Friday, September 27, 2013

This His How An Inside the Beltway Economist Sees the World

Phil Swagel, a professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, who was assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department from 2006 to 2009 and who didn't know money supply was crashing during the summer of 2008, writes this morning in NYT:
As a nation, we will have been fortunate to have benefited from the Fed chairman [Bernanke's] extraordinary efforts over his eight years in charge of the Fed and further privileged to have a worthy successor in Janet Yellen.

He writes this in all sincerity when the economy crashed under Bernanke and the monetary base under Bernanke has positively exploded, leaving a time bomb of  potential money supply growth overhanging the economy. That's the beltway view. The money printers are just great!

6 comments:

  1. THE MATTERHORN INTERVIEW Special: Jesse of Jesse’s CafĂ© AmĂ©ricain – September/October 2013


    "Since money is power, those who are in control of the money of the status quo, the US dollar, will resist this change, even to their own eventual disadvantage and destruction. Pre-eminent among those are the multinational banks, which are loosely called the Anglo-American banking cartel. This extreme defense of untenable positions is an unfortunate tendency of the human nature of those who are driven to seek power and fear losing it.

    By the way, the US is suffering a protracted recession now because while monetary policy is active, although misguided, the fiscal policy has stopped functioning well because of political deadlock. The monetary policy that Bernanke has set is a trickle down approach, which is obviously failing because it is operating in a system that was already skewed by corruption and has not been reformed. It is like sending aid to a Third World country. The aid is seized by powerful warlords and used for their own advantage, with little reaching the people.

    They know this, but they do not care. It is about personal advantage and careers.

    In the US in addition to political deadlock, caused by a struggle for power, there is ironically a credibility trap as well. Both sides are dipped so deep in the corruption of the system that they cannot bear to unleash any uncontrolled reform movement, but they are also fighting one another for the spoils. I have seen this play out in the failure of major corporations, and I am seeing it now again on a larger scale."


    "It is ironic that the US system has now devolved into a serious of threats of destruction and power standoffs, in the both the political and financial systems. That is a symptom of lawlessness.

    I think that if reform does come it will come slowly, as those in political power try to operate behind the scenes to repair things without risking themselves, and upsetting their personally lucrative arrangements and careers. Transparency is not possible because too many still in power are complicit, and speed is not desirable for them because let’s face it, the system is working for them as it is.

    The problem is that short term thinking like this can allow a situation to become so bad that it reaches a tipping point. That is why there was such a concerted effort to suppress the Occupy Wall Street movement. No deviation or dissent from the status quo can be permitted at this fragile time.

    And this is why they say that every so often progressives and reformers must save capitalism from the capitalists. Their short term greed takes them to some tipping point, and they become locked down in a credibility trap that must be resolved from the outside. That is a period of great risk, because sometimes cures are as bad or worse than the disease."

    http://goldswitzerland.com/we-are-seeing-an-all-out-defense-of-the-status-quo-jesse/

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    Replies
    1. The global banking cartel is not really the problem. The State is the problem.

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    2. The US is not suffering a protracted recession now. Recession describes the period between the peak and trough of the business cycle. The peak was Dec 2007. The trough was June 2009. The recession ended in June 2009.

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    3. How cute that you believe such bullshit. I love your parody posts- they are so outlandish and juvenile and reflect the thought processes of the average Democrat so well I almost think you believe them!

      Fitz

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    4. Albert Edwards accuses Fed of inequality cover up

      The U.S. Federal Reserve has engineered a housing bubble to divert attention away from growing inequality in the country, according to controversial Societe General strategist Albert Edwards.

      Edwards, who is known for his bearish views, argued that the Fed's surprise decision last week to keep its stimulus program intact would continue to inflate house prices in the U.S.. The idea behind the Fed's bond-buying program is to free up more funds so that banks have more money to lend to home-buyers. With more buyers on the market, and interest rates near record lows, house prices should increase.

      Edwards referred to recent comments by Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, who said the Fed's decision to maintain its $85-billion-per-month quantitative easing program meant it was "climbing to a higher diving board."

      But Edwards added: "I go further. I see growing inequality draining the swimming pool dry. The crunch, when it comes, will be ugly."



      http://www.cnbc.com/id/101068112

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  2. Imagine how good the economy would be if TARP had been 800B X2 (1.6T) or 2.4T or 3 trillion? If each citizen only had a printing press just think how prosperous we would be?

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