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Bernanke get hammered, tells truth about US economy

This is absolutely hilarious and sad at the same time.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/bernanke-gets-hammered-tells-truth-about-us-economy

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What is a dollar?

 
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It Ain't Money If I Can't Print It!

It Ain't Money If I Can't Print It!
by Peter Schiff

Recently by Peter Schiff: Don't be Fooled by Political Posturing
   
I have been forecasting with near certainty that QE2 would not be the end of the Fed's money-printing program. My suspicions were confirmed in both the Fed minutes on Tuesday and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's semi-annual testimony to Congress yesterday. The former laid out the conditions upon which a new round of inflation would be launched, and the latter re-emphasized – in case anyone still doubted – that Mr. Bernanke has no regard for the principles of a sound currency.


Tuesday's release of the Fed minutes contained the first indication that a third round of quantitative easing (QE3) is being considered. The notes described unanimous agreement that QE2 should be completed, along with the following comment: "depending on how economic conditions evolve, the Committee might have to consider providing additional monetary policy stimulus, especially if economic growth remained too slow to meaningfully reduce the unemployment rate in the medium run." Since the unemployment situation is deteriorating, and by all accounts will continue to do so, the Fed is essentially pledging to keep the spigot turned on. The committee also decided to look only at current "overall inflation" in making their judgments, as opposed to "inflation trends." Since new dollars take awhile to circulate around the economy and raise prices, this means the Fed is sure to be too late in tightening once inflation starts to run away, causing more dislocations in the American economy.

If anyone had lingering faith that Mr. Bernanke actually has a plan to end the US government's addiction to cheap money, the Chairman's semi-annual testimony to Congress should have washed it away. In addition to claiming that his money-printing has helped the US economy, Bernanke told Congress that gold is not money, people buying gold are not concerned about inflation, and the external value of the dollar has no influence on its domestic purchasing power. He even took a moment to stump for President Obama's plan to raise the debt ceiling.

 
By claiming that gold is not money, the Chairman demonstrates his ignorance of much of monetary history. He told Congressman Ron Paul that he had no idea why central banks hold gold, before speculating that it might have something to do with tradition. Yes, traditionally gold is money, which is precisely why central banks hold it. And gold is money because central bankers like Mr. Bernanke cannot be trusted with a paper substitute.

Bernanke further disputes the facts by claiming that the only reason people are buying gold is to hedge against uncertainty, or "tail risks" as he calls them. My advice to the Chairman is to ask the people who are actually buying it. As someone who has been buying gold myself for a decade, I can assure him that my gold buying has nothing to do with "uncertainty." In fact, it's just the opposite. I am buying gold because of what is certain, not what is uncertain. I am certain that Mr. Bernanke's incompetence will destroy the value of the dollar and unleash runaway inflation.

If it were true that people bought gold to protect themselves from market uncertainty, as the Chairman claims, then the metal should have spiked in the midst of the '08 credit crunch. Instead, it fell along with most other assets. People instinctively fled into US dollars and Treasuries because of their long record of stability. What Bernanke doesn't understand is that his irresponsible monetary policy is undermining that faith in US assets, built up over generations. That is what's driving gold: easy money, negative interest rates, and quantitative easing.

 
Finally, by claiming that the dollar's exchange rate has no effect on domestic prices, Mr. Bernanke demonstrates that he probably lacks the competence to be a bank teller, let alone Chairman of the Federal Reserve. A weaker dollar means Americans have to pay more for imported goods. But it also means domestic producers have to pay more for raw materials and imported components, which raises domestic production costs as well. It also means that more domestically produced goods are exported, reducing the supply and raising the price of what is left for Americans to consume. This is Econ 101.

Given the Chairman's confusion on the basics of economics, perhaps it's no surprise that he's put quantitative easing right back on the table, where, despite prior rhetoric, it has been all along. The Fed has always known that QE3 is coming; it's just looking for an excuse to launch it.

 
The problem is that fighting a recession with QE is like fighting a fire with gasoline. As the flames of recession reignite, more QE, while dousing it momentarily, will only produce an even larger economic inferno.

At one point, Bernanke said, "The right analogy for not raising the debt ceiling is going out and having a spending spree on your credit card and then refusing to pay the bill." He's got the analogy right, but his conclusions are completely wrong. Yes, Congress has gone on a spending spree and it's time to pay up. But raising the debt ceiling is like taking out a Mastercard to pay the Visa... it just makes the problem worse. If you or I go out one night, get drunk, and run up a huge credit card bill, we know that the way to fix it is to buckle down and pay it back. We might postpone vacation plans or put off buying a new car, we might cancel our cable TV subscription or gym membership. The point is that we would have to reduce current consumption to make up for the overspending in the past.

Obama claims that raising the debt ceiling is about getting a hold of the federal debt. Have you ever heard of anyone getting out of debt by taking on more debt? Has anyone ever reduced their debt without reducing current consumption? How can the Fed Chairman endorse such a preposterous idea?

Bernanke actually went a step further and warned against reducing current federal spending too sharply, claiming that such a move might impede the "recovery." He apparently believes that it is the role of the Congress to go on spending sprees, and his role to pay the mounting bills with freshly printed dollars. The fact that this formula has produced larger and larger economic crises does not seem to bother him. I guess ignorance is bliss.


July 15, 2011

Peter Schiff is president of Euro Pacific Capital and author of The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets and Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse. His latest book is How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes.

Geithner's Victims of Last Resort by Gary North

Geithner's Victims of Last Resort

by Gary North

Recently by Gary North: The #2 Port in the Academic Storm Is About to Close

 

  

You may have heard that the Federal Reserve System is the lender of last resort. This is a misleading concept. The Federal Reserve loans the U.S. government newly created fiat money. The government issues the FED an IOU. It is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. But who stands behind the United States government, wallets in hand? You do. And so do I.

We are the victims of last resort.

On May 13, Timothy Geithner wrote a letter to Colorado's Senator Michael Bennet. In his letter, he presented the case against freezing the debt ceiling. The letter is here.

Geithner began with a statement that is muddled almost beyond belief. "As you know, the debt limit does not authorize new spending commitments." Quite true. The debt limit does not authorize anything. It prohibits the authorization of any further borrowing. Officially speaking, prohibiting borrowing is the idea behind the debt ceiling. That is why Congress keeps raising it. Congress does not want to cut spending. It also does not want to raise taxes in order to pay for the spending.

The sentence says the opposite of Geithner's point. We know this because of what came next. "It simply allows the government to finance existing legal obligations that Congresses and presidents of both parties have made in the past."

He therefore did not really mean that "the debt limit does not authorize new spending commitments." He meant to write this: "An increase in the debt limit does not authorize new spending commitments." Therefore, he reminded Bennet, to raise the debt limit does not authorize any new spending commitments. Geithner, in his befuddled way, was trying to offer Congress a fig leaf to cover its nakedness. By raising the debt ceiling, Congress will be perceived by the voters as spending recklessly, which is an accurate perception. Geithner was trying to say this: by raising the debt ceiling, Congress does not automatically pass new spending laws.

Millions of voters understand this shell game. If the ceiling gets raised, Congress can then vote for new spending bills. If it doesn't get raised, Congress cannot pass new spending bills without cutting existing spending. The debt ceiling inhibits Congress.

Geithner's sales pitch is simple: Congress must raise the debt ceiling in order to meet its existing commitments. He is giving Congress a way to justify this ceiling hike to constituents. "We're not wild spenders. We're merely making it possible to fulfill previous Congressional commitments made to the public. You don't want us to break our promises, do you?"

He then wrote: "Failure to raise the debt limit would force the United States to default on these obligations, such as payments to our servicemembers, citizens, investors, and businesses." This is correct. This is the famous bottom line.

Do you see what this implies? A rising debt ceiling is built into American politics. Using Geithner's logic, there is no escape from an ever-larger national debt. Every year, the ceiling will have to be raised. Medicare is in the red. Social Security is in the red. Combined, they are about $100 trillion in the hole, according to some estimates.

