"A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." (Thomas Jefferson)
This is an excellent interview with Steve Forbes about the economy, the Federal Reserve, Obama, Bernanke and the Republican candidates for President. Forbes comments on who he will most likely endorse:
“I’m looking over the whole field now. I’m very impressed with Governor Perry, so that’s where the wind’s blowing in my little world. I’ll be making a decision soon.
“Maybe one or two other candidates might come in during the next couple of weeks, but I’ve certainly been impressed by what Governor Perry did. Perhaps he gets over-exuberant in what he says about the Federal Reserve, but he is right. The Fed has a lot to answer for.”
The people who came out and slammed Rick Perry about his comments on the Fed are finding out from person after person who understands the Fed that Perry was right about the Fed. Forbes comments on Ben Bernanke are priceless:
Forbes is highly critical of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who has said any rise inflation is transitory.
“Well, life is transitory,” Forbes observes. “What he’s doing in terms of manipulating the interest rate market is simply another form of price controls. That doesn’t work for very long. What he’s done with interest rate policy is subsidize government debt and discourage lending to small businesses. It’s distorted the market. He’s doing more harm than good. I wish he’d gone to Martha’s Vineyard with the president and stayed there.
“If Ben Bernanke was judged on how well he’s done his job, he would have resigned a long time ago. But in Washington, [be] a failure and you move upward.”
We need more interviews from people like Steve Forbes who understand what is happening with the economy and how to fix it instead of the rhetoric we see out Obama, Bernanke and the Obama Administration that spending more tax dollars is the way out of the bad economy which does not work.
Forbes comments on the main field for the Republican nomination are insightful and very much on the same page as many Republicans including myself. Love his comments that Ron Paul should be running for the Fed. Very good interview and well worth your time to watch.
Steve Forbes to Newsmax: Obama, Bernanke Must GoWednesday, 31 Aug 2011 06:03 PM
By Jim Meyers and Kathleen Walter
Former presidential candidate and Forbes magazine editor Steve Forbes tells Newsmax that President Obama’s planned economic reforms are “the definition of insanity” — repeating failed policies in the hopes that somehow they will become successful.
In a wide-ranging exclusive interview, Forbes also declares that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should have resigned a long time ago, says Obama will be a one-term president, and looks for significant and positive reforms in Washington after the 2012 elections.
He also predicts the United States will make an “astonishing” move and return to a gold standard in the next five years, and says he’s “very impressed” with Gov. Rick Perry and is leaning toward supporting him for the GOP presidential nomination.
Excerpt: Read more on Newsmax about this interview with Steve Forbes
Looks like the Governor of Texas Rick Perry was more right about Fed Chair Bernanke then the alphabet networks, cable news, some conservative pundits, and four Congressmen with their tone it down mantra to the Governor.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s unprecedented effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same amount U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages.
The American taxpayer didn't know this until now that the Fed Chair had loaned $1.2 Trillion from the Fed not only to US banks but to European banks. Words fail me because what I would like to say about Bernanke is not fit to publish. Why weren't the American people told? What right does the Fed Chair have to loan our tax dollars and keep it a secret.
Now rumors are flying Bernanke is thinking of announcing a QE3 on Friday. We found these comments from ZeroHedge.com, doubting he will do a QE3 but with Bernanke who knows. He is probably calculating if it would help Obams'a campaign -- we already know the dollar is not important to him.
QE3 or not QE3, is the question. Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider thinks more easing is unlikely, due to growing inflation. (The Odds Of Imminent QE3 Are Rapidly Plunging) St. Louis Fed President James Bullard remarked, “I think it is a much tougher call to do more QE this time around than it was last year. The inflation picture is different this year than it was last year and the risk of deflation is much more remote than it was last year.”(Fed’s Bullard Says New 2013 Rate Pledge Not a Signal for More Bond Buying)
If the Fed had money to loan, why didn't they use it to cut the deficit or is that too simple of question? Is the money the taxpayers or Obama/Bernanke's? Why are we borrowing money if we had $1.2 Trillion to loan? A lot of questions with zero answers!
Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion From Fed By Bradley Keoun and Phil Kuntz - Aug 22, 2011 7:19 AM CT
Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits.
By 2008, the housing market’s collapse forced those companies to take more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s unprecedented effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same amount U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages. The largest borrower, Morgan Stanley (MS), got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion and Bank of America $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress.
