This is definitely one of those don’t miss posts from Market Ticker with all the bells and whistles. Karl puts the puzzle pieces together; ‘actions speak louder than words’. Make sure to go over and read the entire article; it is eye-opening.
Remember this? $125 billion of “slosh”, or excess liquidity, drained from the system in the four days from 9/19 – 9/24/2008.
To put this in perspective that was a drain of sixty-five percent of the total excess liquidity in the system – a “starvation diet” if you will – and that withdrawal was an intentional act!
The above is an irrefutable record of what The Fed actually did.
Remember that Bernanke’s argument at the time was thatthe credit markets were suffering from a lack of liquidity. That is, there was no problem with firms actually being bankrupt, but they were illiquid.
If that’s true why did Bernankeintentionally drain $125 billion from the system – two thirds of the market’s total excess liquidity – instead of adding to it?
What did the market do after The Fed pulled $125 billion in system liquidity out over the space of four days?
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is likely to pass the first hurdle in winning Senate confirmation to serve another term on Thursday but will face unusually strong opposition as his nomination moves ahead.
The Senate Banking Committee is expected to recommend his confirmation to the full Senate, which is not expected to vote on his nomination until 2010. Bernanke’s four-year term expires January 31.
Bernanke is expected to gain Senate approval, but analysts believe opposition may exceed the 16 no votes former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker drew in 1983, when he raised rates to double digits and triggered back-to-back recessions to crush inflation.
The Senate Banking Committee approved Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s nomination for a second term, with most Dems in favor, on Thursday.
Sixteen members of the committee supported Bernanke’s bid for a second term atop the Fed, while seven senators opposed.
All but one of the committee’s 13 Democrats, Sen. Jeff Merkley (Ore.), voted for Bernanke, while the committee’s Republican members were more mixed. Six Republicans, including ranking member Richard Shelby (Ala.), voted against Bernanke, while four voted in favor.
See the vote tally here:
Yeas:
Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) Jack Reed (D-R.I.) Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) Jon Tester (D-Mont.) Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) Mark Warner (D-Va.) Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) Bob Bennett (R-Utah) Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) Judd Gregg (R-N.H.)
Nays:
Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) Ranking member Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) David Vitter (R-La.) Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas)
One must surmise that nobody on this committee asked Ben where the $9 Trillion went, which would mean,
They are completely in the dark,
They already know, and either approve or don’t care,
$9 Trillion dollars of missing money doesn’t even show up on their radar as important enough to ask about.
At least this meeting was not done behind closed doors and we have the names of the offenders to add to the list of don’ts for re-election.
Your choice; the “Depression Master” who is currently creating a money bubble by increasing the printing of money by 120% or the Canadian company planting trees to offset Obama’s Copenhagen travel.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has been named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2009.
House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was a finalist for the award.
“The recession was the story of the year. Without Ben Bernanke,” Time managing editor Richard Stengel said in a statement, “it would have been a lot worse.”
“We’ve rarely had such a perfect revision of the cliche that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Bernanke didn’t just learn from history; he wrote it himself and was damned if he was going to repeat it.”
A private Canadian company says it will plant 1,176 trees to offset the carbon emitted by Air Force One when it carries President Barack Obama to Copenhagen for the international climate conference.
President Obama will travel 3,979 miles to Denmark on Friday, Dec. 18, and Air Force One will emit an estimated 196 tons of carbon on that trip, said LimeGreen Earth, Inc., in a news release.
“By offsetting President Obama’s carbon emission, we are setting a precedent for the global community,” said the company’s president, Andrew Thomas. “It is up to every individual to do their part to eliminate carbon emissions. There is no one better to lead this revolution than the President of the United States of America.”
I guess we can all breathe easier now, except that breathing out is harmful to humans.
I wonder if LimeGreen Earth is going to keep planting trees for every single one of Barry’s jetsetter trips across the globe, and all those domestic trips trying to save democrats during the 2010 elections?
