Tag Archives: central bank policies

The Double Helix of Entwined Pandemic and Economic Strategy, by Alastair Crooke

When your economy runs on credit, you need a never ending stream of crises to justify never ending government and central bank injections of fiat debt. The Covid outbreak is the latest excuse for fiat debt creation. From Alastair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

The corollary to the collapse of the technocratic initiative to liquify the over-leveraged economy might well be recession, Alastair Crooke writes.

Three years ago, I said to an American Professor from the US Army War College in Washington, in respect to the campaign to return American lost Blue Collar jobs to Asia, that these jobs would never return.  They were gone for good.

He retorted that that was precisely so, but I was missing the point, he said. America did not expect, or want, the majority of those humdrum manufacturing jobs back. They should stay in Asia. The Élites, he said, wanted only the commanding heights of Tech. They wanted the intellectual property, the protocols, the metrics, the regulatory framework that would allow America to define and expand across the next two decades of global technological evolution.

The real dilemma however, he said was, “What is to be done with the 20% of the American workforce that would be no longer needed: that was no longer necessary to the functioning of a tech-led US economy?”

In fact, what the Professor said was but one facet of a fundamental economic dilemma. From the seventies and eighties onwards, US corporations were busy offshoring their labour costs to Asia. Partly, this was to cut costs and increase profitability (which it did) — but it also represented something deeper. 

From the outset, the US has been an expansionary empire ever digesting new lands, new peoples, and their human and material resources. Forward motion, the continuous military, commercial, and cultural expansion became the lifeblood of Wall Street and of its foreign polity. For, absent this relentless expansion, the civic bonds of American unity fall into question.  An America not in motion is not America.  This forms the very essence of US leitkultur.

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Red Friday: A Little Dip and Already the Crybabies on Wall Street are Clamoring for the Fed to Soothe their Pain, by Wolf Richter

There’s nothing like a strong down day on the stock markets to get the easy money crowd to start clamoring for a bailout. From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:

But raging inflation is a political bitch, and the White House got the Fed to acknowledge it, and that changes the equation.

Stock markets closed at 1 p.m. today, and there wasn’t enough time to rectify this evil situation that has emerged on Black Friday, when stocks were supposed to be meandering higher on very low volume, driven by a few algos that would make sure stocks meandered higher to easily book another winning day and a new record high for the S&P 500 to keep the hype going.

But the sellers had arrived overnight while the buyers suddenly weren’t super-interested at buying at these ridiculously inflated record prices after the largest and fastest money printing scheme ever. And voilà. What everyone knew would happen someday, happened on this Red Friday, and stocks swooned.

And already the crybabies on Wall Street have come out in force, clamoring for the Fed to end the tapering of its asset purchases, and to push out the expected interest rate hikes into distant infinity, and to maybe even re-start QE all over again before they even ended it, because, you know, stocks aren’t ever allowed to drop, not even a little bit off their ridiculously inflated highs.

But the Fed, unlike before, has bigger worries for the first time in four decades – and Powell and Brainard, along with just about every other Fed governor have acknowledged it: Raging consumer price inflation that has now spread broadly across and deeply into the economy, filtering into services such as rents that are unrelated to transportation mayhem and production shortfalls in Asia. Rents, accounting for about one-third of CPI, are just now getting started to flex their muscles in the inflation indices. And the mood of consumers has soured.

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Pre-2020 Prices are Gone Forever, by MN Gordon

You can’t keep monetary inflation hidden forever. Every day thousands of Americans are realizing their dollars are being debased. From MN Gordon at economicprism.com:

Price inflation is completely out of hand.  You know this.  Your dog knows it too.

Still, President Joe Biden wants you to believe he’s got it all under control.  Last month, for example, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki insisted inflation is decreasing.  What a crock!

That was about the time White House chief of staff Ron Klain – an absolute goober – endorsed Jason Furman’s claim that America’s inflation and supply chain problems only affect a small part of the U.S. population.  Furman, a former Obama administration economist and economics professor at Harvard University, also tweeted that “most of the economic problems we’re facing … are high class problems.”

