Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is determined to push mortgage rates to record low levels and he is encouraging the banks that the Fed regulates to make home loans more freely. Wait a second – isn’t that exactly what caused the last housing bubble? After 9/11, the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates and this caused mortgage rates to steadily fall. Financial institutions were urged to help “expand home ownership” in America, and many of them started making home loans to people who never, ever should have gotten home loans. When mortgage rates started to go back up, millions of families with adjustable rate mortgages discovered that they could not make their monthly payments. Mortgage delinquencies absolutely soared and large numbers of mortgage-backed securities suddenly turned into garbage. So what is the Fed doing about it? The Fed recently announced another round of quantitative easing in which it will buy 40 billion dollars worth of these mortgage-backed securities a month. Essentially the Fed is clearing the bad financial paper out of the system and is creating the conditions for another housing bubble. But will we really fix our problems by going back and doing the same things that got us into trouble in the first place? (Read More...)
Quantitative Easing
The Federal Reserve Is Not Going To Save Us From The Great Depression That Is Coming
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke delivered his annual address to Congress on Tuesday, and he did very little to give lawmakers much confidence about where the U.S. economy is heading. Bernanke told members of Congress that recent economic data points “suggest further weakness ahead” and that the Federal Reserve is projecting that the U.S. unemployment rate will remain at 7 percent or above all the way through the end of 2014. Now, it is important to keep in mind that Federal Reserve forecasts are almost always way too optimistic. The actual numbers almost always end up being much worse than what the Fed says they will be. So if Bernanke is saying that the U.S. unemployment rate will be 7 percent or higher until the end of 2014, then what will the real numbers end up looking like? During his testimony, Bernanke seemed unusually gloomy about the direction of the U.S. economy. He seemed resigned to the fact that there really isn’t that much more that the Federal Reserve can do to stimulate the U.S. economy. Yes, the Federal Reserve could try another round of quantitative easing, but the first two rounds did not really do that much to help. The truth is that the United States is absolutely drowning in debt, and when that debt bubble finally bursts the Federal Reserve is simply not going to be able to save us from the Great Depression that will happen as a result. (Read More...)
19 Warnings About A Coming Global Financial Catastrophe
Global leaders have tried just about everything that they can think of, but the coming global financial catastrophe continues to march steadily toward us. We have seen “stimulus packages”, quantitative easing, bond buying, interest rate cuts, emergency economic summits, bailout packages for banks, bailout packages for entire nations, “Operation Twist”, unprecedented government intervention in business and massive amounts of new government debt and yet nothing seems to revive the global economy. In fact, it looks like we are rapidly heading into the second dip of a “double dip recession”. Unfortunately, many believe that this next dip will be more like a full-blown depression. All over the world, top economic experts are warning that we are facing an unprecedented crisis of debt and insolvency that will result in a global financial catastrophe. The eurozone is drowning in debt, the U.S. government is drowning in debt and major banks all over the globe are drowning in debt. Global authorities have been trying to patch the system together and keep it going, but the incredible damage that all of this debt has done is now becoming apparent to everyone. The global debt bubble that has fueled prosperity in the western world for the last several decades is getting ready to burst, and when that happens the chaos that will result will be absolutely horrifying. (Read More...)
The Price Of Oil Is Going Up, The Price Of Food Is Going Up And Now Here Comes Quantitative Easing
Millions of American families are about to be broadsided by rising gas and food prices and most of them don’t even realize it. You see, most Americans stop listening when terms such as “quantitative easing” and “agricultural commodities” are brought up, but when millions more Americans are faced with a choice of either feeding their families or heating their homes this winter, maybe then they will start listening. Even before the Federal Reserve announced the latest round of quantitative easing, the price of oil has been going up and the price of food has been going up. Now that the Federal Reserve has announced plans to flood the economy with hundreds of billions more dollars, the inflation monster is going to get even hungrier. The household budgets of scores of American families are going to be stretched beyond the breaking point as prices rise. Meanwhile, the vast majority of U.S. employers will not be giving their workers raises to keep up with inflation. After all, why should they? If someone wants to quit there are hordes of unemployed Americans out there who would just love to take that job in a second. (Read More...)