Category: Central Banks
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Thursday, December 17, 2009
Times, Bernanke Joins a Long List of Infamous Underachievers / Politics / Central Banks
Martin Hutchinson writes: There's a culture in our society that rewards bad behavior. Take the Fort Collins, Colo. couple that pretended to send their 6-year-old boy up in a homemade balloon so the family could star in a reality show?
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Thursday, December 17, 2009
Time Magazine's Kiss of Death to You! / Politics / Central Banks
Bernanke is probably pleased to be name Time Magazine Person of the Year 2009.
The story of the year was a weak economy that could have been much, much weaker. How the mild-mannered man who runs the Federal Reserve prevented an economic catastrophe.
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Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Don't Blame the Federal Reserve for Prescience of Financial Crisis / Politics / Central Banks
Long ago I quit criticizing the Federal Reserve chairman for failing to avert the latest systemic financial disaster, though I still pity him for enduring the endless Socratic essays, polemics, and indignant soliloquies of his detractors. Criticizing the Fed chairman for a lack of prescience is like criticizing a dog for an inability to recite the alphabet. When something is physiologically impossible, why bother?
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Monday, December 14, 2009
Fed's Monopoly Money / Politics / Central Banks
Last week, in the name of protecting the little guy from Wall Street, the House passed HR 4173 to increase the little guy's false sense of security in the financial system. This mammoth piece of legislation would massively increase government regulation and oversight in the banking industry under the misguided reasoning that more government could have stopped faulty lending practices, when in actuality it caused them. This bill would also greatly increase the powers of the Federal Reserve, which too many in Congress still see as savior rather than perpetrator in this mess.
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Wednesday, December 09, 2009
End the Fed? Or End the Market Economy? / Politics / Central Banks
When Republican Congressman Ron Paul recently introduced legislation to audit the Federal Reserve, diverse sections of the political spectrum applauded. And rightfully so. The Fed’s role in the still-developing bank bailouts is one of utter secrecy; the total cost of which — as estimated by the bailout’s Special Inspector General, Neil Barofsky — could cost taxpayers $23.7 trillion. The fact that legislation needed to be introduced to raise the question of the whereabouts of these funds points to a larger breakdown in U.S. democracy.
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Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Gerald Celente Says Bernanke Has Devalued the Dollar and Destroyed the Economy / Politics / Central Banks
Gerald Celente of the Trends Research Institute is strongly opposed to the idea of Ben Bernanke seeking and getting a second term as head of the Federal Reserve. Celente strongly argues that Bernanke is creating the “bailout bubble” and destroying the U.S. economy. But he says the Fed Chief will get to keep his job because he’s an “insiders.”
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Saturday, December 05, 2009
Ben Bernanke, You are the Moral Hazard / Politics / Central Banks
Jim Bunning writes: Four years ago when you came before the Senate for confirmation to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve, I was the only Senator to vote against you. In fact, I was the only Senator to even raise serious concerns about you. I opposed you because I knew you would continue the legacy of Alan Greenspan, and I was right. But I did not know how right I would be and could not begin to imagine how wrong you would be in the following four years.
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Friday, December 04, 2009
Bernanke is Not the Problem But the Rogue Fed Institution / Politics / Central Banks
Yesterday a poll was released that only 21% of Americans support giving Helicopter Ben Bernanke a second term as chairman of the US Fed. This compared to 41% thinking that someone else should be given the job. I must say this is quite an improvement. I wonder if Rasmussen would have been able to say 2 years ago that 21% of Americans even knew who Bernanke was? If nothing else, the financial crisis and economic debacle of the past two years have certainly shone some much-needed but unwanted light on the Fed and its clandestine activities. As much as I disapprove of Bernanke’s policies and his handling of virtually every aspect of what has gone on, I’ll be the first to admit that Big Ben isn’t the problem. No, it isn’t him or Greenspan, or Volcker. It’s the institution itself that is the problem.
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Thursday, December 03, 2009
Distortions, Lies, and Muggings by the Fed, Bank of England / Politics / Central Banks
The first priority of Central Bankers in any crisis is to buy time by any method available. By now, it should be perfectly clear that Central Bankers are willing to unconstitutionally usurp authority in an effort to buy that time.
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Monday, November 30, 2009
Ben Bernanke Pleads to Keep His Job as Fed Chairman / Politics / Central Banks
Ben Bernanke is on yet another self-serving mission to save his job. Please consider The right reform for the Fed an op-ed by Ben Bernanke in the Washington Post.