Twelve “must see” minutes listing Zimbabwe Ben’s failings with regard to bubbles, monetary policy, T.A.R.P., sub-prime mortgages, Brooksley Born, the Wall Street money dance with billions going to foreign banks, etc., etc., etc. I think the only thing that Senator Bunning missed was the $9 TRILLION that The Fed has “lost”.
Here are a few money quotes as a starter:
You Are the Definition of Moral Hazard
You have created zombie banks that are only enriching their traders and executives.
You are repeating the same mistakes of Japan in the 1990’s on a much larger scale while sowing the seeds for the next bubble.
In the same letter where you refused to admit any responsibility for inflating the housing bubble, you also admitted you do not have an exit strategy for all the money you have printed, and the securities that you have bought. That sounds to me like you intend to keep propping up the banks for as long as they want.
Even if that were not true….the AIG bailout alone is reason enough to send you back to Princeton….
From monetary policy to regulation; consumer protection, transparency, and independence, your time as Fed Chairman has been a failure.
Judging by the current treasury secretary, some may think that Washington does rewards failure, but that should not be the case. I will do everything I can to stop your nomination and drag out this process as long as I can. We must put an end to your and the Fed’s failure and there is no better time than now. Your Fed has become the Creature from Jekyll Island.
…because to do so would impair the stability of the economy.
What did Ben expect to happen when they increased the money supply by over 120% since last year; a Nobel for saving the world from “financial extinction”? With the exception of his banker buddies, it looks like everybody else is on the road to financial extinction either through loss of income because of the depression we are in, or loss of future income through the hyperinflation that is coming down the road because of the inflated money supply.
It’s obvious Ben still thinks The Fed has a chance of pulling their a**es out of the fire and maintaining the monopoly on the American money supply, debt, and will be able to continue to make trillions off of us for interest payments on money the traitors in congress told them to print and the taxpayers pick up the check for.
Does anybody else realize the insanity of billions and billions of dollars of interest being paid to The Fed for money that was printed and loaned to a deaf Congress and Obama administration to bailout the big banks and car companies, “free” health care, and anything else the Dems want, in order to completely ENSLAVE Americans with unsustainable debt and interest payments? Until Paulson, Bernanke, and Obama, we were working until May 5th to pay our taxes. Now that line is moving upward again from August 15th. We now spend 2/3 of the year working to pay our taxes and to keep this going. What happens when The Fed raises interest rates? Hmmm?
Does Ben really think that the snake oil scam started in 1913 by New York bankers was going to go on into infinity? And people wonder why Americans have become so poor all of a sudden. Ben, get ready. The Fed is going away either in 2010 or 2012. The New York bankers monopoly on our economic stability is about to be crushed.
As for the title of the Bloomberg article below; I say NOT KICKING THE FED TO THE CURB PERMANENTLY will impair the economy and any future growth. I wonder what Market Ticker is going to have to say about all this.
Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said curbing the central bank’s authority to supervise the banking system and tampering with its independence would “seriously impair” economic stability in the U.S.
“A number of the legislative proposals being circulated would significantly reduce the capacity of the Federal Reserve to perform its core functions,” the Fed chairman said in a commentary released yesterday on the Web site of the Washington Post. The measures “would seriously impair the prospects for economic and financial stability in the U.S..”
Bernanke has presided over the most expansive use of Fed powers since the Great Depression. While the 55-year-old Fed chairman has said he averted a financial meltdown, lawmakers have voiced concern about taxpayer-sponsored bailouts and proposed the most sweeping dismantlement of Fed authority since the creation of the institution in 1913.
Bernanke’s commentary, to appear in tomorrow’s Post, is his first comprehensive answer to proposals in the House and Senate that would limit the Fed’s supervisory powers and exert more political oversight in the setting of interest rates. The issues are likely to be discussed when he faces the Senate Banking Committee on Dec. 3 for a hearing on his nomination to a second term as chairman.
Senate Banking Committee Christopher Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, has criticized the central bank for lax supervision and introduced legislation this month that would strip bank oversight from the Fed and create a single bank regulator. Dodd would also limit the central bank’s ability to loan to individual companies.