“These are all whopping numbers,” said Robert Litan, a former Justice Department official who in the 1990s served on a commission probing the causes of the savings and loan crisis. “You’re talking about the aristocracy of American finance going down the tubes without the federal money.”
(View the Bloomberg interactive graphic to chart the Fed’s financial bailout.)
Foreign Borrowers
It wasn’t just American finance. Almost half of the Fed’s top 30 borrowers, measured by peak balances, were European firms. They included Edinburgh-based Royal Bank of Scotland Plc, which took $84.5 billion, the most of any non-U.S. lender, and Zurich-based UBS AG (UBSN), which got $77.2 billion. Germany’s Hypo Real Estate Holding AG borrowed $28.7 billion, an average of $21 million for each of its 1,366 employees.
The largest borrowers also included Dexia SA (DEXB), Belgium’s biggest bank by assets, and Societe Generale SA, based in Paris, whose bond-insurance prices have surged in the past month as investors speculated that the spreading sovereign debt crisis in Europe might increase their chances of default.
The $1.2 trillion peak on Dec. 5, 2008 -- the combined outstanding balance under the seven programs tallied by Bloomberg -- was almost three times the size of the U.S. federal budget deficit that year and more than the total earnings of all federally insured banks in the U.S. for the decade through 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Peak Balance
The balance was more than 25 times the Fed’s pre-crisis lending peak of $46 billion on Sept. 12, 2001, the day after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon. Denominated in $1 bills, the $1.2 trillion would fill 539 Olympic-size swimming pools.
The Wall Journal has more on Gov Perry's comments about the Fed and explains how it is right to bring the Fed into the public discussion in this campaign. Regardless of what the Obama Media and some conservative writers are saying, Governor Perry is not like President GW Bush in many areas. The key is that Perry was raised in West Texas and went to college at Texas A&M while Bush was sent by his parents back east to boarding school and then to Yale and eventually Harvard. Right there you would see a huge difference down to how they view Wall Street and other issues.
The media trope of the week is that Mr. Perry is George W. Bush only more so, but he clearly isn't the same on monetary policy. Mr. Bush, who first appointed Mr. Bernanke, was an easy-money, weak-dollar President. He and his former economic advisers still don't understand how Alan Greenspan's policies at the Fed contributed to the credit and housing manias that led to the financial meltdown that caused the GOP's political undoing in 2008.
Maybe it is being from Middle America, but we were aghast when the very liberal Senator Schumer (D-NY) recommended Bernanke to Bush to lead the Federal Reserve and he accepted him. President Bush was a nice man but the people he chose to surround himself with in his second term didn't do him any favors. He should have stayed away from Wall Street and Bush 41 for his economic advisors and gone to the Reagan side of the House. In the last few days no one has highlighted the difference more than David Stockman who was the head of the Office of Management and Budget for President Reagan (1981-1985). As we have pointed out on here in several articles, Stockman is adamant that the Fed should not be interfering in interest rates and that is a large part of the problem with the economy.
Note well that the main Fed dissenters from Mr. Bernanke's monetary policy have been from the regional Fed banks. These bank presidents are appointed by regional boards, not by Presidents. One reform to consider is whether the Fed's Open Market Committee, which sets monetary policy, should be changed to include more regional presidents who are better insulated from the political pressures of Washington.
Until reading that paragraph above, I wrongly assumed that the Fed's Open Market Committee was made up of all the President's of the regional Fed banks who are not appointed by any President. Who sits on the Fed's Open Market Committee?
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) consists of twelve members--the seven members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; and four of the remaining eleven Reserve Bank presidents, who serve one-year terms on a rotating basis. The rotating seats are filled from the following four groups of Banks, one Bank president from each group: Boston, Philadelphia, and Richmond; Cleveland and Chicago; Atlanta, St. Louis, and Dallas; and Minneapolis, Kansas City, and San Francisco. Nonvoting Reserve Bank presidents attend the meetings of the Committee, participate in the discussions, and contribute to the Committee's assessment of the economy and policy options.
All total there are only four regional Presidents of the Fed along with the President of the NY Fed. So at the last Fed meeting, 3 out 4 regional Presidents were against Bernanke keeping interest rates so low into 2013 but were overruled by political appointees by the President. If all regional Presidents plus the President of the New York fed voted together, they are still outnumbered by the political appointees of the Presidents 7-5. After learning that, I watched the video from David Stockman on Schumer's Fed Chair Bernanke. Now our bad economy is making more sense and Governor Perry's words did hit their mark.