Who is going to buy this Treasury debt as it rolls over every 50 months (today's average maturity)? For how much longer? This money will have to come from somewhere. It will come from money that might otherwise be invested in the private sector.

Ever since November 2010, the money has come mainly from the Federal Reserve System: $600 billion in newly created money. This will stop after this week. Then what?

The constant absorption of capital by the U.S. government cannot go on forever. It will undermine the growth of the economy by transferring investment capital to the Treasury. When the economy stops growing, the deficit will get worse. At some point, investors will stop lending to the Treasury at anything except very high rates. This will turn a recession into a depression. The government will raise the debt ceiling, but it will not get the funds required to keep spending. This process of ever-rising debt will not go on. As economist Herb Stein observed decades ago, when something cannot go on, it has a tendency to stop.

This means that when the Federal Reserve finally stops buying U.S. debt, there will be a great default. I mean finally. I do not mean temporarily. I do not mean this year. The fear of another recession may keep the safe-haven money flowing into the Treasury this year. But, at some point, investors will demand higher interest rates. Geithner's letter raises this specter of higher interest rates if the debt ceiling is not raised. But this threat will also exist if the debt ceiling is raised and raised again, as it will be.

The Federal Reserve at some point will start buying Treasury debt again to keep rising rates from crippling the economy. This means price inflation will return, as it did in the late 1970s. Then it will move above that era's rate of rising prices. This is why the FED will eventually have to face the music: either hyperinflation or the Great Default. I believe that it will choose the Great Default. If it refuses, then the dollar will collapse.

In either case, the division of labor will contract. In either case, there will be bankruptcies. There will be massive unemployment of people and resources.

We are nowhere near this moment of truth. I know there are lots of people out there who say that hyperinflation is imminent. They are wrong.

DEFAULT NOW

Geithner is facing a default if the debt ceiling is not raised. He said that a default would call into question for the first time the full faith and credit of the United States government. He is correct. I can think of no more liberating event. The monster would go bust.

Investors around the world would lose money, he says. I surely hope so. That might keep them from financing the monster again. Anyway, for a couple of years.

He thinks there will still be buyers, but at higher rates. That would restrict the government's spending, since the government would have to pay investors rather than subsidize new boondoggles.

Default would increase borrowing costs for everyone, he wrote. He did not say why this would be the case. If the government defaults, people will invest elsewhere. It seems to me that this would be good for the private sector. Geithner needs to prove his case.

"Treasury securities are the benchmark interest rate," he wrote. They are? Why should a FED-subsidized interest rate be the benchmark? Why should an out-of-control international debtor set the standard?

THE MOB

"A default would also lead to a steep decline in household wealth, further harming economic growth." Think about this. A thief sticks a gun in your belly. He says, "hand over your money . . . forever." He then shares this money – after handling fees – with his fellow mobsters.

Geithner is saying that if the victims ever decide not to let the thief steal any more of their money, this will reduce household wealth. It will indeed – the household wealth of the thieves. It will increase the household wealth of the victims.

"Higher mortgage rates would depress an already fragile housing market, causing home values to fall." Fact: home values have fallen even as the U.S. Government's debt ceiling has soared. There is a reason for this. As the government has borrowed more money, thereby reducing the money available to the private sector, housing prices have fallen. He did not explain this economic fact. He did not mention it. I can understand why not.

"This significant reduction in household wealth would threaten the economic security of all Americans and, together with increased interest rates, would contribute to a contraction in household spending and investment." He meant the households of politicians, bureaucrats, and everyone who is on the take from the U.S. government.

But what about the victims? What about the taxpayers whose net worth is being used as collateral for Treasury debt? Why would a ceiling on the government's pledge of their future wealth produce a "significant reduction" in their future household wealth? He needed to explain this.

Keynesian economists need to explain this.

Keynesian financial columnists need to explain this.

They never do.

AMERICAN TAXPAYERS: VICTIMS OF LAST RESORT

"Default would also have the perverse effect of increasing our government's debt burden, worsening the fiscal challenges that we must address and damaging our capacity for future growth." So, if Congress votes to cap the government's debt, this will produce even greater debt. We must therefore seek national solvency through additional debt. Solvency through debt! I am reminded of another group of slogans: war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.

What else would a default do? "It would increase rates on Treasury securities, which would significantly increase the cost of paying interest on the national debt." Yes, it would. But the question arises: If the government defaults on its debt, why would it bother to pay any interest at all? The whole idea of default is to stop paying.

It's just like people who owe more on their homes than the homes are worth. They stop paying. If they are evicted – most are not for months or years – they will rent. They will pay less in rent than they pay on their mortgages. In the meantime, they pay nothing except property taxes. (Governments will foreclose when lenders won't.)

The idea of the debt ceiling is to keep the government from running up its tab, based on the future net worth of taxpayers. The idea behind opposing any increase of government debt is this: "Let's stop any new spending projects." Higher interest rates, if they come as Geithner said they will come, will reduce the ability of the government to start new wealth-distribution boondoggles. The money that would have funded the new projects will have to go to creditors in the form of interest payments.

Why is this bad?

It is bad if you are a member of a group that gets payoffs from the Federal Godfather. It is not bad if you are not.

He said that a default will lead to weaker growth. It will lead to more unemployment. A sagging economy will lead to lower tax revenues and "increased demand on our safety net programs." Whose safety net programs? "Ours."

Why will unemployment rise if the government cannot spend borrowed money? Why won't taxpayers save more money, leading to greater economic output and therefore reduced unemployment? Why is it bad for the economy to allow taxpayers to spend more of their own money the way they want to? These questions apparently did not occur to Geithner, or if they did, he chose not to consider them.

A default will lead, he said, to a reduction in "productive investments in education, innovation, infrastructure, and other areas. . . ." He said "investments." That is a political code word for "government subsidies." A default would mean that the government will have to spend less in those areas of the economy in which (1) politicians buy votes, (2) salaried, Civil Service-protected bureaucrats spend money to innovate, and (3) the teacher unions prosper.

He warned that "Treasury securities are a key holding on the balance sheets of every insurance company, bank, money market fund, and pension fund in the world." This is true. This means that taxpayers' future wealth has been mortgaged to provide securities for these outfits. So, if we take this argument seriously, how will the government ever stop increasing the debt ceiling? It won't. The Federal debt system has addicted the world's financial institutions to the promise that American taxpayers are the victims of last resort.

The U.S. government borrows by promising that American taxpayers will fork over the money. The mob has bought itself fiscal credibility. It has guns and badges, and it can finance itself by assuring investors that these guns and badges will be used.

How can this ever be stopped? Geithner or his successors will be able to use this argument forever.

There are two ways that it can be stopped: (1) hyperinflation by the Federal Reserve, which will buy the Treasury's IOUs when other investors cease; (2) default whenever the Federal Reserve stops buying new Treasury debt. One or the other must happen, because (1) the Congress keeps running $1.5 trillion annual deficits, and (2) the Social Security and Medicare liabilities are unfunded.

In the meantime, Geithner implores Congress to kick the can one more time. He will be back for another increase in a year. He is a cheerleader. "Kick it again! Kick it again! Harder! Harder!"

GEITHNER'S PAULSON IMITATION

He said that a default would raise questions about the solvency of the institutions that hold Treasury debt. This could cause a run on money-market funds. It could be "similar to what occurred in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers." He said that this could "spark a panic that threatens the health of the our entire global economy and the jobs of millions of Americans."

This sounds terrifying, but is it true? We have heard all this before: in September and October of 2008. Geithner's predecessor, Hank Paulson, and Ben Bernanke warned high-level Congressmen that this was about to happen. That was how they got Congress to fund TARP. But they never proved that a collapse was imminent. In a persuasive presentation, former budget director David Stockman has shown that no such collapse was imminent.

"Even a short-term default could cause irrevocable damage to the American economy." Irrevocable! Really? Is the American economy so dependent on Treasury interest payments that everything that Americans do or own is at risk? Why? Because "Treasury securities enjoy their unique role in the global financial system precisely because they are viewed as a risk-free asset." I see. Risk-free assets. But risk is inescapable in life. Geithner said that this does not apply to buyers of IOUs from the U. S. Treasury. Not yet, anyway.

