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Posts Tagged ‘Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’

Esther L. George Is The Lone Hero Within the U.S. Federal Reserve

September 19th, 2013 Comments off

The recent conclave of the Fed’s FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee)  that met and rendered a decision  has sent the Dow Jones index soaring to record levels. The Fed, under the chairmanship of Ben Bernanke, is continuing its asset buying program, calibrated at $85 billion per month, as a monetary stimulus to goose and prop up the American economy, still on life support five years after the implosion of Lehman Brothers, previous claims of “green shoots” and economic recovery notwithstanding.

Wall Street is obviously delighted. The claim that the expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet by $2.5 trillion since 2008 is not inflationary is untrue. Inflation there has been, but it is primarily confined to the equity markets, where a new asset bubble is being cultivated by Ben Bernanke and company, to the pleasure of Wall Street, which scored big through the FOMC decision on maintaining the $85 billion per month asset buying program.

The FOMC’s vote was almost unanimous in favor of continuing the money printing frenzy at the Fed-but not quite. There was one lone dissenter who voted against the continuation of the asset buying program; Esther L. George, President of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank.  According to the Fed’s official release, “Voting against the action was Esther L. George, who was concerned that the continued high level of monetary accommodation increased the risks of future economic and financial imbalances and, over time, could cause an increase in long-term inflation expectations.”

It would appear that Ms. George is the sole rational member of the FOMC, with the ability to look beyond the horizon and recognize that the massive economic and financial imbalances being created by the Fed spell catastrophe in the future. Could that be the authentic reason why Larry Summers withdrew his name from consideration as the replacement for soon-to-retire Fed Chairman Bernanke?

If Hillary Clinton runs for President of the United States  in 2016, see the video about the book that warned back in 2008 what a second Clinton presidency would mean for the USA:

Hillary Clinton Nude

HILLARY CLINTON NUDE

Hillary Clinton Nude

WALL STREET KILLS--A CHILLING NOVEL ABOUT WALL STREET GREED GONE MAD

To view the official trailer YouTube video for “Wall Street Kills,” click image below:

In a world dominated by high finance, how far would Wall Streetgo in search of profits? In Sheldon Filger’s terrifying novel about money, sex and murder, Wall Street has no limits. “Wall Street Kills” is the ultimate thriller about greed gone mad. Read “Wall Street Kills” and blow your mind.

U.S. Economy Growth Is Tepid

August 1st, 2013 Comments off

The U.S. Commerce Department released Q2  results that indicate that, at an annualized rate, the American economy grew at 1.7 percent. And Wall Street and its coterie of experts are ecstatic. Why, I may ask? Because that number supposedly beat the predictions of those same experts, and exceeded that Q1 number, which reflected annual growth of the U.S. GDP at 1.1 percent.

Let’s hold our horses before uncorking the champagne bottles. By any standard, 1.7 percent annual GDP growth is tepid, and it is downright atrocious when one considered the massive fiscal and monetary stimulus being poured into the U.S. economy by the politicians and the Federal Reserve, care of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s quantitative easing and purchases of U.S. securities at the rate of 85 billion dollars per month, facilitated through the Federal Reserve’s printing press.

In addition to the above facts, the comparison with Q1 is misleading. Yes, 1.7 percent looks better than 1.1 percent. But let us recall that the 1.1 percent figure is a corrected number; the original Commerce Department report on Q1 was annual GDP growth of 1.8 percent.  Who can be certain that the Q2 number will not at some point be corrected downward, just as with the Q1 report?

All in all, despite the celebratory hype, I find nothing to cheer about in the report, and find the meager growth figure a pathetic end product derived from unprecedented fiscal deficits and Federal Reserve money printing.

If Hillary Clinton runs for President of the United States  in 2016, see the video about the book that warned back in 2008 what a second Clinton presidency would mean for the USA:

Hillary Clinton Nude

HILLARY CLINTON NUDE

Hillary Clinton Nude

WALL STREET KILLS--A CHILLING NOVEL ABOUT WALL STREET GREED GONE MAD

To view the official trailer YouTube video for “Wall Street Kills,” click image below:

In a world dominated by high finance, how far would Wall Streetgo in search of profits? In Sheldon Filger’s terrifying novel about money, sex and murder, Wall Street has no limits. “Wall Street Kills” is the ultimate thriller about greed gone mad. Read “Wall Street Kills” and blow your mind.
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Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke Ramps Up The printing Press

September 13th, 2012 Comments off

It seems an eternity ago when Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, spoke optimistically about “green shoots” on the economic horizon. No more. Two bouts of quantitative easing and “Operation Twists” have been abject failures, as the country’s economic crisis-which is global in nature-continues. Now, the Fed’s FOMC  has jumped in again with more money printing.