“There is a strong case for a continued role for the Federal Reserve in bank supervision,” Bernanke said. “Because of our role in making monetary policy, the Fed brings unparalleled economic and financial expertise to its oversight of banks.”
The Fed chairman said that the government’s actions, while in some instances “distasteful and unfair,” were necessary to prevent “a global economic catastrophe that could have rivaled the Great Depression in length and severity.”
Bernanke pushed the Fed’s backstop lending beyond banks, setting up programs to support the commercial paper and asset- backed securities markets. The Fed Board approved the bank holding company applications of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, giving them access to the Fed’s loan window.
The former Princeton University economist and Great Depression scholar has more than doubled the Fed’s assets to $2.21 trillion and become the lender of last resort to government bond dealers, banks, Wall Street firms and U.S. corporations. The central bank has also propped up markets for mortgage-backed and asset-backed securities that support credit to consumers, small businesses and commercial real estate.
Kids, that $2.21 Trillion is the Fed’s money. It is a private banking cartel! Are you understanding now?
We have been watching Ben Bernanke juggle the fiery pins of zero interest rate, monetizing the debt, and running the printing presses 24/7 for well over a year now, and we have been listening to the Russians and Chinese call for a new world reserve currency for months. It is not official yet, but it appears that our dollar is about to be booted from the table. I personally believe that the title of this article from the NY Post is misleading, but the information that it contains shows the trend, and I am looking for corraboration in other sources.
Ben Bernanke‘s dollar crisis went into a wider mode yesterday as the greenback was shockingly upstaged by the euro and yen, both of which can lay claim to the world title as the currency favored by central banks as their reserve currency.
Over the last three months, banks put 63 percent of their new cash into euros and yen — not the greenbacks — a nearly complete reversal of the dollar’s onetime dominance for reserves, according to Barclays Capital. The dollar’s share of new cash in the central banks was down to 37 percent — compared with two-thirds a decade ago. (emphasis mine)
Currently, dollars account for about 62 percent of the currency reserve at central banks — the lowest on record, said the International Monetary Fund.
Bernanke could go down in economic history as the man who killed the greenback on the operating table.
After printing up trillions of new dollars and new bonds to stimulate the US economy, the Federal Reserve chief is now boxed into a corner battling two separate monsters that could devour the economy — ravenous inflation on one hand, and a perilous recession on the other.
“He’s in a crisis worse than the meltdown ever was,” said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital. “I fear that he could be the Fed chairman who brought down the whole thing.”
Investors and central banks are snubbing dollars because the greenback is kept too weak by zero interest rates and a flood of greenbacks in the global economy.
They grumble that they’ve loaned the US record amounts to cover its mounting debt, but are getting paid back by a currency that’s worth 10 percent less in the past three months alone. In a decade, it’s down nearly one-third.
Yesterday, the dollar had a mixed performance, falling slightly against the British pound to $1.5801 from $1.5846 Friday, but rising against the euro to $1.4779 from $1.4709 and against the yen to 89.85 yen from 89.78.
Economists believe the market rebellion against the dollar will spread until Bernanke starts raising interest rates from around zero to the high single digits, and pulls back the flood of currency spewed from US printing presses.
“That’s a cure, but it’s also going to stifle any US economic growth,” said Schiff. “The economy is addicted to the cheap interest and liquidity.”
Economists warn that a jump in rates will clobber stocks and cripple the already stalled housing market.
“Bernanke’s other choice is to keep rates at zero, print even more money and sell more debt, but we’ll see triple-digit inflation that could collapse the economy as we know it.
“The stimulus is what’s toxic — we’re poisoning ourselves and the global economy with it.”
Thomas Palley, economist from New America Foundation believes that the dollar falling is not necessarily a bad event since it will make American goods cheaper to the rest of the world, but I urge you to take everything with a grain of salt. A taste of what New America is after the vid, and ask “who benefits?”