David Stockman: Fed Chair Ben Bernanke 'doesn't have a clue':
As you watch the video, Stockman points out that we have no more people employed today than we did 12 years ago. We have had stagnant employment for all those years. What has the Fed done? They have been keeping interest rates artificially low and now near zero instead of allowing interest rates to settle on their own. That has led to the Wall Street fat cats getting richer and the middle class losing much of their savings. What savings they do have, they are receiving next to nothing in interest. Finally someone is speaking out and honestly think that Governor Perry's choice of words is probably why this has gotten so much press for which we thank the Governor.
Merely by raising the Fed as a subject, Mr. Perry has sent a political signal to the folks at the Eccles Building to tread carefully as they conduct monetary policy in the coming months. This alone is a public service. Mr. Perry and the other GOP candidates should be more careful in their language, and more precise about the Fed's mistakes. But they shouldn't shrink from debating the subject of sound money that is so crucial to restoring American prosperity.
They hypocrisy of the this inside the beltway/east coast Obama media is stunning when you stop to think that the Vice President of the United States called the members of the Tea Party "terrorists" a few weeks ago. Those words received very little press in comparison to the uproar of the Obama media on Perry's comments.
The Tea Party has been very vocal but they are not thugs like those who inhabit the SEIU and the Teamsters who don't think twice of beating up someone they don't like or who doesn't agree with them. Maybe the media forgets the incident in St. Louis against the young black man from the Tea Party being roughed up by the SEIU thugs (video below). How about the damage the SEIU did to the Wisconsin Capitol Building and all the trash they left around in Wisconsin during their sit-in and rallies against Governor Walker and the Legislature? There is video after video of the thugs from the SEIU and Teamsters on You Tube attacking members of the Tea Party who were doing nothing except expressing their First Amendment rights.
Let's play the devil's advocate here: If an individual(s) is using Fed monetary policy that weakens the dollar causing our economy to tank, is that person a patriot? I sure don't think so. Do I think that tanking the US monetary system with weakening the dollar is akin to an agenda that is treasonous -- guess you could me on the side of Perry on that one. Since redistribution of wealth is a socialist agenda, that is exactly what we are seeing today with the rich getting richer and middle incomes stagnant and now falling with the much higher prices for groceries and gas.
How in good conscience could Obama and his economic advisers put a freeze on social security and civil service raises for two years while his people in the White House received an 8% raise this year? To add insult to injury, the price of healthcare went up so social security recipients now make less than they did two years ago. Yet the AARP continues to support this Administration?
We need Governor Perry to speak out so America understands what the Fed and others in this Obama Administration are doing. Is he angry? You bet he is along with a lot of us out here in Middle America and the South who are being impacted by the EPA and other Government entities and see our budget for food and fuel increase dramatically under Obama.
If the East Coast liberals don't like how a Texan talks, that's too bad because those of us in flyover country don't like their liberal policies that have tanked this economy. We will take a plain spoken Governor who tells it like it is any day of the week versus a weak-kneed President who is too lazy to do his job and always is touting his plan that we never see it. Now we are going to see it in a few weeks or maybe a month or two. Maybe he will wave his magic wand and it will appear. Guess it is taking the Goldman Sachs/academia people longer to write a plan than he expected. (sarcasm) This milk toast President who has thrown so many people under the bus over his tenure when they might hurt his image should go back to be a community organizer because it is sure not working as President.
This editorial is written by someone who understands Texas after referencing the Texas Hill Country and Henry B. Gonzales. When you think back to the days in Congress where the Democrats were more conservative on financial policy, you realize why so many fiscal conservative Democrats have become Republicans like Rick Perry. The Democrat Party of old with people like Sam Nunn, Sam Rayburn and Carl Albert doesn't exist after being taken over by extreme liberal progressives starting with the 2006 election of Harry Reid as Majority Leader of the Senate, Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, and Obama as President two years later. Unlike the Obama media, we will use the term liberal.