When an IOU issued by an agency that is running a $1.6 trillion annual on-budget deficit is regarded as risk-free by investment fund managers, then my strong suggestion is that you not allow those fund managers to handle your retirement portfolio.

"Investors have absolute confidence that the United States will meet its debt obligations on time, every time, and in full." They do? Really? Then they are incapable of reading a balance sheet.

"That confidence increases demand for Treasury securities, lowering borrowing costs for the Federal government, consumers, and businesses." It does? Really? Let me understand this. The demand for Treasury securities increases, because investors with "absolute confidence" in the Treasury's IOUs hand over their money to the Treasury. Yet this transfer of funds somehow lowers borrowing costs for consumers and businesses. I am a bit confused. If the Treasury gets the capital, how can consumers and businesses also pay less for capital? If money goes to the Treasury, how is it simultaneously made available to consumers and businessmen?

You see my problem. I am not a Keynesian. I have this theory that money transferred to X cannot be simultaneously transferred to Y. If money is spent by X on what he wants to buy, it cannot be spent by Y on what he wants to buy. But this is not the case in the world of Keynes.

"A default would call into question the status of Treasury securities as a cornerstone of the financial system, potentially squandering this unique role and the economic benefits that come with it." I ask: Whose economic benefits? The fellow holding the badge and the gun or the fellow with the wallet?

"If the United States were forced to stop, limit, or delay payment on obligations to which the Nation has already committed," he said, "there would be a massive and abrupt reduction in federal outlays and aggregate demand." Again, I have this problem. I am not a Keynesian. I understand cause and effect as follows. If spending by Y (the government) decreases, this leaves more money in X's (the taxpayer's) wallet. When X spends his money without the middleman of the guy with the badge and the gun, aggregate demand does not change. I realize that this is not true in Geithner's parallel universe, but that's how aggregate demand works in my world.

I guess I need a formula. Without a formula, economists cannot perceive cause and effect. So, here goes: $X + $Y = $X + $Y.

To understand this, we need story problems. We all hate story problems, but they help us understand.

(1) "If X spends $1.6 trillion dollars, and Y spends no dollars, how much is aggregate demand?"

(2) "If Y sticks a gun in X's belly and says 'hand it over,' and then spends $1.6 trillion, how much is aggregate demand?"

(3) "If Y comes to X and says, 'hand it over, but this is a loan,' and X forks it over, when Y spends $1.6 trillion, how much is aggregate demand?"

Geithner does not operate in terms of this formula. So, he said that when the government (Y) stops spending, there will be a decrease in aggregate demand. Somehow, the excess money that is now in X's wallet will disappear. "This abrupt contraction would likely push us into a double dip recession." He did not define "us." He wanted Senator Bennet to believe that if Y spends less money, X will suffer a double dip recession. We're all in the same boat, he implied. Why? Because . . . a drum roll, please . . . we owe it to ourselves!

This is Keynesianism's parallel universe. It is a world of endless increases in the U.S. government's debt ceiling. It is a world of endless increases in the Federal Reserve System's monetary base, filled with IOUs from the U.S. government. It is a world in which guns and badges turn stones into bread.

CONCLUSIONS

Here is Geithner's conclusion: "It is critically important that Congress act as soon as possible to raise the debt limit so that the full faith and credit of the United States is not called into question." He went on to say: "I fully expect that Congress will once again take responsible action. . . ."

He and I define "responsible action" differently. He defines it as "authorize people with badges and guns to borrow more money in terms of their ability to get their hands on enough taypayer money to keep paying interest." It is a system in which the taxpayer is the victim of last resort.

I have a different conclusion. I think that Congress will authorize another increase in the debt ceiling. It will do this multiple times. As this limit is increased, there will be a reduction in the number of investors who have absolute confidence in the full faith and credit of the United States government.

Congress is not going to balance the budget, because there seem to be no negative consequences for not balancing the budget, either political or economic. So, the debt will get larger.

At some point, interest rates will rise. Then we will see the negative consequences that Geithner described in his letter.

Geithner is arguing for a delay. That is what most politicians argue for. Today, most politicians have adopted the faith of Dickens' Mr. Micawber: "Something will turn up." They are right: the debt ceiling, then interest rates, then the monetary base, then M1, then the money multiplier, then prices. So will unemployment. Up, up. up.

The key is the money multiplier. When it finally moves up, price inflation will move up with it. Until then, the Federal Reserve can join with Congress in the game of kick the can. The debt ceiling will rise.

Inside the can are lots of IOUs. They are IOU's signed by Congress on our behalf. We are the targeted victims of last resort.

We won't be. At any rate, future voters won't be. The creditors will be.

There will be a Great Default when voters finally say, "We're not going to pay." On that day, your net worth had better not rest on a pile of IOUs issued by the U.S. government. Otherwise, you will be like Thomas Mitchell, in "Gone With the Wind," sitting at his desk in 1865, mad as a hatter, insisting that he was rich. Why? He had lots of government bonds issued by the Confederacy.

So, the victims of last resort will not be the taxpayers after all. They will be the trusting people who retain absolute confidence in the full faith and credit of the United States government right to the bitter end. Either hyperinflation will ruin them or default will, or maybe both: as the Confederacy experienced.

June 29, 2011

Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit http://www.garynorth.com. He is also the author of a free 20-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible.

Copyright © 2011 Gary North

The Next Financial Crisis.

The Next Financial Crisis

by Gary North

Recently by Gary North: The Safe Banking Fantasy

 
  

The mainstream financial media are running stories on the next financial crisis. This is unheard of two years into a so-called economic recovery. So weak is this recovery that the old pre-2008 confidence has not returned.

The first sign that "this time, it's different," was Treasury Secretary Geithner's statement, which received widespread coverage, that there will be another crisis.

On May 18, The Daily Beast ran a story on Geithner's unexpected appearance at the initial screening of an HBO movie, Too Big to Fail, which dramatizes the crisis of late 2008, during which time Geithner was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In an interview, Geithner said this. "It will come again. There will be another storm. But it's not going to come for a while."

That was surely forthright for a sitting Treasury Secretary. He was not specific, but to say that another crisis will come was unique. He added this: "It's not going to be possible for people to capture risk with perfect foresight and knowledge."

That was amazingly forthright. It points to the reality of the naive faith of regulators that they can devise formulas that will keep the system from being hit by some unexpected mini-crisis that will trigger a wider systemic breakdown. He acknowledged that risk analysis, based on statistics, cannot deal with uncertainty: events outside the law of large numbers that serves as the basis of statistics. Ludwig von Mises discussed this in 1949, and Frank H. Knight wrote a book on this in 1921: Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit. Nassim Taleb has called this a black swan event. Whatever we call it, such an event torpedoes the best-laid plans of government regulators as well as statisticians advising leveraged banks.

"Things were falling apart," Geithner said. "We had no playbook and no tools. . . . Life's about choices. We had no good choices. . . . We allowed this huge financial system to emerge without any meaningful constraints. . . . The size of the shock was larger than what precipitated the Great Depression."

That is the official government line, which Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson used to persuade Congress to fork over $700 billion in TARP loans. It justified the Federal Reserve's swaps at face value of liquid Treasury debt in its portfolio for unmarketable toxic assets held by large banks. It justified the 2009 stimulus package of another $830 billion.

The author of the article correctly noted: "In the end, the taxpayers saved the Wall Street investment banks, with Geithner & Co. injecting enough capital to cushion them from bad bets." That is exactly what happened.

GEITHNER RETREATS

On June 6, Geithner spoke at a meeting of the American Bankers Association in Atlanta. Here, his analysis was completely different from what he had revealed in his appearance at the HBO screening. It turns out that the system was saved by investors, not by the government and the Federal Reserve.

Of the 15 largest financial institutions in the United States before the crisis, only nine remain as independent entities.

Those that survived did so because they were able to raise capital from private investors, significantly diluting existing shareholders. We used stress tests to give the private market the ability – through unprecedented disclosure requirements and clear targets for how much capital these institutions needed – to distinguish between those institutions that needed to strengthen their capital base and those that did not.

