Fear and Loathing in the Federal Reserve?
Going, going, Gonzo...
Don't tell the poor bastard about the bats. He'll find out soon enough.
What would he prefer we call it? Man caused disaster?
Let’s just call it theft.
Like the bear said, we should just call it “the printing money”.
Printing Money electronically.
“changing the quantity of bank reserves”
Well, that is EXACTLY what it was the first time around and exactly what it will be this time around. Banks illegally depleted their required FDIC minimum balances then filled their coffers with the first QE round to bring their FDIC minimum balances back to required levels. The banks are now sitting on what is estimated at $2 trillion and not making loans as doing so has no benefit to them. Adding another $600 billion will do nothing more.
“Bernanke Economy Destruction” doesn’t roll off the tongue like QE II does.
http://imarketnews.com/node/21970 (Sunday, November 7)
except:
Bernanke said he and his fellow monetary policymakers had to resume so-called quantitative easing to fulfill its statutory “dual mandate,” which calls for maximum sustainable employment and price stability. He said the Fed couldn't be happy with high unemployment and a rate of inflation that is running below the Fed's long-term forecast of 1.7% to 2%.
But Bernanke, who was on a panel with former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and former New York Fed President Gerald Corrigan, said the Fed is just using different tools to accomplish the same results it would be seeking if it still had room to cut the federal funds rate.
“There's a sense out there that quantitative easing or asset purchases is something completely foreign and new and that we have no idea what's going to happen,” he said. “Quite to the contrary ... . This is just monetary policy.”
How about Tax On Real People-—TORP?
Okay, Helicopter Ben, we’ll stop calling it the “QE II”.
“Titanic” is so much more appropriate.
Bernanke prefers the term “credit easing”.
No it’s called printing money.
Would that it were fully justified.
True, it’s simpler for you to say, obamma and berrwhackie are taking the food out of grand mam’s pantry and replacing it with dog biscuits.
First of all, Bernanke has already stated that the Congress should "stimulate" the economy by "cutting spending" and, hopefully, the new Congress will remove the idiotic Humphrey-Hawkings "mandate" for the Fed to "target unemployment" as if the Fed / monetary policy had any reasonable tools to do that, so everyone would not have to keep lying about this. So Bernanke is a natural ally of conservatives, not an enemy he is made out to be. Contrary to "popular" belief by all the graduates of the "evening news economics" Bernanke is not an idiot, and is the foremost expert on the Great Depression and understand the mistakes of Japan Inc.'s Lost Decades.
Second, simply by focusing on the Fed and Bernanke, which have done more than anybody to save the U.S. financial and banking system and the economy from collapse, they are diverted from focusing "like a laser beam" on the real problems for the U.S. economy - overtaxation, overspending and overregulations, caused by congresscritters and executive and even judicial branches. Democrats are just laughing and loving pointing fingers on different "causes" of problems and have Republicans follow and bashing them (previously, the "deregulation." like the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the "fatcats of Wall Street" any of the "BIG" Businesses, Chamber of Commerce etc. etc.) while not breathing a word about actual culprits CRA / GSEs Fannie-Freddie-FHA-HUD / Sarbanes-Oxley (Sarbox or SOX) and now the new ones that actually must be repealed - FinReg (Dodd-Frank) and ObamaCare which create additional costs and burdens in addition to the uncertainty in the U.S. economic "climate change".
NY Fed President Bill Duddley recently explained the reasons for QE2, and it's not designed to do what most "critics" say it does or will do, or what the actual consequences will be. It was one of the first Fed interviews since the QE2 was attacked at G-20 in Seoul. I didn't see it posted on here, so...
Excerpts from Fed Easing Is Not Aimed at Weakening US Dollar: Dudley - CNBC, by Steve Liesman, 2010 November 16
< snip > ..... A little bit more demand leads to more employment growth, higher income and rising confidence... rather than on the other side of things where we've seen Japan over the last 15 or 20 years." Dudley said a key reason for the new policy was to avoid a "double-dip" recession. "I think there is a fair amount of empirical evidence that suggests that there is a stall speed for the economy" ..... Dudley said that every time the unemployment has risen by three-tenths of a percent in the post-War era, the economy has ended up in recession. < snip > ..... As for the dollar , Dudley said that a currency usually depreciates when one nation eases monetary policy relative to another, but he said that's not always the case. He even held out the possibility that quantitative easing could cause the dollar to appreciate, which it has over the past several weeks. ..... He also disagreed with another point of criticism: that the Fed's policy would lead to inflation. Dudley contended that new tools the Fed has put in place to withdraw excess cash from the banking system when the economy rebounds ..... < snip > < snip > ..... "I think that's very off base because I think that the goal of our policy is a very simple one, to ease financial conditions," Dudley said. The Fed is "not trying to push the dollar to any particular level. What we're trying to do through our large-scale asset purchase programs is to remove Treasurys from the market and force private investors into other assets." .....
The interview is compressed, but Dudley's interviews are rare, so it's worth reading entire article. In it he also explains what the Fed's QE2 actually doesn't do - it doesn't print money - and why QE2 isn't likely to "solve" the lending problem (there are already plenty of reserves in the system) and how the QE2 can help the economy by lowering interest rate (and keeping them low for a while) ... in effect, allowing businesses and consumers to "refi" their debts at lower costs thus injecting more purchasing power into the economy (e.g., all the corporate debt issuance at record low rates, including even tech giants with great cash reserves on their balance sheets, Microsoft and HP, and see Big Wave of Mortgage Resets May Not Be As Bad As Feared - CNBC, by Mark Koba, 2010 November 11).
It's worth reading and understanding, and not be sidetracked into indiscriminately bashing Bernanke and the Fed, just because falling for cheap "populism" and lashing out at "somebody around the problem" feels good... There are real, true and better political targets than blaming a convenient political scapegoat and "shooting the messenger" of the bad economic tides. Let's concentrate on those and drive the message for at least the next two years on who was and should be held responsible for economic troubles, without them being able to point at the bogeyman, "the evil Fed".
The whole speech is worth reading. It's a tour de force of cherry picked facts and false choices.
Ben sounds like Obama after the election: there is nothing wrong with what we are doing. We just did not use the right words to get the American people to like it.
Ben is a poltician and the economy is Obamapolitics to him which means it is Soros’ plan for the country.
Hold onto your hats!
OK, I'll call it BS!