In 2010, we replaced Pelosi as Speaker with Republican John Boehner and 2012 we will replace Reid and Obama in order to get America back on the road to economy recovery. Obama talks shared sacrifice as he flies around Country on Air Force One along with adding a new agency for jobs, and giving many of his White House staff 8% pay raises. Is Obama giving up traveling and his lavish White House parties as part of shared sacrifice? Highly doubt it. The shared sacrifice is only pertains to the American taxpayer as the free spending liberal progressive Democrats could care less about those in America's Heartland!
The media may not like Governor Perry's choice of words but he sure made a point about the poor leadership of Bernanke whose claim to fame was the CEO of Princeton's Economic Department before heading the Fed. In other words, when an Obama person on the economy is not from Wall Street, they are from academia? Sitting here shaking my head because east coast academia is filled with liberals and socialist -- conservatives need not apply. This Schumer backed person is the one setting our Fed policy ignoring the comments of the regional Fed Presidents? Think that sinking feeling just sank more!
Perry's Public Service Behold, a hard-money Texas politician.
As the world's right-thinkers are denouncing Rick Perry for suggesting this week that Texans would get "pretty ugly" with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke if he guns the money supply any more between now and the 2012 election. His poor choice of words aside, the Texas Governor is right to put monetary policy front and center in the 2012 Presidential debate.
Let's stipulate that Mr. Perry, in his first week on the Presidential stump, was wrong to use the words "almost treacherous, treasonous" in referring to Mr. Bernanke. Both of those words ought to be reserved for specific acts of betrayal against America, and the Fed chief is certainly a patriot. In particular, "treason" is the only crime specifically defined in the Constitution, which is something a tea party politician ought to learn.
On the other hand, everybody knows Mr. Perry meant no literal harm and was indulging the irrational exuberance that is one of his trademarks. The faux-outrage from liberals who routinely refer to the tea party as "terrorists" shouldn't be taken seriously.
The real news isn't the rhetorical gaffe but the substance and politics of Mr. Perry's demarche. Here we have a Presidential candidate, a Texas populist no less, laying out a position in favor of sound money. This is a bear walking on its hind legs. The ghosts of Wright Patman and Henry B. Gonzalez are howling in the Hill Country.
....
Mr. Perry seems to appreciate that the Federal Reserve can't conjure prosperity from the monetary printing presses. His articulation needs some work, but we hope the Texan doesn't let media and other criticism deter him from pursuing the argument. The issue is crucial to understanding—and explaining to the American public—how the meltdown happened and why Americans are so unhappy with the current recovery.
The Texas Governor has a better insight into middle-class economic anxiety than do most Washington-Wall Street elites. Americans intuitively understand that their after-inflation incomes haven't risen for a decade. Even when incomes rose during the growth years from 2003-2007, the gains were undermined by the rising cost of housing, as well as by rising food and energy prices.
Then huge chunks of middle-class net worth were wiped out in the panic. And now, even as the recovery is supposedly underway, their meager salary increases are being washed away with another burst of commodity inflation caused by near-zero interest rates and quantitative easing. This is what happens when politicians and central bankers try to use monetary policy to compensate for the slow growth caused by bad fiscal and regulatory policies.
The Texas Governor, or one of his advisers, may also have noticed that various economic sages are offering inflation as the solution to America's debt problem. Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff has suggested that an annual 4% to 6% rise in the price level over several years would do the trick. Assorted columnists are picking up the theme, and our guess is that the Obama Administration is privately on board. By all means, we need a debate in 2012 over Fed policy.
The U.S. also needs a debate over the Fed's political independence. In our view, that independence has been compromised over the last 15 years as Messrs. Greenspan and Bernanke allowed themselves to get too close to the White House and Treasury. The Fed's post-crisis interventions have put the central bank in the middle of decisions about fiscal policy and the allocation of credit. Mr. Bernanke sometimes seems to be a veritable arm of the Treasury, reinforcing its fiscal and regulatory agendas at every opportunity.
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Excerpt: Read More at the Wall Street Journal or view the video of Bartley Fellow, Charlie Dameron, on Texas Governor Rick Perry's liabilities as a GOP presidential candidate.
Larry Kudlow says that Perry shouldn't have used the words he did but his analysis was correct. We did find out one thing from all of this that Perry and the rest of us out here including the Dallas Fed Governor and two others from Minneapolis and Philadelphia are not the least bit happy with Bernanke while Mitt Romney thinks he is on the right track defending Ben Bernanke and dollar depreciation.