He did not mention that the reason why investors came to the rescue was that the winners had been bailed out by the taxpayers and the Federal Reserve.

Regulation has saved us, he insisted, and it will continue to save us.

We now have the authority to subject all major financial institutions operating in the United States to comprehensive, consolidated limitations on risk taking. That represents a dramatic change from before the crisis, when more than half of the financial activity in the nation that was involved in "banking" from the investment banks to large finance companies, AIG, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, operated outside those limits.

And the markets where firms came together – like the over-the-counter derivatives markets – will now be subject to oversight, once regulators finalize and implement new rules authorized by Dodd-Frank. We now have much stronger tools to limit the risk that one firm's failure could cascade through markets to weaken the rest of the system.

Overall, and this is the most important test of crisis response, the U.S. financial system is now in a position to finance a growing economy and is no longer a source of risk to the recovery.

He ended with this inspiring promise. "So we will do what we need to do to make the United States financial system stronger. We will do so carefully. And as we do it, we will bring the world with us."

This was cheerleading for government regulation. This is what we have come to expect. The problem is this: it is a full-scale retreat from his admission at the HBO screening.

GEITHNER'S GOOFS

Simon Johnson took him to task in the New York Times on June 9, in an article titled, "The Banking Emperor Has No Clothes." Johnson was the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, and is a member F.D.I.C.'s newly established Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee. He said that Geithner is naive about the supposedly high degree of safety for the banking system. He complains that Geithner is way too optimistic.

First, he reminds us that the government bailed out the banks. He reminds us of Geithner's admission of this in his HBO interview. Second, he reminds us that the international banking system is interconnected.

But big banks in almost all other major countries have run into serious trouble, including those in Britain and Switzerland – where policy makers are now open about the potential scope of further disasters. French and German banks made large amounts of reckless loans to peripheral Europe and have strongly resisted higher capital requirements, helping to create the current potential for contagion throughout the euro zone (and explaining why the Europeans are so keen to keep control of the International Monetary Fund).

Geithner claimed in Atlanta that U.S. banks are less concentrated than other nation's' banks. But how will that save our banks from a crisis that is triggered outside the U.S.? "Mr. Geithner's most serious mistake is to believe that we can handle the failure of a global megabank within the Dodd-Frank framework."

Mr. Geithner's thinking on bank size is completely flawed. The lesson should be: big banks have gotten themselves into trouble almost everywhere; banks in the United States are very big and have an incentive to become even bigger; one or more of these banks will reach the brink of failure soon.

Johnson then gets to the famous bottom line. The bottom line is this:

There is no cross-border resolution mechanism or other framework that will handle the failure of a bank like Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase or Goldman Sachs in an orderly manner. The only techniques available are those used by Mr. Geithner and his colleagues in September 2008 – a mad scramble to find buyers for assets, backed by Federal Reserve and other government guarantees for creditors.

That this should appear in the New York Times is indicative of the extent to which the old confidence in the banking system is fading.

FELDSTEIN WEIGHS IN

On June 8, the Wall Street Journal ran a column by Martin Feldstein, who served as Reagan's chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. He is a Harvard faculty member.

Feldstein is a Keynesian. He has a reputation as a conservative. He is on the board of contributors to theJournal. He is regarded as a conservative because he favors tax cuts. But he also favors Federal spending in times of crisis. Somehow, he also comes out for a lower deficit.

He said that Obama's $830 billion stimulus package did not go far enough. "As for the 'stimulus' package, both its size and structure were inadequate to offset the enormous decline in aggregate demand." The money should have gone to the Defense Department.

Experience shows that the most cost-effective form of temporary fiscal stimulus is direct government spending. The most obvious way to achieve that in 2009 was to repair and replace the military equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan that would otherwise have to be done in the future. But the Obama stimulus had nothing for the Defense Department. Instead, President Obama allowed the Democratic leadership in Congress to design a hodgepodge package of transfers to state and local governments, increased transfers to individuals, temporary tax cuts for lower-income taxpayers, etc. So we got a bigger deficit without economic growth.

This is pure Keynesianism. It is a call for massive spending in a recession. So, should there be another fiscal crisis, Feldstein's recommendation is a bigger stimulus. The problem for his is this: with the economy slowing, it will be even more vulnerable to an unexpected black swan event.

Second, we are getting an economic slowdown, he says, because Obama will not make the Bush tax cuts permanent. This creates uncertainty in the minds of investors. So, he sounds like a supply-side economist. But he isn't. He is a traditional Keynesian.

Third, there is the deficit.

A third problem stems from the administration's lack of an explicit plan to deal with future budget deficits and with the exploding national debt. This creates uncertainty about future tax increases and interest rates that impedes spending by households and investment by businesses.

Fourth, there is the official strong dollar policy that has led to the decline of the dollar. But he never mentions Federal Reserve policy: QE2.

What are our prospects? He is not optimistic.

The economy will continue to suffer until there is a coherent and favorable economic policy. That means bringing long-term deficits under control without raising marginal tax rates – by cutting government outlays and by limiting the tax expenditures that substitute for direct government spending. It means lower tax rates on businesses and individuals to spur entrepreneurship and investment. And it means reforming Social Security and Medicare to protect the living standards of future retirees while limiting the cost to future taxpayers.

All of these things are doable. But the Obama administration has not done them and shows no inclination to do them in the future.

So, here is a Harvard economist saying that we needed a larger stimulus in 2009, but we need reduced spending now. We also need to reform Social Security and Medicare, while protecting the future retirees and limiting costs. All this is doable.

All this is utter nonsense. The politics of Medicare and Social Security have not changed in 40 years because there is no politically acceptable way to limit their costs. Voters will vote against anyone who suggests such a reform. The voters were promised the Keynesian moon, and they will not tolerate the popping of that pipe dream. In short, none of what Feldstein suggests is doable, short of a monumental crisis that enables Congress to start goring specific electoral oxen. And when that crisis comes, Feldstein will no doubt recommend a large deficit, with the money going to the Defense Department.

This is Establishment Wall Street opinion.

WIGGIN TELLS IT STRAIGHT

Then there was an article in Forbes, a conventional outlet, written by Agora's Addison Wiggin. He begins with this.

There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner," says hedge fund legend Mark Mobius, "because we haven't solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis."

Mobius is a legendary hedge fund manager. If he thinks there is going to be another crisis, we would be wise to listen.

Wiggin thinks the Greek debt crisis is a good candidate for a trigger event.

The Greek crisis is first and foremost about the German and French banks that were foolish enough to lend money to Greece in the first place. What sort of derivative contracts tied to Greek debt are they sitting on? What worldwide mayhem would ensue if Greece didn't pay back 100 centimes on the euro?

That's a rhetorical question, since the balance sheets of European banks are even more opaque than American ones. Whatever the actual answer, it's scary enough that the European Central Bank has refused to entertain any talk about the holders of Greek sovereign debt taking a haircut, even in the form of Greece stretching out its payments.

The ECB is determined to protect the Too Big to Fail banks. It always says that it will not lend more money to the Greek government, but it always does. It calls for more bailouts by the German and French governments. The game must go on!

It will accomplish nothing. Going deeper into hock is never a good way to get out of debt. And at some point, this exercise in kicking the can has to stop. When it does, you get your next financial crisis.

CONCLUSION

We are being warned in advance by the financial media: expect another major crisis. The bailouts were not enough. The expansion of the monetary base was not enough. The new Dodd-Frank regulatory structure is not enough.

The international banking system is an interdependent, interconnected system. The system is not transparent. Even if it were, the level of debt – unsecured IOUs – is enormous. Wiggin comments.

Estimates on the amount of derivatives out there worldwide vary. An oft-heard estimate is $600 trillion. That squares with Mobius' guess of 10 times the world's annual GDP. "Are the derivatives regulated?" asks Mobius. "No. Are you still getting growth in derivatives? Yes."

In other words, something along the lines of securitized mortgages is lurking out there, ready to trigger another crisis as in 2007-08.