Ivory tower thinking like this has turned Washington into a land of idiots.  The elites are completely detached from reality.  And their policies are wreaking havoc on working class and middle class Americans.  We can’t change this.  But we can revel in what it represents…

You see, one of the unspoken delights of the 21st century American experience is zeroing in on the precise moments when reality can no longer be covered up with lies.  Like when America invaded Iraq and didn’t find weapons of mass destruction.  Or when Fed Chair Ben S. Bernanke said impacts from problems in the subprime market were likely to be contained and then Lehman Brothers went belly-up.

This week price inflation attained this special status.  Reports fabricated by government bean counters could no longer bury the truth.

On Tuesday, the Labor Department reported the producer price index (PPI), which measures wholesale prices, increased in October at an annual rate of 8.6 percent.  Then, on Wednesday, the Labor Department reported the consumer price index (CPI) increased 6.2 percent in the last 12 months.

In truth, the CPI is rising at more than double the rate of what’s officially reported.  Nonetheless, the fact that the official CPI was reported at 6.2 percent documents a moment when reality could no longer be covered up with lies.  Mark it on your calendar.

And what’s this…

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The futility of central bank policy, by Alasdair Macleod

Central banks are between a rock and a hard place like they haven’t been since the 1970s. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

t is only now becoming clear to the investing public that the purchasing power of their currencies is declining at an accelerating rate. There is no doubt that yesterday’s announcement that the US CPI rose by 6.2%, compared with the longstanding 2% target, came as a wake-up call to markets.

Along with the other major central banks, the Fed’s reaction is likely to be to double down on interest rate suppression to keep bond yields low and stock valuations intact. The alternative will lead to a major financial, economic and currency shock sooner rather than later.

This article introduces the reader to some of the basic fallacies behind state currencies. It explains the misconceptions policy planners have over interest rates, and how central banks have become contracyclical lenders, replacing commercial banking’s credit creation for non-financial activities.

In effect, narrow money is being used by the major central banks in a vain attempt to shore up government finances and economic activity. The consequences for currency debasement are likely to be more immediate and profound than cyclical bank credit expansion.

Introduction

It is becoming clear that there has been an unofficial agreement between the US Fed, Bank of England, the ECB and probably the Bank of Japan not to raise interest rates. It is confirmed by remarkably similar statements from the former three in recent days. When, as the cliché has it, they are all singing off the same hymn sheet, those of us not party to agreements between our monetary policy planners are right to suspect they are doubling down on a market rigging exercise encompassing all financial markets.

That these policy planners are clueless about money and economics escapes nearly everyone affected. It is assumed the so-called experts know what they are doing. But for nearly a century, universities have promoted statist beliefs on their economics courses to the exclusion of reasoned theory leading to the current situation. In modern times it started with Georg Knapp’s Chartalist movement in Germany before the First World War. And it really took off with Keynes’s General Theory published in 1936. The essence of it has been state attempts to dehumanise economics; to turn economic actors, that is you and me, into predictable components in a mathematical economy.

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All-knowing, all-powerful central bank throws in the towel, by Simon Black

The only powers modern central banks have are to create debt instruments and exchange them for other debt instruments. Could someone please explain how that can create economic growth? From Simon Black at sovereignman.com:

It’s been nearly 11 years now that Ben Bernanke, who was then Chairman of the Federal Reserve, sat down for a rare TV interview with 60 Minutes back in late 2010.

As he sat across from journalist Scott Pelley, Bernanke appeared shaken, but not stirred; he was visibly nervous, but displayed the emotional detachment of a trauma surgeon.

He was especially detached– even dismissive– when addressing concerns about inflation; the Fed had nearly tripled the size of its balance sheet in late 2008, practically overnight, and slashed interest rates to zero.

And there were legitimate concerns that these actions would lead to significant inflation.

Bernanke rejected these concerns, telling Scott Pelley he has “100%” confidence in his ability to control inflation, and that “we can raise interest rates in 15 minutes if we have to. . .

Ironically inflation actually did start to rise, literally weeks after that interview; by late summer 2011, in fact, inflation peaked at nearly 4%, though food and fuel prices raced much higher.