“The committee is concerned that, without further policy accommodation, economic growth might not be strong enough to generate sustained improvement in labor market conditions,” say the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee), justifying their decision to purchase $40 billion in mortgage backed securities each month. In addition, the Fed plans to keep interest rates at near zero until at least 2015.

The global economic crisis erupted in 2008. The Fed is now saying, through its ill-conceived policy decisions, that this crisis will last at least until 2015-seven years after the implosion of Lehman Brothers. An this is not an economic depression?

 

                 

 

 

 

WALL STREET KILLS--A CHILLING NOVEL ABOUT WALL STREET GREED GONE MAD

 To view the official trailer YouTube video for “Wall Street Kills,” click image below:

In a world dominated by high finance, how far would Wall Street go in search of profits? In Sheldon Filger’s terrifying novel about money, sex and murder, Wall Street has no limits. “Wall Street Kills” is the ultimate thriller about greed gone mad. Read “Wall Street Kills” and blow your mind.

 

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America and Europe on the Brink of Economic Disaster

September 5th, 2011 Comments off

Not much talk anymore about green shoots from U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. Despite infinite and very creative attempts by politicians in the U.S., the U.K. and the Eurozone to twist and spin economic statistics to make it appear that the world is indeed recovering from the global economic crisis, the data that is emerging is so bad it can no longer be “massaged.” The latest jobs report from the United States showed that in the month of August, zero jobs were created by the economy. The official news was bad by itself, but it hides an even worse reality. Even with no net new jobs created, the official discounted unemployment rate in America remained at 9.1percent. With approximately 200,000 new adults entering the work force each month, the only way that could have happened with no change in the U3 unemployment rate is if 200,000 discouraged job seekers left the labor market, or were merely eliminated form the ranks of the unemployed by the slick action of a statistician’s pencil.

While America’s jobs crisis worsens, Europe has its own woes to contend with. The sovereign debt crisis is clearly getting more dangerous, with both Spain and Italy increasingly vulnerable to the bond vigilantes. And the U.K. is experiencing sluggish or non-existent economic growth, in the process undermining the objectives of its austerity program. The global economic and fiscal situation is so bad, even the IMF is starting to hit the panic button. I think the happy talk from politicians may just about have run out of steam.

 

                 

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U.S. Economy Performing Much Worse Than Earlier Reported

July 31st, 2011 Comments off

The U.S. Commerce Department issued revised figures for the first quarter of 2011. It had earlier reported an annual rate of anemic GDP growth of 1.9 percent for Q1. Even if that number had been accurate, it was insufficient to reverse the catastrophic rate of unemployment and underemployment in the United States. The revised numbers are now in; the Commerce Department now says that actual GDP growth in the first quarter of 2011 was a virtually non-existent 0.4 percent. It also issued preliminary growth figures for Q2 of 1.3 percent, worse than expected. As with the Q1 data, it is likely that future revisions will show that Q2 did even worse.

What conclusions can one draw from this miserable economic data? Two things come to mind. In the first place, any preliminary numbers on the U.S. economy that derive from official government sources are highly suspect, and likely to be overly optimistic. Secondly, after an unprecedented level of public debt that is leading America towards fiscal ruin, the best that can be accomplished by the Washington policymakers is a Japanese-style “L” shaped recession. 

Now, what happens to the U.S. economy when the pump-priming stops, as will inevitably happen?  With revenue at historic lows and public expenditures at unprecedented highs as a proportion of the national economy, the frail American  economic edifice is floating on an ocean of unsustainable debt. While the current fiscal trajectory of the United States is headed towards a calamitous train wreck, a self-imposed and immediate elimination of the deficit, or even talk of such a possibility, will further exacerbate the economic crisis that never ended in America, despite official pronouncements.

 In the meantime, the U.S. political establishment cheerfully debates the debt ceiling. Both sides of the argument are in denial. The bottom line that both Republicans and Democrats refuse to confront is that the authorship of the present economic and fiscal crisis is bipartisan. The only hope of avoiding a full-fledged American sovereign debt crisis and its apocalyptic ramifications is creating a path towards much higher levels of growth that will reduce the ratio of debt to GDP to levels that can be sustained into the future. Instead of a serious policy debate, however, both parties are engaged in an ideological debate on cloud nine, divorced from the miserable reality of an American economy that is imploding.

If this is not an indication of dysfunction in Washington, I don’t know what is. Maybe the policymakers are not worried because they know that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will soon ramp up his printing press again. I am more inclined towards the vision of Dante than Bernanke, when it comes to the future of the U.S. economy.