There is no formula to deal with this. There is no organized government response that is waiting in the wings. There will be another crisis. And when it comes, the response will be the same: to preserve the solvency of the biggest banks, at taxpayer expense and at central bank expense. When it comes to bailouts and central bank inflation, it's all "doable." It will therefore be done.

June 11, 2011

Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visithttp://www.garynorth.com. He is also the author of a free 20-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible.

Copyright © 2011 Gary North

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Link to the original article: http://lewrockwell.com/north/north990.html

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Nixonomics at the New York Times

The sinking New York Times is running cover for the Federal Reserve.  Read this article to see him strip away the emperor's clothes.  I especially like the sections on Nixonomics.
 
The article appeared on LewRockwell.com: http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north979.html
 

Nixonomics at the New York Times

by Gary North

Recently by Gary North: The Foundational Economic Myth of Our Era: 'Government Cured the Great Depression'

 

   

On August 15, 1971, a Sunday, President Nixon unilaterally suspended the last traces of the gold standard. He "closed the gold window" on his own authority. From that time on, no government or central bank has been able to exchange dollars for Treasury gold at a fixed price. Nixon broke the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944. He broke the nation's word. He cheated. That was his way. Ever since that day, American monetary policy has been Nixonomics.

Eight months earlier, he had announced his conversion to Keynesianism. This passage is from the amazingly good documentary on PBS, "Commanding Heights."

For one thing, whatever the effects of the Vietnam War on the national consensus in the 1960s, confidence had risen in the ability of government to manage the economy and to reach out to solve big social problems through such programs as the War on Poverty. Nixon shared in these beliefs, at least in part. "Now I am a Keynesian," he declared in January 1971 – leaving his aides to draft replies to the angry letters that flowed into the White House from conservative supporters. He introduced a Keynesian "full employment" budget, which provided for deficit spending to reduce unemployment.

If you think I am trying to tar and feather critics of the gold standard and defenders of Keynesian economics by connecting their ideas to a pragmatic, lying politician, then you're brighter than your brother-in-law thinks.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

It should come as no surprise that the premier mouthpiece of American Establishment official opinion, The New York Times, is hostile to the traditional gold coin standard or any state-guaranteed version of the gold standard.

The New York Times used to be called "the gold standard of journalism." But it was always a fiat standard. And like the fiat United States dollar, its value keeps sinking.

The gold coin standard places limits on a central bank's ability to create money out of nothing, meaning counterfeiting. This is why its critics hate it.

At the center of almost every national economy today is a central bank that has been granted the government-sanctioned authority to intervene in the financial sector on behalf of large multinational banks. In the city of over-leveraged multinational banks, the New York Times wants no limits placed on the ability of the Federal Reserve System to bail out over-leveraged multinational banks.

The Times is well aware of the fact that Ron Paul is most famous for his position, which is also his book's title, to end the FED. This position was considered crackpot, even within conservative political circles, prior to Paul's run for the Republican Party's nomination for President in late 2007. His was a well-timed candidacy. The economy went into a recession in December of 2007.

His stand against the FED spread rapidly in late 2008, after the FED and the U.S. government bailed out the biggest banks. The anti-FED genie is out of the bottle. Never before in America's post-1913 history has there been this much public opposition to the FED.

The Times can do nothing about this, other than to publish an occasional obligatory article that announces: "You know where we stand." Of course we know. We also know that the fiscally besieged Times is going bankrupt.

We know that its influence is fading, along with all print media. We know that there will not be enough paying online subscribers to offset the declining revenues from advertising, which the Times cannot command these days in the face of its declining readership.

So, for old Times sake, I offer my critique of its recent piece, "Be Careful Wishing for the Fed's End." That warning makes about as much sense to me as this one: "Be Careful Wishing for the Times' End." The author is the company's in-house financial columnist, Roger Lowenstein.

A CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE IN THE FED

Lowenstein leads off with one of the most heart-warming paragraphs of my intellectual life.

Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, faces a crisis of confidence. He is excoriated on the right for debasing the currency, and blasted on the left for failing to stimulate more than he has. It has gotten so bad that last week Mr. Bernanke, who prefers to discuss monetary policy with erudite professors like himself, submitted to the indignity of a news conference. Among the uninvited was Representative Ron Paul, who is flirting with a presidential run, and who, if he took office in 2013, would like nothing more than to celebrate the Fed's centennial by ... abolishing it.

Think about this paragraph. Never before in the FED's history has any chairman faced this kind of opposition.

And that got me to thinking: What if there were no Fed? Don't laugh; it has happened before. The United States had a primitive central bank, conceived by Alexander Hamilton, but President James Madison let its charter lapse in 1811.

Madison did nothing of the kind. By the terms of its incorporation, it automatically lapsed, and no President had any authority to keep it from lapsing.

Lowenstein does not mention that, during the long fight over the re-chartering of the Bank, Albert Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury, had favored the Bank's re-chartering from 1809 to 1811. At no time did Madison fire him or suggest that he did not speak for Madison on this issue. Madison had two years to do so; Gallatin repeatedly lobbied Congress for the renewed charter. In 1811, the vote to re-charter failed by one vote in the House. In the Senate, the vote was tied; Vice President Clinton voted against it. Therefore, Madison did not let the First Bank's charter lapse. Congress did, just barely. If Madison had publicly opposed the re-chartering, the votes would not have been close. But he kept silent. He let Gallatin speak for him. In 1816, Madison favored the creation of the Second Bank of the U.S. He signed it into law.

Having misled his readers regarding the First Bank of the United States, Lowenstein goes on to mislead them about the second Bank, i.e., Madison's Bank.

A second such bank became the target of President Andrew Jackson, who viewed it as a "hydra" and a "curse" upon the nation. Jackson sought to decertify the bank and, in 1836, succeeded. Never mind that the following year, the United States was plunged into a serious financial panic. The curse had been lifted, not to reappear for nearly a century.

Never mind? Here is what he wants his readers not to mind. The president of the Bank, Nicholas Biddle, filed for re-chartering in 1831, five years early. The election of 1832 was fought mainly over the re-chartering of the Bank. Jackson vetoed the bill to re-charter. Congress failed to override the veto. Jackson's Party had a smashing victory in November. The government ceased depositing funds in the Second Bank. Biddle's bank began calling in loans, to pressure Jackson to comply. This action failed. The panic of 1837 was the result of an expansion of fractional reserve banking at the state level, 1833-36, over which the U.S. government had no constitutional control.

If the U.S. government had simply refused to deposit tax receipts in the banks, calling in specie and holding it as "excess reserves," to use the nomenclature of today's Federal Reserve System, there would have been no boom or bust, 1833-37. This idea was well known. It was called the independent Treasury system.

There was an inflow of silver, 1833-37, because of the inflationary policies of Santa Anna's government. It was the result of Gresham's law: a fixed exchange rate on silver. This inflow had nothing to do with Jackson or the Second Bank. The monetary base grew. Reserve requirements were not raised by state banks, including the Bank of the United States, still run by Biddle. The problem was fractional reserve commercial banking, as always: the state-granted license to counterfeit money.

IF THERE WERE NO FEDERAL RESERVE

The Establishment can no more conceive of money without a central bank than it could conceive of television programming standards without the Federal Communications Commission in 1970 or airline ticket pricing without the Civil Aeronautics Board in 1977.

Established in 1913, the Fed was to be a banker to the nation's banks, controlling the money supply and, thus, the value of the currency. Without a Fed, someone else would have to handle these (and other) tasks of central banking.

Under the FED, there was monetary inflation in the World War I era, then the recession of 1920-21, and then the monetary inflation and bust of 1926-30, followed by the Great Depression. Stability? There was none.

"Money," observes the Fed historian Allan H. Meltzer, "does not take care of itself." But who else could regulate the value of money? And regulate its value in relation to what?

Why doesn't money "take care of itself"? Because governments want to control it. Contract law serves the other markets. Why not money? Why should money be under the control of a system of 12 privately owned banks that are under a government board?

In its founding days, the United States defined the dollar by an explicit weight of gold or silver.

No, it didn't. The dollar was always a silver standard. Then a price control with gold was set by the government, which led to Gresham's law. Sometimes gold would be in short supply, sometimes silver. That is what price controls produce: gluts and shortages.