Founded 1999, to “bring exceptionally promising new voices and new ideas to the fore of our nation’s public discourse. Relying on a venture capital approach, the Foundation invests in outstanding individuals and policy solutions that transcend the conventional political spectrum.”
Senior Staff as of October 2006: President and CEO Ted Halstead, VP Michael Calabrese, VP Rachel L. White, and many lesser directors on salary.
Why are we even having a discussion about this? Why are we paying over $306 Billion a year to service our debt? Why is The Fed still crashing our economy?
President Obama plans to nominate Ben S. Bernanke to a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve, administration officials said Monday night.
The nomination, while expected, comes after Mr. Bernanke has had perhaps the most tumultuous term of any Fed chairman, helping to steer the economy through its greatest downturn since the 1930’s. Mr. Bernanke is a Republican who was appointed by President George W. Bush.
A top White House official said Mr. Obama had decided to keep Mr. Bernanke at the helm of the Fed because he had been bold and brilliant in his attempts to combat the financial crisis and the current deep economic recession.
Everybody read MarketTicker this morning? Bernanke and his buddies should be in jail; not being allowed to slurp at the trough for some 14 more years.
Let’s be clear: These banksters have robbed well over $100 billion dollars from taxpayers and citizens via various schemes in the last decade. These scams have included securitizing loans that they either knew or should have known were laced with fraud, in some cases shorting them while selling them on to other people. It includes outrageously-complex and intentionally-obfuscated securities “packages” for municipalities which have resulted in huge losses for the town (and huge fees and profits for the bank.) It has included marketing “auction rate” securities which were claimed to be as liquid and safe as cash, when in fact nothing of the sort was true. The schemes and scams run the gamut but at their core was the intentional obfuscation of the true nature of the risk embedded in these instruments so that the dupe (that would be you, your town, your state) would wind up losing money all for their benefit: you would enter into a complex swap transaction you didn’t understand, you’d buy a bubble house with an OptionARM after being told you “definitely” could refinance before payments would go up, your kid was sold an expensive educational loan package without being told that it was unable to be discharged in bankruptcy, you were given a credit card with 27 pages of fine print, and buried somewhere in there was vague language letting the company jack your interest rate to anything it wanted – including the 36% it did jack it to – if you missed an electric bill by three days.
Then, when the game of musical chairs ended and all this debt that could not possibly be paid off started to default these very same banksters went to Congress through Paulson and Bernanke, the chiefs of the bankster scam parade, and in my opinion literally committed economic terrorism: hand over $2 trillion dollars hiding all but $700 billion, or we detonate the entirety of the economy and everyone literally starves.
How does this differ from an old-fashioned Al-Quaida terrorist who calls in a nuclear bomb threat? “Hand over $2 trillion dollars or New York City will be vaporized.”
Hmmmmm… sounds kinda like the same thing to me!
Now let’s juxtapose this with the fact that every Congressperson took an oathto defend The Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.
So riddle me this my fellow Americans: How is it that Bernanke, Paulson, Geithner, and both Presidents Bush and Obama are still free men instead of being housed at GITMO? How is it that on that fateful night in September of 2008 when Bernanke and Paulson “briefed” Congress and demanded $700 billion in ransom and a blank check to back-door an unlimited amount in “guarantees” and “pass-throughs” to their banking buddies the Sargeant At Arms was not immediately called to place these goons under arrest pending indictment and prosecution?
…for the continued audacity of diversion that The Fed and this administration have become known for. So far this year, 77 banks have been closed and the last report dollar amount in the F.D.I.C. account was $13 Billion at the end of March with numerous bank failures since then. The dollar is weakening because Bernanke and his buddies are pumping trillions into our economy and now the F.D.I.C. wants to loosen rules so that private equity firms can buy banks. Now why would that be? Could it be because F.D.I.C. is broke and we are on the verge of the commercial real estate bubble implosion and many more banks are going to sink when that happens?
JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke declared Friday that the U.S. economy is on the verge of a long-awaited recovery after enduring a brutal recession and the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
Economic activity in both the U.S. and around the world appears to be “leveling out,” and “the prospects for a return to growth in the near term appear good,” Bernanke said in a speech at an annual Fed conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo.
Y’all know what I am thinking about this POS and The Fed, but Karl Denninger has definitely got it going on better than I ever could state.
The two largest remaining free-standing investment banks, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, were stabilized when the Federal Reserve approved, on an emergency basis, their applications to become bank holding companies.
That too is a lie. These firms survived only because you negotiated a back-door transfer of taxpayer money, free of all obligation, through AIG to these companies. Their application to become bank holding companies also came with exemption requests for BHC leverage limits, which you granted, thus leaving the liability for their continued gambling (and boy have they!) on the taxpayer’s back as well.
The failure of Lehman Brothers demonstrated that liquidity provision by the Federal Reserve would not be sufficient to stop the crisis; substantial fiscal resources were necessary. On October 3, on the recommendation of the Administration and with the strong support of the Federal Reserve, the Congress approved the creation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, with a maximum authorization of $700 billion to support the stabilization of the U.S. financial system.
You and Hank Paulson lied about your intentions for that $700 billion dollar appropriation. That this was a knowing lie, in that the intended disbursement changed before it was finally voted up in Congress, is fact, not supposition – it was disclosed by Neal Kashkari during questioning under oath by Congress that The Fed and Treasury had shelved the “bad asset” purchases several days prior to the final vote, but you never informed Congress of your altered intent.
In short, you and Treasury acquired access to that $700 billion under false pretense. In an honest world we would call that theft by conversion, or simple fraud. But we live in a world where regulatory capture and fraud are part and parcel of everyday life in Washington DC.
Make sure to go over and read the whole article, and do the math yourself. Numbers don’t lie, but people do.
This is bad Ben, very bad. You know that the “little people” are waking up to the banking cartel known as the Federal Reserve and that you have to be sucking fumes if people are thinking the IRS does a better job than you.
Ben Bernanke has been on the campaign trail in the past week trying to convince people that there is nothing mysterious or evil about the Federal Reserve, but a new Gallup Poll proves that people are not buying it. Sucks to be you Ben, especially since you are “up” for re-appointment for a 14 year term. Anybody want to keep looking at Ben for the next 14 years?
PRINCETON, NJ — At a time when Americans are discouraged about the direction of the country and hesitant about the scope of President Barack Obama’s federal budget plans, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NASA, and the FBI earn credit for a job well done from a majority of Americans. The 61% who say the CDC is doing an excellent or good job can be contrasted with the 30% who say this of the Federal Reserve Board, making the latter the worst reviewed of nine agencies and departments rated in the July 10-12 Gallup Poll.
In 2003, the slight majority of Americans, 53%, said the Federal Reserve was doing an excellent or good job and 5% called it poor. Today, 30% of Americans praise the job the Fed is doing, while nearly as many, 22%, call it poor. While this ratings downturn coincides with a substantial drop in consumer confidence toward the U.S. economy over the same period, it is unclear how much of the Fed’s image decline is due to the general decline in the country’s economic climate, as opposed to specific perceptions about the agency’s performance in carrying out its monetary responsibilities and possibly its role in the crisis surrounding U.S. financial markets. The Fed’s low excellent/good rating may also reflect the higher-than-average percentage of Americans having “no opinion” about this arm of the government, relative to the other agencies rated.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, is on a publicity campaign with a message: the central bank is here to help, and it is not as mysterious or menacing as people might think.
In a profound departure from the central bank’s tradition as an aloof and secretive temple of economic policy, Mr. Bernanke has plunged into the public spotlight to an extent that none of his predecessors would have contemplated.
He has given a television interview to “60 Minutes” on CBS, including a tour of his hometown, Dillon, S.C.; held what amounted to a televised news conference; and written newspaper commentaries to explain the Fed’s efforts to fight the financial crisis.
