PALIN AND BECK RING THE QE BELL
by ilene - November 9th, 2010 11:52 am
PALIN AND BECK RING THE QE BELL
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
The nonsense regarding the world’s greatest monetary non-event just continues to spiral out of control. Last week it was Glenn Beck pretending to know something about the monetary system and economics. This week it is Sarah Palin. In a talk today Mrs. Palin went on a politically motivated rant about government intervention and “money printing”:
“I’m deeply concerned about the Federal Reserve’s plans to buy up anywhere from $600 billion to as much as $1 trillion of government securities. The technical term for it is “quantitative easing.” It means our government is pumping money into the banking system by buying up treasury bonds. And where, you may ask, are we getting the money to pay for all this? We’re printing it out of thin air.
The Fed hopes doing this may buy us a little temporary economic growth by supplying banks with extra cash which they could then lend out to businesses. But it’s far from certain this will even work. After all, the problem isn’t that banks don’t have enough cash on hand – it’s that they don’t want to lend it out, because they don’t trust the current economic climate.
And if it doesn’t work, what do we do then? Print even more money? What’s the end game here? Where will all this money printing on an unprecedented scale take us? Do we have any guarantees that QE2 won’t be followed by QE3, 4, and 5, until eventually – inevitably – no one will want to buy our debt anymore? What happens if the Fed becomes not just the buyer of last resort, but the buyer of only resort?”
Glenn Beck made equally irresponsible comments last week. Why these people feel as though they are qualified to discuss monetary operations is beyond me. It would be like me walking into the Kennedy Center and telling the National Symphony Orchestra that they are playing the music all wrong (and I have not one ounce of musical talent in my entire body).
I won’t repeat the entire argument I have consistently made in recent weeks because I fear readers might bludgeon me with my keyboard, but let’s reiterate a few things:
- QE is NOT money printing. They are adding reserves to the banking sector and removing government bonds. Mr. Bernanke has explicitly stated this:
In The Headlights
by ilene - September 7th, 2010 5:21 pm
In The Headlights
Courtesy of James Howard Kunstler
The toils of summer are bygone now. The days grow shorter and America stands in the darkling road of its own prospects like a dumb animal frozen in the blinding light of approaching fury. The White House must be a strange place these days with the management of the USA turned over to astrologasters, alchemists, prayer-wheel spinners, fakirs, viziers, necromancers and other visitors from occult realms unaffiliated with the dominion of reality.
One of these characters, Ms. Christina Romer, at a luncheon celebrating her departure as chief of the White House Council of Economic Advisors (i.e. readers of spilled goat innards) even blurted out that she had no idea what’s been going on in banking and business and how come America can’t be more like it was in 1999. Don’t cry for Christina. A cushy chair awaits her at the Hogwarts Berkeley outpost where she can repose in a trance of unknowing until California slides into its own tar pit of default and disintegration.
It’s all a mystery in Washington. Nobody can figure out what happened to their green-eyed champion called Growth, that savior who rights all wrongs and insures our eternal exception from the sad fates of other less-blessed empires. Isn’t there a book of conjures somewhere in the Harvard Business School that guarantee perpetual growth — even if there are different tomes around the campus that describe the essential tragic nature of life, viz., that there is a beginning, a middle, and an end to everything. And while this might not be the end of the human project in North America, it is certainly the end of the cheap oil abbondanza, and everything spun off of it in the way of mass consumer luxury, with air-conditioning and a cherry on top.
My own view — I might be wrong-- is that we are going through an epochal compressive contraction, which is the opposite of growth. Money is disappearing because debts are being welshed on in such a volume that all the digital dollars conjured out of chief wizard Ben Bernanke’s magic booty box are but empty spells cast into a hurricane of broken promises. This is no Hurricane Earl – which stared into the discharge tube of Lloyd Blankfein’s cappuccino machine and skidded off whimpering into the fogs of Newfoundland. This…
The Borowitz Report
by ilene - June 7th, 2010 7:21 pm
Here are headlines/links to Andy Borowitz’s recent satirical articles finding humor in current events. Funny, though potentially offensive. (So don’t blame me for not warning you – Palin fans, Tiger Woods fans, BP execs.) - Ilene
The Borowitz Report
BP Says It Has Successfully Controlled Flow of Information on Spill
Tiger: At Least I Didn’t F%*k The Entire Gulf Of Mexico
Golf Legend Seizes PR Opportunity
Bin Laden Says He’s ‘Professionally Envious’ Of BP
‘I’ve Got To Step Up My Game,’ Says Madman
Experts Propose Plugging Oil Leak With BP Executives
Submerging Execs Could Be ‘Win-Win
Poll: Rand Paul Surges Ahead Of Palin Among Voters Who Describe Themselves As Morons
Key Constituency For Two Hopefuls
China To Stop Spying On Its People; Will Use Facebook Instead
Social Network To Replace Listening Devices, Spy Satellites
Greece Offers To Repay Loans With Giant Horse
Steed Wheeled Into Brussels At Night
Meet The New Sarah Palin
by ilene - January 20th, 2010 12:28 pm
Meet The New Sarah Palin
Courtesy of Joe Weisenthal at Clusterstock
Besides the immediate impact of last night’s Massachusetts Senate race (healthcare reform all but dead, financial reform probably toast, no risk of Cap & Trade, etc), the story of Scott Brown’s meteoric rise has other ramifications for key players in the Republican party.
Most notably, Sarah Palin is a big loser, and she’s no longer the hero, insurgent member of the party. She is seen as having helped lose the 2008 election.
Scott Brown won in freakin’ Taxachusetts!
It’s also great for Mitt Romney, the other big Bay State Republican, who appeared onstage with Brown at his victory party.
The GOP resurgence starts in Massachusetts!
See Also:
How The White House Plans To Deal With Sarah Palin The FOX Pundit
The Scott Brown Selloff Gets Worse, Dow Down Nearly 160 Points