Spend or be financially doomed: Idolizing the gods of consumption and stoking the fires of debt based speculation. Has the Fed crossed the line of no return?
The Federal Reserve has created the perfect environment where savers are chastised and debt based spending is glorified. Our economic engine is powered by the fires of consumption. This has been true for many decades. What is different about our current space in time is the punishment savers are taking. Many banks through savings or [...]
Federal Reserve ZIRP has essentially destroyed household income growth: Households headed by those 45 to 54 see their real household income growth drop by 16 percent from 1999.
The Federal Reserve has pursued a zero interest rate policy as a mechanism for pulling the US out of the financial crisis. Interestingly enough low rates and heavy speculation were part of the cocktail that led us into the crisis in the first place. Ben Bernanke recently mentioned a bit of concern that speculation is [...]
Inflation in the most important things: Inflation hitting housing, tuition, and medical services. Is the Fed reinventing another debt based bubble?
Household income is a vital measure of the overall well-being for most Americans. This is why it is important to try to understand why overall household incomes are back to levels last seen in 1995. This is a critical barometer that measures the health of the US middle class. Yet we continually see the argument [...]
Federal Reserve bubble escape clause: The master of bubble creation talks about preventing future bubbles and other circular banking logic. Fed aggressively buying securities outright.
It is no secret that the Federal Reserve is aggressively buying up a variety of securities and storing them in their opaque balance sheet. The Fed in essence has become the bad bank and has served as the conduit to support bad banking policy. There seems to be a policy of slowly shrinking the middle [...]
Smoke and mirrors economy – 47 percent of the members in Congress are millionaires. 67 percent of Senators. Fed and Treasury money close to $7 trillion.
The Federal Reserve is really deep into uncharted territory. In no other time in history has the Fed been so intricately involved in the overall economy. The Fed balance sheet has expanded to an incredible level under very little scrutiny by the public or elected officials, many who have a vested interest in keeping the [...]
How the Fed bluffs the financial system – Labor force participation back to levels last seen over three decades ago. Fed policy aims at pushing US dollar lower.
The US is facing a long trend of aging Americans entering into retirement or what can be viewed as life post-work. The vision of sitting on the sand in some resort villa is largely a dream. Nearly half of American when they leave this world go out broke like a country western song. Today as [...]
QE3 into infinity and stagflation – Federal Reserve now purchasing over 50 percent of MBS and planning on buying $40 billion per month into infinity.
The Federal Reserve is playing with financial fire here. The last employment report was terribly weak and no amount of spinning can make it good. The drop was largely based on hundreds of thousands of Americans dropping out of the labor force. Is that really a positive sign? Last week we received data from the [...]
Federal Reserve slaps on financial rocket boosters but who will benefit? Half of Americans spend more than they make and household incomes fall back to levels last seen in 1995.
The Federal Reserve announced the sequel to the sequel on Thursday with Quantitative Easing 3. After all, if something didn’t work the first time might as well rinse and repeat. The markets are rallying yet what has come from the QEI, QEII, TALF, TARP, and all of those other backdoor bailouts? What has resulted is [...]
The engineering of bigger financial bubbles – corporate profits as a percent of GDP at record levels while unemployment is historically high and record number of Americans on transfer payments. Paying interest on excess reserves to banks for our own bailout funds.
The market is perched on the edge of a chair looking out for what the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank have to say. The almighty Oz is the only game in town. With the Fed, the expectation is of some sort of additional quantitative easing to prime the economy once again whereas the market [...]
The dynamic central banking duo – ECB balance sheet up over €3.1 trillion mimicking Fed balance that is close to $3 trillion. Shuffling toxic assets into darkness.
You might have the vague memory that the European Central Bank reacted somewhat negatively to the Federal Reserve’s massive balance sheet expansion a few years ago. The ECB was not following in the same path as that of the Fed. Well fast forward to the current Euro crisis and the ECB now has a balance [...]