Updated in red to reflect the current status of Romney and Bain Capital according to his aides: Guess Romney likes making lots of money with Bain Capital (Held in a blind trust for Romney and his wife) but Bain wasfined (Jun 29, 2011 ...Bain Capital's hedge fund unit has agreed to return $1.7 million it earned for buying stock it had shorted three days earlier). We don't need more of the same that we have been seeing. We need someone who is not afraid to make the hard cuts to spending and get this budget balanced and who is not involved with Wall Street. (NOTE: Romney was the founder of Bain Capital which when he headed the Olympic Committee he had to resign and then as Governor of Massachusetts he put everything in a blind trust but has continued to be surrounded by Bain Capital people for his campaign)
There was an interesting discussion on Bloomberg this afternoon with Michael Aronstein and David Stockman about how Bernanke and the Fed keeping interest rates artificially low is helping the big guys and hedge funds grow wealthier while the individual who is trying to save is getting basically nothing on their savings. Both believe there should be no Fed involvement in interest rates as it is harming the recovery.
Personally could care less what the financial world has to say as they are part of the reason for this mess with thinking that bigger is better in banking and taking bailouts of our tax dollars to prop up failing banks, car companies, and others holding their hands out. Here is the money quote of the article:
So in this sense Governor Perry’s red-hot riposte at Bernanke may be shrewd politics, as well as a much needed defense of stable money.
Kudlow details what happened after QE2 Bernanke pushed which ended up being a terrible decision but Romney thought it was the right decision. There is an old saying 'follow the money' and we are seeing the rich get richer off the low Fed interest rates for borrowing. Too much borrowed money and not enough investment of a companies of their own money IMHO.
Very interesting take by Kudlow:
Perry's Red-Hot Bernanke Slam: A Much Needed Defense of the Dollarby Larry Kudlow 16 Aug 2011
Gov. Rick Perry scorched the political pot on Tuesday with a red-hot rhetorical attack on Fed-head Ben Bernanke. When asked about the Fed reopening the monetary spigots, Perry said, “If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what y’all would do to him in Iowa, but we — we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas.”
And that wasn’t all. In a more controversial slam, Perry said, “Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous — or treasonous — in my opinion.”
Pretty rough stuff. Very aggressive language. And undoubtedly way too strong. It was poorly received in the financial world.
No, Ben Bernanke is not a traitor. This is a policy dispute; it’s not a matter of patriotism. However, and this is an important however, the rest of Perry’s statement suggests that his analysis of Fed policy is right on target.
In other words, wrong words, right analysis.
The Texas governor, who by some polls is the new Republican presidential frontrunner, went on to say, “We’ve already tried this. All it’s going to be doing is devaluing the dollar in your pocket. And we cannot afford that.”
Well, to me that is exactly right.
Let’s take a quick look at Bernanke’s QE2 record of pump-priming: The dollar fell 12 percent on foreign-exchange markets. The consumer price index jumped over 5 percent at an annual rate. And the $600 billion cheapening of the greenback led to skyrocketing commodity prices, including oil, gasoline, and food. That oil-price shock is one of the principal factors behind the 0.8 percent first-half economic stutter. As a result of the jump in inflation linked to QE2, real consumer incomes slumped badly and consumer spending fell substantially.
Before QE2 the economy was growing about 2.5 percent, even though it was already blunted by numerous tax and regulatory obstacles. But the cheap-dollar oil shock came perilously close to pushing us into recession.
So it turns out that Governor Perry — even with his overly strong language — is a pretty sharp economic and monetary analyst.
In fact, Perry’s analysis actually channels recent Fed dissents by reserve-bank president’s Dick Fisher of Dallas, Charles Plosser of Philadelphia, and Narayana Kocherlakota of Minneapolis. They object to a two-year extension of the Fed’s zero-interest-rate policy, and in so doing have set down an opposition marker to a potential new shock-and-awe quantitative easing that many fear will be announced on August 26 when Bernanke speaks to the Jackson Hole Fed conference.
What makes Governor Perry’s position even more interesting is his disagreement with former governor Mitt Romney. When I interviewed Mr. Romney this past April, he essentially defended Ben Bernanke and dollar depreciation. “Well, you know, I think Ben Bernanke is a student of monetary policy,” Romney said. “He’s doing as good a job as he thinks he can do in the Federal Reserve.”
