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...)
International Trade
Now That U.S. Government Debt Has Been Downgraded, The Rest Of The World Is Calling Even Louder For A New Global Currency
For decades, the U.S. economy was so dominant compared to the rest of the world that nobody really even challenged the status of the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency of the world. But now that U.S. government debt has been downgraded, the U.S. dollar is showing significant weakness and the U.S. economy continues to crumble, the rest of the world is questioning whether the U.S. dollar should be allowed to continue to have such a privileged position in the global marketplace. Politicians all over the world are now openly calling for a new global currency to replace the U.S. dollar in international trade. In fact, we are already seeing a shift away from the dollar in many areas of the globe. A decade ago, the U.S. dollar made up approximately 70% of all foreign exchange reserves around the world. Today, that figure is down to about 60%, and it continues to fall. As the debt problems of the U.S. government get even deeper, and as the U.S. dollar loses even more strength, the calls for a truly global currency are going to grow even louder. (Read More...)