During the first half of the 19th century, state-chartered banks issued notes, preferably backed by metal, that circulated much as dollar bills do today. But since these banks were private, and differed widely in their standards, their notes were accorded different values. In effect, the country had lots of "monies."

Exchange rates set the value of these notes, just as the free market does in the currency markets today. With computerization in our day, this is no problem. The government can set what currency it requires for tax payments. Gold would be a good choice. The government does not need to set currency ratios. It does not need to monopolize money. But politicians want to.

The United States moved to normalize the situation during the Civil War. It restricted the issuance of notes to more uniform, federally chartered banks, which were required to hold Treasury bonds (as well as gold) in reserve.

The government did this to gain more control over the money supply. It had suspended payment in gold in late 1861 – a violation of contract. Then it created "greenbacks" – unbacked paper money – in a wave of price inflation. The South did the same, only much worse. It was theft: first the suspension of specie payments, then from the people through inflation.

Should the Fed be interred, this abbreviated history provides some clues about alternatives. One solution would be for private banks to issue money – perhaps bearing the likeness of Jamie Dimon and the seal of his bank, JPMorgan Chase. Alternatively, the Treasury could do it.

Private agencies of all kinds could issue money. The market would decide which to use. Money tied to gold or silver would enjoy a great advantage. Banks do this now, but without being tied to gold. Their digits are money.

If the government ever does this, then hyperinflation is a sure thing. This would be greenback economics, which is always political and inflationary in modern times. On greenback economics, click here.

A GOLD STANDARD

As long as contracts are not violated, private money would work far better than the Federal Reserve's legalized counterfeiting does. Any firm could issue an IOU for gold or silver or platinum coins of a specific weight and fineness. Just be sure it has the metals in reserve.

But what will the money represent? Gold is the first obvious answer. James Grant, the newsletter writer, author and gold bug par excellence, asserts that gold money is superior to the "fiat" money of the Fed. By fiat, he means that it has value only because the Fed says it does. (Representative Paul, less diplomatically, refers to Federal Reserve notes as "counterfeits" and to the Fed as a price fixer.)

Grant is correct. Paul is correct. Fiat money is counterfeit money. Let the banks issue warehouse receipts 100% backed by gold. Contract law will take over. There will be a market for gold coins.

Let us interject that in any monetary system, some authority must fix either the price of money or the supply. McDonald's can either set the price of a hamburger and let the market consume the quantity it will – or, it can insist on selling a specified quantity, in which case consumer demand will determine the price.

I will not let "us" interject anything of the kind. There is no logic to it. Gold, silver, and platinum are limited by mining costs, but there is no fixed money supply. There never has been in man's history. The statement is conceptually ludicrous and historically ludicrous. No authority need fix either the supply or the price of anything.

The Fed has a similar choice with money. The Bernanke Fed, which is trying to stimulate the economy, regulates the price of money – the interest rate – presently 0.0 percent. Paul Volcker, who assumed command of the Fed in 1979, when inflation was rampant, chose the opposite tactic. Mr. Volcker provided a specific (and, dare I say, miserly) quantity of liquidity, letting interest rates go where the market directed – ultimately 20 percent. There is an element of arbitrary choice either way.

The element of arbitrary choice is the heart of the problem: it will eventually be misused. Central banking's cheerleaders want us to believe that wise, salaried bureaucrats should control the monetary base. There is a problem here: these bureaucrats then must let commercial bankers, speculators, and governments decide what the money is worth. They cannot determine this on their own authority.

The gold standard, in effect, replaces the Fed chief with the collective wisdom (or luck) of the mining industry. Rather than entrust the money supply to a guru or a professor, money is limited by the quantity of bullion.

He's got it! The private property rights system restricts the money supply, so that neither politicians nor central bank committees are in charge of our money. We can trust mining costs with greater confidence than politicians with badges and guns and a printing press.

The law in the early 20th century stipulated that dollars be backed 40 percent in gold. This fixed the dollar in relation to metal but not in relation to things, like shoes or yarn, that dollars could buy. This was because the quantity of bullion that banks had in reserve, relative to the size of the economy, fluctuated. As a historian noted, it was as if "the yardstick of value was 36 inches long in 1879 ... 46 inches in 1896, 13 and a half inches in 1920."

Whoever that unnamed historian was, he was an economic ignoramus. Money is not a measure. It is a social institution based on contract. The government wants to get control over it, so that it can create fiat money and thereby impose an inflation tax rather than tax voters directly.

The gold standard – which John Maynard Keynes termed a "barbarous relic" – led to ruinous deflations.

There have never been any ruinous deflations based on a contracting supply of gold. Gold's supply constantly increases, though slowly. There were many deflations based on fractional reserve banking – fiat money allowed to commercial bankers by the state – when the over-leveraged (over-counterfeited) banks got hit by bank runs.

When gold reserves contracted, so did the money supply. David Moss, a Harvard Business School professor, asserts that the United States experienced more banking panics in the years without a central bank than any other industrial nation, often when people feared for the quality of paper; specifically, it experienced them in 1837, 1839, 1857, 1873 and 1907.

States authorize commercial bank counterfeiting. The Constitution does not authorize the U.S. government to intervene to stop this practice. That is what federalism is all about. That is what the Tenth Amendment used to be about, before it was gutted by the Supreme Court.

THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND

The Establishment occasionally admits that the November 1910 meeting on Jekyll Island was a quiet gathering. But it was not a conspiracy. Not at all. The difference is this. . . There must be a difference. . . Anyway, it was all for the public's good.

The Fed was conceived to alleviate such crises; that is, to be "the lender of last resort." This function was fulfilled, ad hoc, by the financier J. P. Morgan in the panic of 1907. But Morgan was old, destined to die the year the Fed was created; some institution was needed. Hostility toward central banks, an American tradition, was such that in 1910, lawmakers and bankers convened at Jekyll Island, Ga. – under the ruse of going duck hunting – to sketch a blueprint.

The FED was conceived to bail out the big New York banks. It was justified as a tool to alleviate crises. And, yes, it was a conspiracy consummated on Jekyll Island by a group of bankers and Senator Nelson Aldrich, John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s father-in-law.

Part of the aim of the new central bank was a more flexible money supply – for instance, to lend to farmers in the winter. Another was to lend into the teeth of a panic – though only to solvent institutions and on sound collateral. The insurance giant American International Group – a controversial bailout recipient in 2008 – would not have qualified.

AIG surely qualified in 2008. That is what "flexibility" is for: to bail out insiders.

Farmers in the winter. Right! As if the FED cared a whit about farmers, back then or now. Did the FED save farms in the 1920s? No. Did it save farm area banks, 1930-33? No. In any case, prices for grain adjust in winter. That is what pricing is for. That is also why interest rates change. Conditions change. You don't need counterfeiting to smooth out supply and demand based on seasons.

In its early days, the Fed maintained the gold standard – forcing it to maintain tight money even in 1931, in the midst of the Great Depression. Economists today regard this as a mistake.

This is Milton Friedman's misleading intellectual legacy. The FED did not tighten money, 1930-31. See the chart provided by a vice president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank. The monetary base was flat.

Money shrank because 9,000 banks went under. That ceased in 1934, when the FDIC was set up. The FED had no authority or ability to save 9,000 banks.

The circumstances are relevant to those who envision a Fed-less future. England had departed from the gold standard; worried that the United States would follow suit, people demanded to trade dollars for gold. Professor Meltzer deduces that the gold standard doesn't work for one country alone; the bad paper money corrupts the good.

This is the ill-informed person's view of Gresham's law: that the free market rewards bad money. It doesn't. When there are government-imposed fixed exchange rates – price controls on money – the artificially overvalued money drives out the artificially undervalued money. In other words, price controls create gluts and shortages. Every economist knows this. Any economist who promotes Gresham's law without explaining this price control factor is trying to put the shuck on the rubes. Lowenstein is one of the rubes who got shucked.

AN ALTERNATIVE TO GOLD

Here is where Lowenstein lets his imagination soar.