But the Fed did not raise interest rates. Instead they dismissed any inflation concern as “transitory”.

Now, this idea of the central bank’s almighty power has long been a cliché in financial markets; they’ve convinced investors, politicians, and citizens alike of their infinite resources to bend the economy to their will.

Well then… let’s see it.

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When a Train Wreck Is No Accident, by Jeff Thomas

What if the impending financial collapse is all part of some master plan? From Jeff Thomas at internationalman.com:

trainwreck

“In spite of all the rhetoric, we will go deeper in debt, the Fed will print more money, and the value of the dollar will continue to plummet.” – Ron Paul

Never in history have the economic and political structures been so manipulated by those who are responsible for their safekeeping; never has so much been at stake, in so many countries, and facing collapse, all at the same time.

The great majority of people in the First World recognise that the world is passing through an economic crisis. However, most are under the impression that there are some pretty smart fellows running the show and all they need to do is tweak the system a bit more and we’ll return to happy days.

Not so. The “smart fellows” who are in charge of fixing the problem are in fact the very same people who created it.

Understandably, this a hard concept for most people to even consider, let alone accept, as the very idea that those in charge of the system might consciously collapse it seems preposterous. So, we might wish to back up a bit here and present a very brief history of the system itself, in order to understand that the eventual collapse of the economic system was baked in the cake from the very beginning.

Creating a Central Bank

From the very earliest days of the formation of the American republic, bankers (along with inside help from George Washington’s secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton) sought to create a banking monopoly that would create the country’s currency and become the central banking system.

The first attempt at a central bank was a failure, and strong opponents, including Thomas Jefferson, prevented a second central bank for a time. Later, further attempts were made by bankers and their political cronies, and each central bank was either short-lived or defeated in its planning stages.

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Distraction As Policy While Our Economic Rome Burns, by Matthew Piepenberg

The global economy is going down the tubes, but nobody is supposed to notice. From Matthew Piepenberg at goldswitzerland.com:

Desperation and distraction are masquerading as economic policy. Below we see how and why—and at what cost.

COVID: The Great Economic and Political Hall-Pass

If every time I stole a cookie from the jar in front of my mom (age 8), or drove dad’s car (sometimes into a tree) without permission (age 16), failed a dorm-room inspection (age 17), broke a lawnmower for driving over a fence post (each year) or forgot a key anniversary (eh-hmm), it would have been so convenient to have a universal “hall pass” to excuse what is/was otherwise just plain stupid behavior.

Luckily for the grown children running our global financial system into the ground, the COVID pandemic is becoming precisely that: “A global hall pass for excusing decades of stupid.”

As we’ve written many times, inexcusably high debt levels, tanking growth data, struggling work force figures, embarrassing wealth disparity and insider market rigging between Wall Street and DC was well in play long before COVID made the headlines.

But now, the architects of such “pre-COVID stupid” have the current COVID narrative to justify and excuse even, well… more stupid.

The Latest Jobs Report “Explained” …

Take, for example, the latest job reports data from those DC-based creative writers at that comic-book publication otherwise known as the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Known for years on Wall Street as mathematical magicians capable of turning 12% inflation into a 2% CPI lie, that same BLS is operating yet again to fib away the latest (and otherwise telling) jobs data.

The September jobs report was the second consecutive and disappointing report from the BLS, which they were quick to blame on “pandemic-related staffing fluctuations.”

Hmmm. That’s a nice phrase, no? “Pandemic-related staffing fluctuations.”

But the real description boils down to something more PRAVDA-like under the new Biden Vaccine Mandate, namely: “Obey or we take your job away.”

Needless to say, not everyone is obeying.

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We’re Living in a Chaos Economy. Here’s How to End It. By Mark Thornton

The solution is simple—get the government and its central bank out of the economy—but alas, given present day politics implementation will be impossible. From Mark Thornton at mises.org:

The Federal Reserve has been increasing the money supply at an explosive rate. The federal budget, deficits, and the trade deficit are record levels. Governments, both foreign and domestic, have locked down people, restricting production and consumption. How should this be viewed by an economist?

