009, it held $1.75 trillion of bank debt, MBS, and Treasury notes, and reached a peak of $2.1 trillion in June 2010. Further purchases were halted as the economy had started to improve, but resumed in August 2010 when the Fed decided the economy was not growing robustly. After the halt in June holdings started falling naturally as debt matured and were projected to fall to $1.7 trillion by 2012. The Fed's revised goal became to keep holdings at the $2.054 trillion level. To maintain that level, the Fed bought $30 billion in 2–10 year Treasury notes a month. In November 2010, the Fed announced a second round of quantitative easing, or "QE2", buying $600 billion of Treasury securities by the end of the second quarter of 2011.[44][45] A third round of quantitative easing, or "QE3," was announced by the Federal Reserve in September 2012. The third round includes a plan to purchase US$40 billion of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) per month. Additionally, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announced that it would likely maintain the federal funds rate near zero "at least through 2015."[46]
The Bank of England had purchased around £165 billion of assets by September 2009 and around £175 billion of assets by end of October 2010.[47] At its meeting in November 2010, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted to increase total asset purchases to £200 billion. Most of the assets purchased have been UK government securities (gilts), the Bank has also been purchasing smaller quantities of high-quality private sector assets.[48] In December 2010 MPC member Adam Posen called for a £50 billion expansion of the Bank's quantitative easing programme, whilst his colleague Andrew Sentance has called for an increase in interest rates due to inflation being above the target rate of 2%.[49] In October 2011, the Bank of England announced it would undertake another round of QE, creating an additional £75 billion,[50] in February 2012 it announced an additional £50 billion,[51] in July 2012 it announce another £50 billion[52] bringing the total amount to £375 billion. The Bank of England has said that it will not buy more than 70% of any issue of government debt.[53] This means that at least 30% of each issue of government debt will have to be bought by other institutions.
The European Central Bank (ECB) said it would focus efforts on buying covered bonds, a form of corporate debt. It signalled initial purchases would be worth about €60 billion in May 2009. [54]
The Bank of Japan (BOJ) increased the commercial bank current account balance from ¥5 trillion yen to ¥35 trillion (approximately US$300 billion) over a 4 year period starting in March 2001. As well, the BOJ tripled the quantity of long-term Japan government bonds it could purchase on a monthly basis. In early October 2010, the BOJ announced that it would examine the purchase of ¥5 trillion (US$60 billion) in assets. This was an attempt to push the value of the yen versus the US dollar down to stimulate the local economy by making their exports cheaper; it did not work.[55] On 4 August 2011 the bank announced a unilateral move to increase the amount from ¥40 trillion (US$504 billion) to a total of ¥50 trillion (US$630 billion).[56][57] In October 2011 the Bank of Japan expanded its asset purchase program by ¥5 trillion ($66bn) to a total of ¥55 trillion.[58]
The expression "QE2" became a "ubiquitous nickname" in 2010, usually used to refer to a second round of quantitative easing by central banks in the United States.[59] Retrospectively, the round of quantitative easing preceding QE2 may be called "QE1". Similarly, "QE3" refers to the third round of quantitative easing involving the purchase of mortgage-backed securities, announced in September 2012, following QE2.[60][61]
According to the IMF, the quantitative easing policies undertaken by the central banks of the major developed countries since the beginning of the late-2000s financial crisis have contributed to the reduction in systemic risks following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. The IMF states that the policies also contributed to the improvements in market confidence and the bottoming out of the recession in the G-7 economies in the second half of 2009.[62]
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan calculated that as of July 2012 there was "very little impact on the economy" and noted "I'm very surprised at the data."[63]
Economist Martin Feldstein argues that QE2 led to a rise in the stock-market in the second half of 2010, which in turn contributed to increasing consumption and the strong performance of the US economy in late-2010.[64]
In November 2010, a group of conservative Republican economists and political activists released an open letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke questioning the efficacy of the Fed's QE program. The Fed responded that their actions reflected the economic environment of high unemployment and low inflation.[65]
Lowering interest rates can actually hurt the economy if people who depend on interest income spend less in response to their reduced income. In general, however, the Federal Reserve has assumed that the advantages of the low interest rates outweigh this effect, though they often admit that seniors may be hit as collateral damage.[citation needed]