An alternative to gold, and to the Fed, was suggested by Mr. Bernanke's hero, Milton Friedman: let a computer govern the money supply. John Taylor, a former Treasury official, has derived a formula, the Taylor Rule, which Fed policy often agrees with. Adopting the formula in a mechanical way would trim the deficit a bit, since the Fed could dismiss every one of its 200 economists. The problem with a formula (also its virtue) is its lack of flexibility. Alan S. Blinder, a former Fed vice chairman, notes that strict adherence to the Taylor Rule during the recent crisis would have mandated an interest rate of negative 5 percent. (That is, the economy was so weak, and people so unwilling to borrow money, the computer would have paid people 5 percent a year to accept it.) This being impractical, Mr. Bernanke was moved to improvise a remedy other than negative rates.

This is academic self-puffery. There is no Taylor rule at the FED. That is my point and Ron Paul's point. There are no rules. You know: "flexibility," as Lowenstein calls it. There is only ad-hockery, such as: (1) double the monetary base, (2) swap T-bills at face value for toxic assets held by large New York banks, and (3) lend billions to large foreign banks.

If the computer is out and the Fed shuttered, Professor Meltzer suggests that the dollar be backed by euros, pounds and yen (and, eventually, the renminbi). This new money would require that each of the financial powers commits to a targeted rate of inflation – say, 2 percent a year. People who didn't trust the dollar to maintain its value could trade them for euros. Now there's an idea that would delight the Tea Party – American money backed by France.

Professor Meltzer can say anything he wants. Nobody has to believe him. I surely don't.

The dollar is not backed by anything, and has not been ever since August 15, 1971, when Nixon without authorization suspended payments in gold to foreign central banks. Nixon was a petty tyrant, but here the Congress and business cheered. He imposed price and wage controls. More cheering. Ben Bernanke presides over Nixonomics, as have all subsequent chairmen of the Board of Governors of the FED. But no one in the Establishment wants to call the system what it really is: Nixonomics.

Actually, this system is not terribly different from today's. We have, indeed, fiat money, convertible into foreign exchange and regulated, not always successfully, with the intent of maintaining (or not too quickly depreciating) the dollar's purchasing power. And if money is a unit of value, it is hard to conceive of a yardstick better than purchasing power.

I see. A yardstick. This "yardstick" has shrunk by over 95% since 1914, the year the FED opened for business. You can check this with the inflation calculator of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But the Fed, thanks to an act of Congress in 1978, and perhaps to America's suspicious anti-central banking culture, has a dual mission – protecting the value of the dollar and promoting long-term growth and employment. In this, it differs (at least in degree) from Europe's and other central banks. In many ways, this mission creep – the Fed's expanded power and role in the economy – lies at the root of the animus that Americans feel for it.

This is not a dual mission. It is a dual public relations statement. Congress did not specify any numbers. The FED gets to make them up as it goes along . . . and does.

Banking purists would like, if not to abolish the institution, to return it to the job envisaged on Jekyll Island. They are, in a sense, the financial equivalent to strict constitutionalists. Nostalgia has its place, but so does pragmatism. Mr. Bernanke and his colleagues may be flawed, but democracy trusts in the power to elect, appoint and, if need be, remove. It is fine to lament their alleged excesses – for instance, the Fed's swollen balance sheet in the name of stimulation, or "quantitative easing." It is another to imagine that regulating the money could be as simple as it was in 1913, or that a formula, or a barbarous relic, could do the job.

CONCLUSION

In his view, defenders of the gold coin standard are quaint relics of the past, just as gold is. He writes: "They are, in a sense, the financial equivalent to strict constitutionalists. Nostalgia has its place, but so does pragmatism." So, adhering to the Constitution is nostalgia. So is the idea of a world without the creature from Jekyll Island.

What Lowenstein wants is pragmatism. You know: flexibility.

This is what every central banker always wants. Also, every dictator.

Richard Nixon surely wanted it.

It is what Ron Paul does not want. Neither do I.

End the FED.

May 7, 2011

Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit http://www.garynorth.com. He is also the author of a free 20-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible.

Copyright © 2011 Gary North

 
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Wunderlich Securities analysts have no clue on economics and AGNC.

I have one question for the unnamed Wunderlich Securities analyst(s).  Do you think that short term interest rates will rise faster than longer term interest rates in the next one or two years?  Their answer has to be no.  Otherwise, they wouldn’t have said what they said in the article below.

The research firm expects “market trends could support higher debt to equity ratios going forward because collateral is relatively dear in the marketplace.” While not every Index member is a dividend payer, the Index does sport a yield of 10%.

Wunderlich notes wider spreads and adequate liquidity will support returns on equity of over 17% on average this year and could provide support with the potential for multiple expansion.

Interest rates will rise from these artificially low rates manufactured from Federal Reserve digital money creation.  I have posted about this here: http://bit.ly/RatesRise .  Interest rate spreads will tighten when the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing (QE2) ends in June.  If the Fed stop printing money for a year like they did for most of 2010, then the recession will continue.  Short term interest rates will rise faster than long term rates.  This is the precursor to an inverted yield curve.  The inverted yield curve has preceded almost every recession since the end of World War II.

If the Federal Reserve starts printing money again (QE3) before the onset of another recession, then perhaps the interest rate spreads won’t tighten as quickly.  But the Fed will be sowing the seeds of a bigger calamity later.  American Capital Agency Corp. (AGNC) and the other mortgage REITs are going to have to slash dividends and their stock prices will take huge losses because their asset values will erode.

Ask yourself this question: Did Wunderlich Securities warn their clients that a financial crisis was eminent in 2007?  I can’t find any warnings using the search terms “Wunderlich Securities” + “financial crisis”.  I do know that Peter Schiff, EuroPacific Captial, is an advocate of the Austrian school of economics.  He is on the list of those who warned of the financial crisis: http://marketplayground.com/2010/11/20/twelve-who-forecast-the-financial-crisis/   No one from Wunderlich saw the crisis coming.  Why should you trust them now on mortgage REIT dividend stability?

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* * * * * * *

Wunderlich Sees Stability In Mortgage REIT Dividends (NLY, AGNC, NRF, CIM, CLNY)

by Jason Smith | May 2nd  |  Filed in: Stock Sector News

The Mortgage Investment Stocks Index is up 0.1% after Wunderlich Securities said metrics reported by the firms in this group that have reported first-quarter earnings speak to the stability of dividends currently in place. Wunderlich notes fewer than half the mortgage REITs under coverage have delivered first-quarter results, but company reports and current market trends indicate stable payouts for investors.

The research firm expects “market trends could support higher debt to equity ratios going forward because collateral is relatively dear in the marketplace.” While not every Index member is a dividend payer, the Index does sport a yield of 10%.

Wunderlich notes wider spreads and adequate liquidity will support returns on equity of over 17% on average this year and could provide support with the potential for multiple expansion.

Shares of Annaly Capital Management (NLY), the largest Index member by market value are fractionally lower today. Annaly has a yield of 13.9%, based on past distributions. With a yield of 19.2%, based on past distributions, American Capital Agency (AGNC) is modestly higher while Northstar Realty Finance (NRF) with a yield of 7.9%, based on past distributions, is soaring 3%. Chimera Investment (CIM) and Colony Financial (CLNY) are both lower by half a percent. Those stocks yield 13.8% and 6.9%, based on past distributions, respectively.

Investors can track dozens of high-yielding indexes at tickerspy.com.

Link to original article: http://www.tickerspy.com/newswire/?p=4402

A Must Watch 10 min video - Keynes vs. Hayek rap video Round 2

Keynes vs. Hayek round 2 is awesome.
 
 
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Bernanke's Q&A.

Bernanke’s Q&A

from LewRockwell.com Blog

We can watch the Bernanke press conference, a response to Ron Paul, at 2:15 pm Eastern time this afternoon.

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The Federal Reserve is definitely on the defensive.  This is their first press conference in its 97 year history.  They prefer to unknown and boring while quietly eroding your purchasing power year after year.  Their actions affect your investments and savings (usually for the worst).