Meanwhile, in Tea Party circles on the campaign trail, Mr. Bernanke is a much disliked figure. Rightly or wrongly he is blamed for bailing out Wall Street. Also, many view Bernanke’s massive money-creation, along with President Obama’s massive federal-stimulus spending, as another failed big-government attempt to revive the economy.
Tea partiers and many others fervently believe in lower spending, reduced tax burdens, and a regulatory rollback to strengthen small businesses and the private economy. They’re against Uncle Sam just throwing money at problems.
So in this sense Governor Perry’s red-hot riposte at Bernanke may be shrewd politics, as well as a much needed defense of stable money.
The former Air Force captain piloted C-130 missions in Central and South America, North Africa, and all over Europe. He’s a fierce devotee of American exceptionalism and greatness. My hunch is, just like Ronald Reagan, Governor Perry views a collapsing-dollar threat as more evidence of American decline. And he is very much opposed to any of that.
Finally a powerful voice has joined those telling Barnanke not to print more money as it would devalue the dollar more. That seems to be the one course Bernanke sees to help Obama win on the economy is to print more money since giving it away with the stimulus didn't help with new jobs. What it did do was keep Government people in jobs for another two years but states cannot afford those employees now with their tight budgets.
Personally think Bernanke would do anything to see Obama reelected. Don't trust him even a little after three Regional Fed Chairs told him not to set a date on low interest rates. He did it to make sure it came after the election. It was so obvious what he was doing. The Fed Chair should be non-partisan not a partisan hack for the Obama Administration which is what we see in Bernanke. He was Schumer's recommendation which President Bush should have ignored and chosen his own person.
This comes on top of Rick Perry yesterday calling on Obama to put a freeze on regulations:
DES MOINES, IOWA – Texas Gov. Rick Perry today called on the Obama Administration to put a six-month freeze on new federal regulations in an effort to ease the burden on small businesses that continue to struggle under President Obama’s job-killing economic policies. The governor’s call was made at a campaign stop at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, where he also highlighted his record of job creation in Texas and the importance of pursuing policies that will open doors to job growth and get America working again. Read Full Article
With Governor Perry saying this in Iowa with Obama coming to the state, it sets up an interesting dynamic. Right now Governor Perry is holding a business roundtable discussion in Dubueque -- same TV market that Obama will be speaking on his non-existent plan to create jobs. Iowa is getting an early taste of what might end up being the Presidential race and knowing some Iowans, they are enjoying every minute.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry isn’t happy about the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy. The Texas governor had harsh words for Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke while campaigning in Iowa, ABCNews.com reports.
“If this guy prints more money between now and the election, “I don’t know what y’all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas,” Perry said. “Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous -- or treasonous in my opinion.”
By playing politics, he meant that the Fed would be trying to help Obama. “If they print more money between now and this election, I would suggest that’s exactly what’s going on,” Perry said.
Perry was answering a question from the audience when he made the statements. He went on to criticize Bernanke's policies under the Obama administration:
“We’ve already tried this. All it’s going to be doing is devaluing the dollar in your pocket and we cannot afford that. We have to learn the lessons of the past three years that they’ve been devastating. The President of the United States has conducted an experiment on the American economy for almost the last three years, and it has gone tragically wrong and we need to send him a clear message in November of 2012 that new leadership is coming.”
Fed Chair Bernanke should have listened to the three dissenters from Dallas, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis Feds when they opposed setting a date into 2013 which closed off some options and sent the wrong signal -- they were right as witnessed in the Dow falling 519.83, S&P 51.77, and NASDAQ 101.47. Five major companies delayed announcing their 2nd quarter results until AFTER the market closed 11 minutes ago.
Figured there was going to be fallout from the Bernanke pushing the lid on interest rates into the middle of 2013 and there was. The gains from yesterday were lost and more.
Big news is also out that the SEC is investigating Goldman-Sachs to see if they broke bribery laws on Libya. Goldman-Sachs is said to be too big to fail but just maybe they are too big and forgot what it was like to be honest. There are too many people with Goldman-Sachs ties in the Government and just maybe it is time to start looking outside of Wall Street to fill positions.
Another bad day for Wall Street and the American economy thanks to Bernanke from what we have been hearing on Bloomberg.
That is disappointing on many levels. First and foremost, it is a crystal clear sign from Ben Bernanke and other Fed members that they think the economic recovery (if one could still call it that) will remain tepid for a long time.