Here is Bernanke's entire article (in italics) with my comments interspersed in plain type. Most of my comments are made straight to Ben Bernanke, but they apply in general to all central bankers.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Gold, Freedom, and the Fed / Politics / Central Banks
Jacob G. Hornberger writes: The following is a non-verbatim transcript of a speech I delivered on November 23, 2009, at the End the Fed rally in Philadelphia.
With the possible exception of the Internal Revenue Service, the federal agency that is the greatest threat to the financial well-being and freedom of the American people is the Federal Reserve. This is the agency that has the power to wipe you out. It can destroy all your savings and the value of your income. Worst of all, it can do all this secretly and surreptitiously.
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Tuesday, November 24, 2009
The Federal Reserve's Silver Lining / Politics / Central Banks
The central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve, is under intense scrutiny for its unprecedented actions following the 2008 financial crisis. Amidst the carnage of the financial crisis and real estate crash, Congress has taken a fresh look at the actions of the Federal Reserve on the economy.
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Monday, November 23, 2009
Audit the Fed Attached as an Amendment / Politics / Central Banks
I was pleased last week when we won a vote in the Financial Services Committee to include language from the Audit the Fed bill HR1207 in the upcoming financial regulatory reform bill. As it stands now, if HR 3996 passes, because of this action, the Federal Reserve's entire balance sheet will be opened up to a GAO audit. We will at last have a chance to find out what happened to the trillions of dollars the Fed has been giving out.
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Saturday, November 14, 2009
Origins of the Federal Reserve Banking System- Part 3 / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
Jacob Schiff Ignites the Drive for a Central Bank
The defeat of the Fowler Bill for broader asset currency and branch banking in 1902, coupled with the failure of Secretary of Treasury Shaw's attempts of 1903–1905 to use the Treasury as a central bank, led the big bankers and their economist allies to adopt a new solution: the frank imposition of a central bank in the United States.
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Saturday, November 14, 2009
Origins of the Federal Reserve Banking System-Part 2 / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
Charles A. Conant: Surplus Capital and Economic Imperialism
The years shortly before and after 1900 proved to be the beginnings of the drive toward the establishment of a Federal Reserve System. It was also the origin of the gold-exchange standard, the fateful system imposed upon the world by the British in the 1920s and by the United States after World War II at Bretton Woods. Even more than the case of a gold standard with a central bank, the gold-exchange standard establishes a system, in the name of gold, which in reality manages to install coordinated, international, inflationary, paper money.
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Saturday, November 14, 2009
Origins of the Federal Reserve Banking System / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
The Progressive MovementThe Federal Reserve Act of December 23, 1913, was part and parcel of the wave of Progressive legislation on local, state, and federal levels of government that began about 1900. Progressivism was a bipartisan movement that, in the course of the first two decades of the 20th century, transformed the American economy and society from one of roughly laissez-faire to one of centralized statism.
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Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Central Banksterism / Politics / Central Banks
I have presented the basics of monetary theory, as developed by Austrian School economists. A distinct Austrian School theory of money goes back to Ludwig von Mises' book, The Theory of Money and Credit (1912). Mises amplified this theory over the years until its culmination in Human Action (1949). His disciple, Murray Rothbard, extended Mises' analysis in a series of books, most notably chapter 11 of Man, Economy, and State (1962), America's Great Depression (1963), What Has Government Done to Our Money? (1964), and The Mystery of Banking (1983).
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Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The Fed Saves the Nation / Politics / Central Banks
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gets more than his share of grief. He is, after all, just the present grand master for the Keynesian policies that have ruled Washington since the days of Herbert Hoover.
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Monday, October 26, 2009
Audit the Fed, Anything Less Than Full Disclosure is Unacceptable / Politics / Central Banks
Last week a new bill was introduced in the Senate to audit the Federal Reserve. Some backers of my bill HR1207 and the existing Senate companion bill S.604 were a little miffed at this, but depending on how you think about it, this new legislation poses no great threat to our efforts.
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Friday, October 16, 2009
Greenspan a Decade Behind the Curve / Economics / Central Banks
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is the worst Fed boss in history, but boy-oh-boy how we loved to watch him smile. We were so attracted to Mr. Greenspan’s girlish grin, in fact, that he could say just about anything and people would eat it up: “I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said”. How delightfully playful! He really must be the world’s best central banker!
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