In the European Union, World Pensions Council (WPC) financial economists have also argued that QE-induced artificially low interest rates will have an adverse impact on the underfunding condition of pension funds as “without returns that outstrip inflation, pension investors face the real value of their savings declining rather than ratcheting up over the next few years” [66]
Quantitative easing may cause higher inflation than desired if the amount of easing required is overestimated, and too much money is created.[16] On the other hand, it can fail if banks remain reluctant to lend money to small business and households in order to spur demand. Quantitative easing can effectively ease the process of deleveraging as it lowers yields. But in the context of a global economy, lower interest rates may contribute to asset bubbles in other economies.[citation needed]
An increase in money supply has an inflationary effect (as indicated by an increase in the annual rate of inflation). There is a time lag between money growth and inflation, inflationary pressures associated with money growth from QE could build before the central bank acts to counter them.[67] Inflationary risks are mitigated if the system's economy outgrows the pace of the increase of the money supply from the easing. If production in an economy increases because of the increased money supply, the value of a unit of currency may also increase, even though there is more currency available. For example, if a nation's economy were to spur a significant increase in output at a rate at least as high as the amount of debt monetized, the inflationary pressures would be equalized. This can only happen if member banks actually lend the excess money out instead of hoarding the extra cash. During times of high economic output, the central bank always has the option of restoring the reserves back to higher levels through raising of interest rates or other means, effectively reversing the easing steps taken.
On the other hand, in economies when the monetary demand is highly elastic with respect to interest rates, or interest rates are close to zero (symptoms which imply a liquidity trap), quantitative easing can be implemented in order to further boost monetary supply, and assuming that the economy is well below potential (inside the production possibilities frontier), the inflationary effect would not be present at all, or in a much smaller proportion.
Increasing the money supply tends to depreciate a country's exchange rates versus other currencies. This feature of QE directly benefits exporters residing in the country performing QE and also debtors whose debts are denominated in that currency, for as the currency devalues so does the debt. However, it directly harms creditors and holders of the currency as the real value of their holdings decrease. Devaluation of a currency also directly harms importers as the cost of imported goods is inflated by the devaluation of the currency.[68]
The new money could be used by the banks to invest in emerging markets, commodity-based economies, commodities themselves and non-local opportunities rather than to lend to local businesses that are having difficulty getting loans.[69]
Professor Willem Buiter, of the London School of Economics, has proposed a terminology to distinguish quantitative easing, or an expansion of a central bank's balance sheet, from what he terms qualitative easing, or the process of a central bank adding riskier assets onto its balance sheet:
Quantitative easing is an increase in the size of the balance sheet of the central bank through an increase [in its] monetary liabilities (base money), holding constant the composition of its assets. Asset composition can be defined as the proportional shares of the different financial instruments held by the central bank in the total value of its assets. An almost equivalent definition would be that quantitative easing is an increase in the size of the balance sheet of the central bank through an increase in its monetary liabilities that holds constant the (average) liquidity and riskiness of its asset portfolio. Qualitative easing is a shift in the composition of the assets of the central bank towards less liquid and riskier assets, holding constant the size of the balance sheet (and the official policy rate and the rest of the list of usual suspects). The less liquid and more risky assets can be private securities as well as sovereign or sovereign-guaranteed instruments. All forms of risk, including credit risk (default risk) are included.[70]
In introducing the Federal Reserve's response to the 2008–9 financial crisis, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke distinguished the new programme, which he termed "credit easing" from Japanese-style quantitative easing. In his speech, he announced:
Our approach—which could be described as "credit easing"—resembles quantitative easing in one respect: It involves an expansion of the central bank's balance sheet. However, in a pure QE regime, the focus of policy is the quantity of bank reserves, which are liabilities of the central bank; the composition of loans and securities on the asset side of the central bank's balance sheet is incidental. Indeed, although the Bank of Japan's policy approach during the QE period was quite multifaceted, the overall stance of its policy was gauged primarily in terms of its target for bank reserves. In contrast, the Federal Reserve's credit easing approach focuses on the mix of loans and securities that it holds and on how this composition of assets affects credit conditions for households and businesses.[71]
Credit easing involves increasing the money supply by the purchase not of government bonds, but of private sector assets such as corporate bonds and residential mortgage-backed securities.[72][73] When undertaking credit easing, the Federal Reserve increases the money supply not by buying government debt, but instead by buying private sector assets including residential mortgage-backed securities.[72][73] In 2010, the Federal Reserve purchased $1.25 trillion of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in order to support the sagging mortgage market. These purchases increased the monetary base in a way similar to a purchase of government securities.[74]
Quantitative easing has been nicknamed "printing money" by some members of the media,[75][76][77] central bankers,[78] and financial analysts.[79][80] However, central banks state that the use of the newly created money is different in QE. With QE, the newly created money is used for buying government bonds or other financial assets, whereas the term printing money usually implies that the newly minted money is used to directly finance government deficits or pay off government debt (also known as monetizing the government debt).[75]
Central banks in most developed nations (e.g., UK, US, Japan, and EU) are forbidden by law to buy government debt directly from the government and must instead buy it from the secondary market.[74][81] This two-step process, where the government sells bonds to private entities which the central bank then buys, has been called "monetizing the debt" by many analysts.[74] The distinguishing characteristic between QE and monetizing debt is that with QE, the central bank is creating money to stimulate the economy, not to finance government spending. Also, the central bank has the stated intention of reversing the QE when the economy has recovered (by selling the government bonds and other financial assets back into the market).[75] The only effective way to determine whether a central bank has monetized debt is to compare its performance relative to its stated objectives. Many central banks have adopted an inflation target. It is likely that a central bank is monetizing the debt if it continues to buy government debt when inflation is above target, and the government has problems with debt-financing.[74]
Ben Bernanke remarked in 2002 that the US Government had a technology called the printing press, or today its electronic equivalent, so that if rates reached zero and deflation was threatened the government could always act to ensure deflation was prevented. He said, however, that the Government would not print money and distribute it "willy nilly" but would rather focus its efforts in certain areas (for example, buying federal agency debt securities and mortgage-backed securities).[82][83] According to economist Robert McTeer, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, there is nothing wrong with printing money during a recession, and quantitative easing is different from traditional monetary policy "only in its magnitude and pre-announcement of amount and timing".[84][85] Richard W. Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, warned that a potential risk of QE is, "the risk of being perceived as embarking on the slippery slope of debt monetization. We know that once a central bank is perceived as targeting government debt yields at a time of persistent budget deficits, concern about debt monetization quickly arises." and later in the same speech states that the Fed is monetizing the government debt, "The math of this new exercise is readily transparent: The Federal Reserve will buy $110 billion a month in Treasuries, an amount that, annualized, represents the projected deficit of the federal government for next year. For the next eight months, the nation’s central bank will be monetizing the federal debt."[86]
Based on research reassessing the effectiveness of the US Federal Open Market Committee action in 1961 known as Operation Twist, The Economist has posited that a similar restructuring of the supply of different types of debt would have an effect equal to that of QE.[87] Such action would allow finance ministries (e.g., the US Department of the Treasury) a role in the process now reserved for central banks.[87]
| Look up quantitative easing in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
http://www.infowars.com/10-shocking-quotes-about-what-qe3-is-going-to-do-to-america/
Michael Snyder
The American Dream
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Ready or not, QE3 is here, and the long-term effects of this reckless
money printing by the Federal Reserve are going to be absolutely
nightmarish. The Federal Reserve is hoping that buying $40 billion worth
of mortgage-backed securities per month will spur more lending and more
economic activity.