 

 

 

 

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke Appears Clueless as Global Economy Sinks

June 9th, 2011 Comments off

Alan Greenspan, former Fed Chairman and a prime facilitator of the U.S. housing bubble, appears in retrospect a scion of fiscal prudence in comparison with his successor, Ben Bernanke.  This disaster-prone Fed Chairman presided over the financial collapse of 2008, which came in the wake of his prediction that the housing bubble would not cause a recession, let alone a global financial meltdown. And this man is still the most powerful architect of U.S. monetary policy?

 In his recent speech delivered at the International Monetary Conference in Atlanta, Bernanke blamed everything but himself for what he concedes is anemic economic growth, which he knows all too well is being artificially propped up by the most expansive monetary and fiscal policies in human history. In the Fed Chairman’s world, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, weather conditions and other unpredictable “acts of God” are to blame, not the Federal Reserve’s polices, for the utter disaster that the U.S. and many other advanced economies are coping with.

While in Atlanta, Ben Bernanke made passing reference to the sharp rise in commodity prices, though without admitting that this was due largely to the Fed’s policy of quantitative easing. He then added the illogical assessment that inflation is “not broad based” in the economy. Really?

As he has done before, Bernanke made perfunctory remarks about the need for the policymakers to eventually bring down the U.S. federal government’s budget deficit. As he and his colleagues continue to propel the United States towards a fiscal train wreck, he holds the politicians with no power to rein in Bernanke with responsibility for preventing the future shocks that the Fed’s policies have in store for everyone.

The disconnect this man has with the real world is mind-numbing. One thing, however, we can be thankful for. At least Bernanke has avoided the personal behavior issues that led to the recent resignation of the head of the IMF. With Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the question is all about his performance as Fed Chairman, and nothing else. On that score, history will probably judge President Barack Obama harshly for reappointing Ben Bernanke as Fed chairman.

 

 

 

 

 

U.S. Housing Market Continues To Be An Economic Disaster

March 3rd, 2011 Comments off

Ground zero of the global financial and economic crisis of 2008, the collapse of the U.S. residential housing market, remains in critical condition. Despite trillions of dollars in public debt utilized as a backstop for the mortgage industry and gimmicks like tax credits for new home purchasers, the stream of date shows that the overarching trend in the United States is continuing home price deflation, as a rising proportion of outstanding mortgages  are under water.

One recent survey indicates that in January of this year 27 percent of all American mortgages were under water (balance of mortgage exceeds market value of home),compared with 20 percent in August 2010. The National Association of Realtors Pending Home Sales Index most recently has tracked downward movement on home sales, and prices in most parts of the United States continue to decline.

With a weak housing market in the U.S. seemingly immune to massive injections of borrowed public money, no wonder Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is printing money like a crazy man on LSD. His most recent bout of quantitative easing does not seem to have stimulated the domestic housing market at all, though it has pumped up the Dow Jones index to absurd ratios of price to earnings. However, as 2008 demonstrated the centrality of housing to the U.S. economy and not its hyperbolic stock market, the continuing weakness in this core sector does not bode well for a sustained recovery, both in America and throughout the global economy.

 

 

 

U.S. Structural Unemployment Rate Stuck at Record High

December 6th, 2010 Comments off

The latest U.S. official employment data states that fewer than 40,000 new jobs were created in November, well below the level required to cover new entries into the workforce due to natural population growth. Officially, the U.S. unemployment rate stands at 9.8%, though factoring in discouraged workers and part-time employees unable to find full-time work, the actual figure hovers near 20 percent. More alarmingly, long-term unemployment in America stands at the highest level since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Despite the dismal employment numbers, there remains among economic commentators in the United States eternal optimists who believe there are still “green shoots” pointing to an economic recovery. Some even maintain that the actual job creation numbers for November are much higher than the official numbers, despite much more voluminous contrary evidence.

In contrast with the optimists, the Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, is already hinting at the need for a third round of quantitative easing, after his recent unleashing of QE2, a $600 billion orgy of money-printing by the Fed. Bernanke knows that the employment situation in the U.S. is a catastrophe, meaning there can be no consumer-led recovery of the economy, that at a time when the Obama stimulus money is running out. With a second stimulus program off the table now that the Republicans have taken control of the House of Representatives, the Federal Reserve sees itself as the only avenue for stimulus in a desperate drive to revive job creation in America. However, to think that monetary policy can be more effective than fiscal policy in facilitating job creation seems like the last great gasp of an incorrigible fool.

