Entertain yourselves while I finish up my taxes. Here is a clip where Ron Paul asked Ben Bernanke where the money comes from to bail our Greece or California.
Hat tip to Bob Wenzel at [...]
|
Chairman Bernanke reaffirmed again the Fed’s commitment to low interest rates because the U.S. economy is still weak. Bernanke also said that the federal government’s fiscal situation “looks dark” and that he is worried about the ability of the Treasury to sell debt: “Interest rates might rise because of a lack of confidence by [...]
Don’t panic, this hilarious piece is from The Onion:
President Obama used his bully pulpit on Thursday to chastise banks and bankers while announcing a punitive tax on them to assuage an angry populace. Is his rage against the big paydays justified? Not for the reasons he thinks. [...] By Jeff Harding. Since the biggest financial collapse in world history was built on credit related to housing, it is pretty obvious that we should be paying very close attention to that market. The reasons are complex, but a recovery must be based on the liquidation of bad debt. The sooner that happens the quicker a recovery will happen.
When we mean “liquidation of debt” we are talking about a mountain of credit built on the housing bubble. This phony bubble wealth permeated the entire economy. When home owners saw the price of their home rising, they saw it as a source of capital to use for a variety of things, but let’s face it, most people spent it. New stores opened, malls were built, financial institutions grew, cars and boats, second homes, vacations, and restaurants all flourished. Credit card debt mushroomed. Home mortgages were increased to pull cash out for spending. Yes, some of it went to good things, like our children’s education, helping our aged parents, and paying off bills. But the reality was that our debt kept growing. The clever lads created even more phony wealth under the guise of insurance, but as we found out, companies like AIG really had no idea how large their obligations were for credit default swaps written against almost any financial risk. And these instruments were further leveraged without understanding the magnitude of these triple-counted obligations or their relationship to housing. It all comes back to housing as the fuel for the 70% of our economy that was consumer spending. The thought was that housing has always gone up, and if it went down, it really never went down if you averaged growth since the post-WWII-period. A drop of 10%? Never has happened. 20%? Not even a 6th deviation possibility. My thesis has been that this was all fueled by the Fed through monetary policies that created and supported the bubble. Aided and abetted by governmental policies and financing schemes that favored housing and risky loans. This was not a “free market” phenomenon. Far, far from it. My thesis has also been that we can’t recover until all this bad debt is liquidated, and capital generated by savings is created and ultimately invested in profitable enterprises. It would be a mistake to rekindle the bubble. But, as we know, that’s what our government is trying to do. The government creates uncertainty as it flails around with programs, spending, and debt schemes to revive the economy. As a result mark-to-market accounting is thing of the past and banks are guarding their balance sheets, corporations are sitting on a lot of cash, cutting costs, and becoming leaner, and Mr. and Mrs. America still favor savings and debt instruments over equities and spending. The big question: is the housing market bottoming out? … Continue reading Why The Housing Market Is In Trouble By Jeff Harding. This is a bit of an “I told you so” comment. My complaint has been that we shouldn’t let the people who were in charge of getting us into this mess be in charge of getting us out of it. If they don’t understand the cause they can’t really help with [...] By Jeff Harding President Obama did what was expected of him, the safe political thing: “Ben approached a financial system on the verge of collapse with calm and wisdom, with bold action and out-of-the-box thinking that has helped put the brakes on our economic free fall,” Mr. Obama said, with the Fed chairman standing [...] By Jeff Harding This is a compilation of film clips of Ben Bernanke making various prognostications as the financial crisis unfolded and he is shown to be embarrassingly wrong. What I think you will see from this video is that Ben is just another economist who looks to the future by incrementally adjusting from past data [...] By Jeff Harding Janet Yellen, the President of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank gave an interesting speech about recovery the other day to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. It was about the Fed’s position on the economic crisis and what she believes is a beginning recovery. “The recession will end sometime later [...] By Jeff Harding It’s not too difficult to understand why the Fed didn’t raise interest rates today. All you need to do is read the news; you’ll get the same information that the Fed gets only simpler and easier to understand. To put the issue in perspective, many critics are saying that the [...] By Jeff Harding I am on my high horse right now. Refreshed after a week off I come back to an economic mess. And I’m angry. I like to think that I’m an optimist. That attitude has been difficult to maintain with the news out of Washington. Nouriel Roubini claims he’s not “Dr. Doom,” just a realist, so I would like to claim the same title. But …
Forget the massive spending. Forget the greatest expansion of the money supply by the Fed. Forget the new regulations that will stifle initiative in an attempt to impose “stability” on us. Forget the caving in to special interests such as unions. Forget the bailout of companies that should go bankrupt. Forget the nationalization of the health care industry. There is something worse. That something is the ascendancy of the technocrat, whom I shall call “Mr. Fixit.” I don’t mean to diminish the importance of the above “forgets” because they are very significant issues that will have long-term negative impacts on all of us. But the triumph of the technocrat is the “something” that has allowed the “forgets” to happen, and there is a reason for it. It has to do with philosophy, or, if you will, ideas. Mr. Fixit is the modern version of the New Deal idealist socialist technocrat and we are giving him greater power than ever. Mr. Fixit is not a leftist fringe idealist: he is the mainstream. Until we can defeat the current philosophy, we will continue to lose our freedom and prosperity. I hear all the time that I should confine my commentary to facts and current events because readers don’t want all the philosophy crap. But how do you know if the stuff I’m feeding is not crap? (Assuming you don’t already believe that it is crap.) There has to be a way to spot, if not the truth, then at least the crap. It isn’t just plain common sense. … Continue reading Mr. Fixit Spoof on Ben Bernanke done to the Police’s “Every Breath You Take.” Very clever. Thanks to Bob Murphy at Free Advice. |
|
Copyright © 2010 The Daily Capitalist - All Rights Reserved |