This is not good. The Great Recession may have technically ended in June 2009. But for many Americans, this current malaise is just an extension of the problems that first began to surface in 2007. Lost Decade anyone?
Yes, that's a Japan reference. And it's sadly apt. The Fed, by pledging to leave short-term rates "exceptionally low" for what will eventually amount to a four-and-a-half-year stretch, is essentially guaranteeing that long-term bond rates will remain persistently low -- just like in Japan.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury is at about 2.13%. Yields actually briefly touched the all-time low from December 2008 of 2.03% on Tuesday after the Fed announcement before bouncing back.
Would it be any surprise if the 10-year soon had a 1 handle on it like there is for Japan's 10-year bonds? That would be extremely troubling. The time to emulate Japan's economy was in the 1980s. Not now.
It's even more ironic since Bernanke criticized the Bank of Japan in a paper in 1999 while he still was a professor at Princeton. The title? "Japanese Monetary Policy: A Case of Self-Induced Paralysis?"
I have several more bones to pick with the Fed. Why did the central bank feel that it was a good idea to put a specific time frame on when it will raise rates in the first place? Even if it was mid-2012 that would have been silly.
I'm all for transparency. And the Fed under Bernanke is clearly a lot less opaque than it was under Alan Greenspan. But sometimes the Fed can give the markets, to use teen texting parlance, TMI.
The Fed has now effectively boxed itself in regardless of what the economy does over the next few months and year. Sure, it seems impossible now to think that the economy will pick up dramatically anytime soon. But keep in mind that economists, the market and the Fed are often wrong.
Is Bernanke turning into a dictator at the Federal Reserve? This is the most dissent for a Fed Chairman since 1992 so you have to wonder how much of this is politics to protect Obama. Call me a skeptic, but this smells big time to actually say what the rate is going to stay until the middle of 2013. Does that mean if a Republican is elected Bernanke will run to raise the key interest rate in the middle of 2013? Do I think he could be that political? Absolutely!
Could be really wrong but all of this smells big time. Why was it necessary to name a date that far in the future? Don't know much about the Fed but when three of the regional Fed Chairs from Dallas, Philadephia, and Minneapolis object, there is something wrong.
Bernanke Timeframe on Key Interest Rate Provokes Most Dissents Since 1992By Craig Torres and Josh Zumbrun - Aug 9, 2011 4:48 PM CT
Ben S. Bernanke lost the full consensus of the Federal Open Market Committee as he reached for another non-traditional tool and provoked three dissenting votes in the process -- the most for a Federal Reserve chairman since 1992.
For the first time today, U.S. central bankers specified a date for their commitment to low borrowing costs, saying the benchmark rate will stay in a range of zero to 0.25 percent at least through mid-2013. The new language replaces their prior promise to keep rates low for an “extended period.”
Today’s decision shows that a Fed chief can govern with more than two opposing votes, and it opens the door to bolder action if necessary, said Roberto Perli, a former economist in the Fed’s Division of Monetary Affairs, which helps craft the language of the FOMC statements.
“We have reached the point where Bernanke is taking control and saying we have to do the right thing no matter how many people dissent,” said Perli, a managing director at International Strategy & Investment Group in Washington. “It shows the committee can move forward.”
Seven members of the panel favored the action. Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Charles Plosser of Philadelphia and Narayana Kocherlakota of Minneapolis voted no, preferring to maintain the existing “extended period” language. The last time three FOMC voters dissented was on Nov. 17, 1992, under Bernanke’s predecessor, Alan Greenspan.
History of Discomfort
Fed officials have a long history of discomfort with pledges that limit their policy flexibility, minutes of their meetings show. The deterioration of the economic outlook, and the limits of monetary policy when interest rates are already near zero, prompted Bernanke to opt for the time commitment -- even at the cost of three dissenting votes, said former Fed Governor Laurence Meyer.
It is beginning to look more and more like the Bernanke/Paulson bailout of banks (TARP) last year was to tank Sen McCain's chances. Our question has been from Day One why Paulson of Goldman Sachs recommended by Sen Schumer (D-NY) was even nominted by President Bush to be Treasury Secretary? Has anyone investigated the million of dollars that Paulson lead enterprises have invested in China? Excepts posted from a Frank Gaffney article at NRO, bring into even more question, why Paulson was nominated to be the Secretary of the Treasury overseeing the assets of the US Government.
