Our givernment “betters” clueless on a topic of major national importance?
The Hell you say.
“Everything’s so...unexpected!”
Guess it would look bad if they just hauled out a Ouija board at these meetings.
Somebody get me some rope.
I read that and became amazed at supposedly grown-up, educated, adult ‘leaders’ could not say “With the invention of Democratic legislation Congress has now crushed the economic future of America for at least 20 years.” How can these people have any credibilty ever again? By design, HMMMM?
The recession wasn't caused by FED "bubble blowing policies".
The recession was caused by continued off-shoring of American industries, which over decades has left a severely weakened economy. Then an oil price spike back in 2007, soaked up disposable income and started job losses. Those job losses eventually triggered enough mortgage defaults that by Oct 2008, a money market fund heavily invested in short term mortgage securities broke the dollar for the first time.
That in turn caused a bank panic, extension of credit dried up, an old fashioned liquidity bank run hit.
At least three things served to exasperate the crisis.
First, the Fed had reduced the bank reserve rate to an effective 1%. This meant the Federal Reserve no longer had one of it's major tools to offset a liquidity crisis. They had to turn to Congress for a bail-out.
I believe they did this to be competitive with foreign banks. Same reason Congress repealed Glass-Steagall. But we should have kept foreign banks out of our market and kept our banks playing by our rules. Instead we let the foreign banks in and lowered our standards.
Second, the repeal of Glass-Steagall allowed the banks to engage in more risky business and it blurred the lines between investment banking and traditional banking. This combined with the FDIC's unwillingness or inability to get proper congressional authorization to regulate credit default swaps left a major hole in risk analysis of banks.
Third, in efforts to keep the economy going, the credit standards for mortgages had been lowered. Lots of 100% loans had been made. The loans weren't fraudulent. They just couldn't survive and economic downturn. In fact, in most downturns, mortgages and real estate take a hit. Real estate often looks like a "bubble" in hindsight. But it's a symptom of the greater economy, and very rarely the true cause of any economic downturn.
The primary job of the FOMC is to suppress wages. They do a great job of that.
OF COURSE THEY’RE ALL FRICKIN’ CLUELESS. None of these jerks have ever lived in the real world. They live in a world of books and theories from the likes of Krugman and Marx. They’re a bunch of know nothing puppets with massive power.