On Sunday, Mr. Bernanke reached another milestone in his evolution from Fed chairman to Fed showman, participating in a one-hour town hall-style forum here organized and moderated by Jim Lehrer of “The NewsHour” on PBS.
Like a political candidate on the campaign trail — indeed, his four-year term expires in January — Mr. Bernanke fielded questions from local residents and tried to rebuff charges that the Fed was either conspiring with big banks, stifling free-market capitalism or possibly doing both at the same time.
When a small-business owner asked Mr. Bernanke why the Fed helped rescue big banks while “short-changing” small companies, Mr. Bernanke answered that he had decided to “hold my nose” because he was afraid the entire financial system would collapse.
Are You Freakin’ Kidding Me? Hold you nose, Bernanke? These are your buddies that you helped to bailout with Paulson, Pelosi, Frank, Dodd, etc. Meanwhile, that supposed credit crunch would ease with T.A.R.P. and we would all be living in my little pony world. Is it any wonder your job approval is going through the floor?
The Fed has never wielded as much power as it does right now, but the very expansion of its mission has exposed it to more second-guessing and more challenges to its political independence than ever before.
“The Federal Reserve, in collaboration with the giant banks, has created the greatest financial crisis the world has ever seen,” Representative Ron Paul, Republican of Texas, said at a House hearing last week in which Mr. Bernanke testified about the state of the economy.
President Obama has proposed a sweeping plan that would make the Fed more powerful in some respects and less powerful in others. Mr. Obama’s plan would put the Fed in charge of regulating systemic risk, like the buildup of dangerous mortgages during the housing bubble, and would give the Fed power to impose tougher regulation over financial institutions deemed too big to fail.
At the same time, the administration plan would strip the Fed of its current authority to regulate mortgages and other forms of consumer lending, including credit cards. Those powers would be shifted to a new regulatory agency with broad power to regulate consumer financial products.
Mr. Bernanke strongly supports putting the Fed in charge of risk regulation, but he and Fed officials are resisting Mr. Obama’s plan for a separate consumer regulatory agency. That puts him in the potentially awkward position of alienating the Fed’s most important supporter — the president.
At the town hall event, which will be shown on “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” this week in three parts, Mr. Bernanke set out to reassure people that the economy would regain its strength “within a few years.” But he cautioned that the unemployment rate would probably climb above 10 percent before it gradually started to fall next year.
Now here is our buddie Ben last week in front of a congressional committee explaining that he does not know exactly where $553 BILLION of Central Bank Liquidity Swaps went; just that it went to 14 Central Banks throughout the world.
I am still trying to come to terms with Alan Grayson asking pertinent questions of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, when he has been involved with this and this, but I digress.
After everything we have been through in the last 18 months, one would think that there are not too many things that would send us screaming for the lifeboats after what we already have been through. At some point saturation and desensitization sets in. Let’s run through a short list:
The Rules and Bylaws Committee Meeting on May 31, 2008.
Hank Paulson scaring the bejesus out of Congress in September, 2008.
T.A.R.P.
Barack Obama being elected by 69 million teary crazed idiots.
Millions of Americans losing their jobs and homes.
THE APOLOGY TOUR!!!
The numerous appointments of tax evaders.
The Stimulus Package
The Bailout of AIG.
Nationalization of the banks and financial industry.
The Takeover of Chrysler and GM.
Being labeled domestic terrorists by Janet Napolitano.
Hussein appointing 31 Czars and counting.
Hussein throwing Israel under the bus, hand-holding Iran, and championing the ousted dictator in Honduras.
The Federal Reserve “loses” $9 TRILLION.
Cap and Tax
Al Franken being inducted into the Senate.
Obama DeathCare
Talk about Porkulus II.
The Big NY Banks posting profits after eating each other.
Possible $23 Trillion in Bailouts.
An almost $2 Trillion Deficit THIS YEAR!
I was pretty much inured to it until I saw this photo this morning where I promptly had a visceral reaction and found myself immediately in fight or flight mode. How about you? Does this scare the bejesus out of you? Anybody like to caption this? (and the Winner is now the caption.)