Henry Paulson has been Communist China’s Armand Hammer. In fact, he has been vastly more effective than Hammer ever was in promoting his clients’ interests and enabling their access to Western economic assistance and high technology.
Under Mr. Paulson’s leadership at Goldman Sachs, the company has been instrumental to the growth of Chinese economic power and particularly to its penetration of Western capital and other markets. He has been directly involved in developing his firm’s relationships with the PRC, priding himself on having made 70 trips there since late 1991. Consider just a few of the deals Goldman has managed, underwritten or otherwise facilitated under Henry Paulson’s leadership:
In 2005, Goldman Sachs not only advised the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) in its attempted takeover of Unocal. It also strove to ensure that the Chinese state-owned company’s bid prevailed after ChevronTexaco offered $17 billion in an effort to keep Unocal in U.S. hands. CNOOC was able to up the ante to $18.5 billion for the American concern, thanks to a bridge-loan Goldman Sachs arranged (along with J.P. Morgan). Fortunately, despite the assiduous efforts made by Mr. Paulson and his firm to secure Unocal for Communist China, the American people and Congress strenuously opposed the transaction, leading ultimately to its derailing.
In late January 2006, Goldman Sachs purchased a stake in the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China’s biggest bank, for $2.58 billion. According to press reports, Mr. Paulson’s personal stake in this transaction was $25 million.
One thing we have always admired about Frank Gaffney is his honesty and straight forward comments. Gaffney founded the Center for Security Policyin 1988 which has become a voice in foreign policy. Obama would have been well served to listen to Frank Gaffney instead of Holbrooke but then he might have had to change his liberal agenda.
Now we discover that Americans were mislead to by Paulson/Barnanke which proves that Gaffney was right to oppose the appointment of Paulson to be Treasury Secretary.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Study: Bernanke, Paulson misled public on bailouts Financial institutions not so healthy By Sean Lengell
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. misled the public about the financial weakness of Bank of America and other early recipients of the government's $700 billion Wall Street bailout, creating "unrealistic expectations" about the companies and damaging the program's credibility, according to a report by the program's independent watchdog.
The federal government last October loaned Bank of America and eight other "healthy" financial institutions a total of $125 billion - the initial payout from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP - in an attempt to avoid a series of major bank collapses that would push the sputtering economy into a free fall or depression.
The rationale for giving money to stable banks and not failing ones, regulators said, was that such institutions would be better able to lend money and thus unfreeze tight credit markets - a major factor in last year's Wall Street losses.
But an audit released Monday by TARP Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky says senior government officials and Wall Street regulators, including Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson, had "affirmative concerns" that several of the nine institutions were financially shaky.
Arrogance of NRA is simply stunning - for an organization who used to be about gun safety now the bottom line for gun/ammo manufacturers trumps all as the NRA lobbies for them.
According to Think Progress, “NRA: Practice Range” is billed as a “network of news, laws, facts, knowledge, safety tips, educational materials and online resource” for the organization.The National Rifle Association released a new app on Sunday that includes a gun range equipped with coffin-shaped targets, and the option for players to simulate using a military-grade sniper rifle.
The app includes what it calls “9 true to life firearms,” and allows players to download an MK-11 sniper rifle setting for 99 cents. The rifle can shoot 750 rounds per minute.
Dems/GOP Fighting -- Will they Finally Work Together for the Country? Will replace this image when they do. (11/07/2012)
Quotes
"We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society, but that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely we can do better than this." President Barack Obama, Newtown, CT, 12/16/2012
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"I don't think that the way to correct a spin from the left is to try to impart a spin from the right.... [A]n information flow distorted from the right would be just as much a disservice as distortion from the left. What we really should be after... is accurate information. And I don't see what any conservative or anybody else for that matter has to fear from accurate information." M. Stanton Evans
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Former Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY)
“For heaven’s sake, you have Grover Norquist wandering the earth in his white robes saying that if you raise taxes one penny, he’ll defeat you,” he told CNN back in May. “He can’t murder you. He can’t burn your house. The only thing he can do to you, as an elected official, is defeat you for reelection. And if that means more to you than your country when we need patriots to come out in a situation when we’re in extremity, you shouldn’t even be in Congress.”
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"We are are an American family and we rise or fall together as one nation.
John Stuart Mill was a 19th century political philosopher:
"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it." John Stuart Mill.
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