There is clearly chaos in the economy, and hardly a day goes by when I don’t find unusual if not unprecedented situations in day-to-day economic life. However, many people and economists are either oblivious to the problems or in denial. Things are normal for them. Politicians are mostly in this camp. For economists and investment promotors, inflation is “transitory.” They don’t know how the economy works and they expect near perfection from the economy and entrepreneurs. This view is wrong.

The chaos is all too real for most others. Homemakers who spend household income are seeing their purchasing power shrink, their choices disappearing, and more of their time consumed stretching the family budgets. Christmas shopping will be worse than normal.

Chaos deniers are further entrenched in their experience by the mainstream media (MSM). The problems are either not reported by the MSM or are masked by aggregate statistics like price inflation, i.e., the Consumer Price Index, low unemployment, wage increases, and extremely high stock markets and real estate, especially housing prices. These stats make people feel good, or at least less nervous.

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Are We Really Crazy Enough to Believe This Is Going to Work? By Charles Hugh Smith

Crazy is believing a house of cards built on a foundation of sand will stand. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

Unbeknownst to the giddy participants, they’re not just betting on the omnipotence of the Fed Politburo, they’re also making a max-leverage bet that “the madness of crowds” will never end.

Imagine an economy so dominated by its central bank that all markets hang on every word of its priesthood as life or death. You know, like the Federal Reserve and the American economy.

Now imagine this central bank issues enormous sums of new money which supercharges speculative activity such as hundreds of billions of dollars in stock buybacks, special purpose acquisition casinos, oops, I mean companies, and so on. You know, like the Federal Reserve’s trillions in nearly free money for financiers.

Next, imagine that the central bank makes barely concealed promises that should any big gambler lose money in the casino, the bank will flood the financial system with even more nearly free money for financiers and bail out the loser.

Since flooding the system with nearly free money for financiers keeps the speculative frenzy going, the bank has implicitly promised that assets driven higher by speculative frenzy will never be allowed to drop. This promise naturally incentivizes even more speculative borrowing, leverage and risk, generating a titanic Everything Bubble in which risky assets skyrocket from pennies into dollars and dollars into fortunes.

Now imagine that this speculative frenzy spreads into every nook and cranny of the economy such that everyone is drawn into one casino or another, and previously sober, cautious people are seized by a quasi-religious fervor in which they become convinced that their gambling chips on NFTs, SPACs, meme-stocks, obscure alt-coins, homes, collectables and pretty much anything within the manic swirl of speculative frenzy is now a can’t lose path to carefree permanent wealth because the central bank guarantees it and anyone who questions this is in league with the Devil (or worse).

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The Biggest Federal Reserve Scandal, by Ron Paul

A couple of Fed regional presidents resigning due to odiferous trading is small change compared to the scandal that is central banking and its fiat money. From Ron Paul at ronpaulinstitute.org:

Following revelations that Federal Reserve officials made trades in financial assets while the Fed was taking extraordinary efforts to “stimulate” the economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell ordered a review of the Fed’s ethics rules. While these trades appear problematic, they pale in comparison to the biggest Fed scandal — the Fed’s impoverishment of ordinary Americans, enrichment of the elites, and facilitation of government debt and deficits.

The depression induced by coronavirus, though really caused by so-called public health actions government took in response, was the official reason for the Fed’s increased asset purchases last year. However, the Fed actually started ramping up its money creating activities in September of 2019, when it began pouring billions a day into the repo markets, which banks use to make short-term loans to each other, in order to keep repo market interest rates low.

Coronavirus was just a convenient excuse for the Fed to do more of what it was already doing. Now, the Fed is using the limited reopening as a scapegoat for rising prices. Of course, anyone who understands Austrian economics understands that rising prices are a symptom, not a cause, of inflation. Inflation is the very act of money creation by the Fed.

Rising prices that diminish the average American’s standard of living are not the only result of the Fed’s manipulation of the money supply. The manipulation distorts economic signals, producing results including booms, bubbles, and busts.

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