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Desperate Federal Reserve Speeds Up the Printing Presses :$600 Billion in QE2

November 3rd, 2010 Comments off

Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, is up to his old tricks and gimmicks. His earlier bout of quantitative easing, totaling nearly two trillion dollars, was a miserable failure, attested to by an official U.S. unemployment rate of 9.6% and unofficial but more accurate rate of 17 percent, when underemployed and discouraged workers are accounted for. With no likelihood that Congress will spring for a second economic stimulus spending program, Bernanke and the Fed are now implementing QE2.

The second round of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve will involve the purchase of 600 billion dollars in long-term U.S. Treasuries by the 2nd quarter of 2011. This is a gamble by the Fed, which I don’t see having a snowball’s chance in hell of being any more effective than the first round of quantitative easing. Furthermore, printing money out of thin air to buy government debt, in effect monetizing the debt, creates the risk of severe inflation, failed treasury auctions and the radical devaluation of the U.S. dollar.

It may be that Bernanke is doing QE2 precisely to weaken the dollar, though he would never say so publicly. In theory, a weaker dollar would make U.S. exports more competitive, leading to the creation of new jobs. However, as reported in an earlier blog, virtually every major economy is manipulating its currency in a race to the bottom. Not even dollar devaluation, if that is the Fed’s goal, will reverse the negative character of the U.S. economy and its grim unemployment crisis.

Federal Reserve Begins Massive Monetization of U.S. Government Debt

August 11th, 2010 Comments off

In a step that will be one of the markers on the road to economic and financial catastrophe, the Federal Open Market Committee (otherwise known as the FOMC) of the Federal Reserve, made a bombshell policy decision on August 10, 2010, one fraught with dangerous long-term consequences for the American and global economy. In a policy being dubbed QE2, the Federal Reserve’s FOMC conceded that the so-called U.S. economic recovery has “slowed,” and required more stimulus from the Fed. However, with federal funds interest rates now effectively at zero, the only aspect of monetary policy left is money printing. Thus, the Federal Reserve, in effect, will use its printing press to buy long-term U.S. government debt.

Of course, that is not how the FOMC is positioning this major escalation in quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve. In the dry, obtuse language that the obscurantists of the Federal Reserve love to engage in, the committee’s official statement said:

“To help support the economic recovery in a context of price stability, the Committee will keep constant the Federal Reserve’s holdings of securities at their current level by reinvesting principal payments from agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities in longer-term Treasury securities. The Committee will continue to roll over the Federal Reserve’s holdings of Treasury securities as they mature.”

In  its first bout of heavy quantitative easing, in the wake of the implosion of the major Wall Street investment  banks in the fall of 2008, Ben Bernanke, utilizing his printing press, purchased $1.25 trillion in mortgage-backed securities, and an additional $200 billion in debts owed by so-called government-sponsored enterprises, primarily Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. This massive explosion in the Fed’s balance sheet has thus far failed to stimulate economic activity and retard a persistent deflationary recession. All that Bernanke has accomplished has been to create a new asset bubble, this time on Wall Street, with equities exploding in price far beyond their post-crisis lows. Beyond the Dow Jones index, however, the impact of Bernanke’s balance sheet expansion has been impotent in the face of economic realities, particularly a collapsing labor market and the contraction in consumer demand. The erosion in the M3 money supply, a statistic the Federal Reserve no longer publicly discloses, attests to the failure of its policies.

Now that the Federal Reserve admits, though in its typically obscure linguistic constructs, that a double-dip recession is becoming increasingly likely, Bernanke is going to enter a buying binge of long-term U.S. Treasuries. The hope is that this will stabilize financial markets, and somehow force liquidity into the economy. That, at least is the hope. Given Ben Bernanke’s track record, I would not bank on hope in the infallible judgement of the Federal Reserve and its FOMC.

What is likely to result from the QE2 phase of the Federal Reserve’s disastrous policymaking? In time, sovereign wealth funds will recognize Bernanke’s manoeuvre for what it is: monetization of the U.S. national debt. When that happens, Treasury auctions will begin to fail, and yields will advance. This will all put added pressure on the Fed to print even more dollars, and monetize an increasing proportion of the federal government’s debt. This will unquestionably inject liquidity into the U.S. economy. But this Federal Reserve monetary injection will be as beneficial as money printing was in Weimar Germany in the early1920s, or Zimbabwe more recently.

In deciding on a process that will lead to an ever-growing proportion of the U.S. national debt and yearly budget deficits being monetized by its printing press, the Federal Reserve, under the leadership of its chairman, Ben Bernanke, has taken a fateful step towards irredeemable economic and financial ruin, ultimately convulsing America with a savage, hyperinflationary depression. And, as history teaches us, severe economic depressions bring along other unanticipated consequences, often leading to political and social turmoil and even global war.