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Keeping Capital in a Depression.

Keeping Capital in a Depression

by Doug Casey

Recently by Doug Casey: Save, Invest, Speculate, Trade, or Gamble?

 

 

 

Nothing is cheap in today’s investment world. Because of the trillions of currency units that governments all over the world have created – and are continuing to create – financial assets are grossly overpriced. Stocks, bonds, property, commodities and cash are no bargains. Meanwhile, real wages are slipping rapidly among those who are working, and a large portion of the population is unemployed or underemployed.

The next chapter in this sad drama will include a rapid rise in consumer prices. At the beginning of this year, we saw the grains – wheat, corn, soybeans and oats – go up an average of 36% within one month. In the same time frame, hogs were up 30.7%. Copper was up 29.1%. Oil was up 14%. Cotton was up 118%. Raw commodities are the first things to move in an inflationary boom, largely because they’re essential to everything. Retail prices are generally the last to move, partly because the labor market will remain soft and keep that component down, and partly because retailers cut their margins to retain customers and market share.

We are in a financial no-man’s land. What you should do about it presents some tough alternatives. “Saving” is compromised because of depreciating currency and artificially low interest rates. “Investing” is problematical because of a deteriorating economy, unpredictable and increasing regulation, rising interest rates and wildly fluctuating prices. “Speculation” is the best answer. But it may not suit everyone as a methodology.

There are, however, several other alternatives to dealing with the question “What should I do with my money now?” – active business, entrepreneurialism, innovation, “hoarding” and agriculture. There’s obviously some degree of overlap with these things, but they are essentially different in nature.

Active Business

Few large fortunes have been made by investing. Most are made by creating, building and running a business. But the same things that make investing hard today are going to make active business even harder. Sure, there will be plenty of people out there to hire – but in today’s litigious and regulated environment, an employee is a large potential liability as much as a current asset.

Business itself is seen as a convenient milk cow by bankrupt governments – and it’s much easier to tap small business than taxpayers at large. Big business (which I’ll arbitrarily define as companies with at least several thousand employees) actually encourages regulation and taxes, because their main competition is from small business – you – and they’re much more able to absorb the cost of new regulation and can hire lobbyists to influence its direction. Only a business that’s “too big to fail” can count on government help.

It’s clearly a double-edged sword, but running an active business is increasingly problematical. Unless it’s a special situation, I’d be inclined to sell a business, take the money, and run. It’s Atlas Shrugged time.

Entrepreneurialism

An entrepreneur is “one who takes between,” to go back to the French roots of the word. Buy here for a dollar, sell there for two dollars – a good business if you can do it with a million widgets, hopefully all at once and on credit. An entrepreneur ideally needs few employees and little fixed overhead. Just as a speculator capitalizes on distortions in the financial markets, an entrepreneur does so in the business world. The more distortions there are in the market, the more bankruptcies and distress sales, the more variation in prosperity and attitudes between countries, the more opportunities there are for the entrepreneur. The years to come are going to be tough on investors and businessmen, but full of opportunity for speculators and entrepreneurs. Keep your passports current, your powder dry, and your eyes open. I suggest you reform your thinking along those lines.

Innovation

The two mainsprings of human progress are saving (producing more than you consume and setting aside the difference) and new technology (improved ways of doing things). Innovation takes a certain kind of mind and a certain skill set. Not everyone can be an Edison, a Watt, a Wright or a Ford. But with more scientists and engineers alive today than have lived in all previous history put together, you can plan on lots more in the way of innovation. What you want to do is put yourself in front of innovation; even if you aren’t the innovator, you can be a facilitator – something like Steve Ballmer is to Bill Gates. It will give you an excuse to hang out with the younger generation and play amateur venture capitalist.

This argues for two things. One, reading very broadly (but especially in science), so that you can more easily make the correct decision as to which innovations will be profitable. Two, building enough capital to liberate your time to try something new and perhaps put money into start-ups. This thinking partly lay in back of our starting our Casey’s Extraordinary Technology service.

Hoarding

In the days when gold and silver were money, “saving” was actually identical with “hoarding.” The only difference was the connotation of the words. Today you can’t even hoard nickel and copper coins anymore because (unbeknownst to Boobus americanus) there’s very little of those metals left in either nickels or pennies – both of which will soon disappear from circulation anyway.

We’ve previously dismissed the foolish and anachronistic idea of saving with dollars in a bank – so what can you save with, other than metals? The answer is “useful things,” mainly household commodities. I’m not sure exactly how bad the Greater Depression will be or how long it will last, but it makes all the sense in the world to stockpile usable things, in lieu of monetary savings.

The things I’m talking about could be generally described as “consumer perishables.” Instead of putting $10,000 extra in the bank, go out and buy things like motor oil, ammunition, light bulbs, toilet paper, cigarettes, liquor, soap, sugar and dried beans. There are many advantages to this.

Taxes – As these things go up in price and you consume them, you won’t have any resulting taxes, as you would for a successful investment. And you’ll beat the VAT, which we’ll surely see.

Volume Savings – When you buy a whole bunch at once, especially when Walmart or Costco has them on sale, you’ll greatly reduce your cost.

Convenience – You’ll have them all now and won’t have to waste time getting them later. Especially if they’re no longer readily available.

There are hundreds of items to put on the list and much more to be said about the whole approach. The idea is basically that of my old friend John Pugsley, which he explained fully in his book The Alpha Strategy. Take this point very seriously. It’s something absolutely everybody can and should do.

Agriculture

During the last generation, mothers wanted their kids to grow up and be investment bankers. That thought will be totally banished soon, and for a long time. I suspect farmers and ranchers will become the next paradigm of success, after being viewed as backward hayseeds for generations.

Agriculture isn’t an easy business, and it has plenty of risks. But there’s always going to be a demand for its products, and I suspect the margins are going to stay high for a long time to come. Why? There’s still plenty of potential farmland around the world that’s wild or fallow, but politics is likely to keep it that way. Population won’t be growing that much (and will be falling in the developed world), but people will be wealthier and want to eat better. So you want the kind of food that people with some money eat.

I’m not crazy about commodity-type foods, like wheat, soy and corn; these are high-volume, industrial-style foods, subject to political interference. And they’re not important as foods for wealthy people, which is the profitable part of the market. Besides, grains are where everybody’s attention is directed.

But there are other reasons I’m not wild about owning any amber waves of grain. Anything you want to plant will practically require the use of a genetically modified (GM) seed from Monsanto. I’m not sure I really care if it’s GM; all foods have been genetically modified over the millennia just by virtue of cultivation. And $1 paid to Monsanto typically not only yields the farmer $5 of extra return, but produces lots of extra food – which helps everybody. But I wouldn’t be surprised if someday the giant monocultures of plants, all with totally identical purchased seeds, don’t result in some kind of catastrophic crop failure. This is a subject for another time, but it’s a thought to keep in mind.

In any event, agricultural land is no longer cheap. But I don’t suggest you look at thousands of acres to plant grain. Niche markets with niche products are the way to fly.

I suggest up-market specialty products – exotic fruits and vegetables, fish, dairy and beef. The problem is that in “advanced” countries – prominently including the U.S. – national, state and local governments make the small commercial producers’ lives absolutely miserable. Maybe you can grow stuff, but it’s extremely costly in terms of paperwork and legal fees to sell, especially if the product is animal based – meat, milk, cheese and such. Niche foods are, however, potentially a very good business. Eternal optimist that I am, I see one of the many benefits of the impending bankruptcy of most governments as again making it feasible to grow and sell food locally.

Above all, though, this isn’t the time for business as usual. You’ll notice that “Working in a conventional job” didn’t occur on the list above. And I pity the poor fools working for some corporation, hoping things get better.


Get more valuable advice on how to survive in a crisis in The Casey Report – a monthly newsletter brimming with top-notch analysis of U.S. and world events, economic research, trend forecasts and investment advice for the big-picture investor. Details in this free report.

April 14, 2011

Doug Casey (send him mail) is a best-selling author and chairman of Casey Research, LLC., publishers of Casey’s International Speculator.

Copyright © 2001 Casey and Associates

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