But that didn’t happen with either QE1 or QE2. Both times the banks just sat on most of the extra money. As I pointed out the other day, U.S. banks are already sitting on $1.6 trillion in excess reserves. So will pumping them up with more cash suddenly make them decide to start lending? Of course not. In addition, QE3 is not likely to produce many additional jobs. As I showed in a previous article, the employment level did not jump up as a result of either QE1 or QE2. So why will this time be different? But what did happen under both QE1 and QE2 is that a lot of the money ended up pumping up the financial markets. So once again we should see stock prices go up (at least in the short-term) and commodities such as gold, silver, food and oil should also rise. But that also means that average American families will be paying more for the basic necessities that they buy on a regular basis. The most dangerous aspect of QE3, however, is what it is going to do to the U.S. dollar. Most of the rest of the world uses the U.S. dollar to conduct international trade, and by choosing to recklessly print money Ben Bernanke is severely damaging international confidence in our currency. If at some point the rest of the world rejects the dollar and no longer wants to use it as a reserve currency we are going to be facing a crisis unlike anything we have ever seen before. The real debate about QE3 should not be about whether or not it will help the economy a little bit in the short-term. Rather, everyone should be talking about the long-term implications and about how QE3 is going to accelerate the destruction of the dollar.
The following are 10 shocking quotes about what QE3 is going to do to America….
#1 Ron Paul
“It means we are weakening the dollar. We are trying to liquidate our debt through inflation. The consequence of what the Fed is doing is a lot more than just CPI. It has to do with malinvestment and people doing the wrong things at the wrong time. Believe me, there is plenty of that. The one thing that Bernanke has not achieved and it frustrates him, I can tell—is he gets no economic growth. He doesn’t do anything with the unemployment numbers. I think the country should have panicked over what the Fed is saying that we have lost control and the only thing we have left is massively creating new money out of thin air, which has not worked before, and is not going to work this time.”
#2 Peter Schiff, CEO Of Euro Pacific Capital
“This is a disastrous monetary policy; it’s kamikaze monetary policy”
This is the nuclear option for them. This is a never-ending weapon that is being fired at the middle class”
#4 Donald Trump
“People like me will benefit from this.”
“Quantitative easing—a fancy term for the Federal Reserve buying securities from predefined financial institutions, such as their investments in federal debt or mortgages—is fundamentally a regressive redistribution program that has been boosting wealth for those already engaged in the financial sector or those who already own homes, but passing little along to the rest of the economy. It is a primary driver of income inequality formed by crony capitalism. And it is hurting prospects for economic growth down the road by promoting malinvestments in the economy.”
#6 John Williams Of Shadowstats.com
“That’s absolutely nonsense. The Fed is just propping up the banks.”
#7 Marc Faber
“I happen to believe that eventually we will have a systemic crisis and everything will collapse. But the question is really between here and then. Will everything collapse with Dow Jones 20,000 or 50,000 or 10 million? Mr. Bernanke is a money printer and, believe me, if Mr. Romney wins the election the next Fed chairman will also be a money printer. And so it will go on. The Europeans will print money. The Chinese will print money. Everybody will print money and the purchasing power of paper money will go down.”
#8 Mesirow Financial Chief Economist Diane Swonk
“I think this will end up being a trillion-dollar commitment by the Fed”
#9 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke
“I want to be clear — While I think we can make a meaningful and significant contribution to reducing this problem, we can’t solve it. We don’t have tools that are strong enough to solve the unemployment problem”
#10 Credit Rating Agency Egan-Jones
“[T]he FED’s QE3 will stoke the stock market and commodity prices, but in our opinion will hurt the US economy and, by extension, credit quality. Issuing additional currency and depressing interest rates via the purchasing of MBS does little to raise the real GDP of the US, but does reduce the value of the dollar (because of the increase in money supply), and in turn increase the cost of commodities (see the recent rise in the prices of energy, gold, and other commodities). The increased cost of commodities will pressure profitability of businesses, and increase the costs of consumers thereby reducing consumer purchasing power. Hence, in our opinion QE3 will be detrimental to credit quality for the US….”
We have reached a major turning point in the financial history of the United States.
It would be hard to overstate how much damage that QE3 could potentially do to our financial system. If the rest of the world decides at some point that they no longer have confidence in our dollars and our debt then we are finished.
Sadly, the mainstream media does not seem to understand this, and most Americans gleefully believe whatever the mainstream media tells them.
So what do you think about QE3? Please feel free to post a comment with your opinion following this article….
| BLOG INDEXES |
| 2011 |
| JAN, FEB, MAR, APR 2012 |
| MAY, JUNE, JULY, AUG 2012 |
| SEPT, OCT, NOV, DEC. 2012 |
