Ready or not, QE3 is here, and the long-term effects of this reckless money printing by the Federal Reserve are going to be absolutely nightmarish. The Federal Reserve is hoping that buying $40 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities per month will spur more lending and more economic activity. But that didn’t happen with either QE1 or QE2. Both times the banks just sat on most of the extra money. As I pointed out the other day, U.S. banks are already sitting on $1.6 trillion in excess reserves. So will pumping them up with more cash suddenly make them decide to start lending? Of course not. In addition, QE3 is not likely to produce many additional jobs. As I showed in a previous article, the employment level did not jump up as a result of either QE1 or QE2. So why will this time be different? But what did happen under both QE1 and QE2 is that a lot of the money ended up pumping up the financial markets. So once again we should see stock prices go up (at least in the short-term) and commodities such as gold, silver, food and oil should also rise. But that also means that average American families will be paying more for the basic necessities that they buy on a regular basis. The most dangerous aspect of QE3, however, is what it is going to do to the U.S. dollar. Most of the rest of the world uses the U.S. dollar to conduct international trade, and by choosing to recklessly print money Ben Bernanke is severely damaging international confidence in our currency. If at some point the rest of the world rejects the dollar and no longer wants to use it as a reserve currency we are going to be facing a crisis unlike anything we have ever seen before. The real debate about QE3 should not be about whether or not it will help the economy a little bit in the short-term. Rather, everyone should be talking about the long-term implications and about how QE3 is going to accelerate the destruction of the dollar. (Read More...)
Ben Bernanke
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...)
10 Really Stupid Things The Mainstream Media Has Said About The Bilderberg Group In 2011
This weekend, dozens upon dozens of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world will be gathering behind closed doors at a luxury hotel in Switzerland. All of the participants are sworn to secrecy and swarms of heavily armed security guards are making sure that nobody unauthorized gets in. Decisions will be made at this meeting which will fundamentally change our future. The CEO of Amazon.com will be there, as will the head of Google, one of the co-founders of Facebook and one of the top executives from Microsoft. The president of the EU will be in attendance, along with the president of the World Bank, the president of the European Central Bank, the head of the World Trade Organization and the top commander of NATO. Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller will be there. Royalty from all over Europe will be attending as well. Past attendees have included several U.S. presidents, Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, Prince Charles, current British Prime Minister David Cameron, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates and current Texas governor Rick Perry. You would think that these meetings would be something that the mainstream media would want to cover. But unfortunately, the mainstream media mostly ignores the Bilderberg Group meetings, and if they do cover them they just crack a bunch of jokes about “conspiracy theories” and they do their best to play down the importance of the meetings. (Read More...)