Tag Archives: The Fed

On Friday, the Dow closed at its highest level since December 2007

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CSMonitor: FRIDAY, SEP. 13, 2012: “US stocks rallied after news that the Federal Reserve will spend $40 billion a month to buy mortgage securities. Nearly four stocks rose for every one falling, and the Dow closed at its highest level since December 2007.

“David Abuaf, chief investment officer at Hefty Wealth Partners, said he expects investors to keep shifting from safer assets like government bonds to stocks. That could push stock prices higher and start a cycle of increased wealth and spending. “People will feel more confident, consumers will buy more goods, and GDP growth will increase,” he said, referring to the gross domestic product, or economic output. The stock market had already enjoyed a summer rally, in part because investors were betting on more Fed action. The Dow has climbed more than 1,100 points since the start of June.”


image: christopherstreet

Jon Stewart: Our government is the world’s dumbest loan shark

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Source: sandandglass

Source: drunkonstevphen

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The Occupy movement already needs to clean house #OWS #99percent

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Here’s one issue that many people believe the Occupy movement should focus on — bottom to top income redistribution that will only continue if the GOP has its way, with extending Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy with austerity measures for the rest of us:

(VIDEO) Dennis Kucinich: [IN 2008] the Fed gave $7.77 Trillion in secret, non-congressionally approved loans to big banks that made them an estimated $13 Trillion. They’ve used tax payer money to get rich, then insist we need to cut social services that they won’t use. In Mr. Kucinich’s words, “Now do you understand Occupy Wall Street?” (via: jonathan-cunningham)

However, Bob Cesca feels the Occupy movement is losing its way, as it’s hijacked by anarchists and libertarians, with plans to protest a DCCC fundraiser:

Protesting a DCCC fundraiser does nothing to “change the conversation” when those in attendance are already discussing the things you want them to discuss.

Jobs. Taxing the rich and shameless. Financial regulations.

Nancy Pelosi even presided over the most sweeping regulation of Wall Street in decades while she was Speaker of the House, which President Obama later signed into law.

And “elitist?”

And this is from last night:

More than 100 Occupy Wall Street protesters marched to a Midtown hotel on Wednesday night to protest a fund-raising event for President Obama.

[...] Demonstrators held signs that leveled some of the Occupy protest’s most pointed criticism to date of the president. “Obama is a corporate puppet,” one said. “War crimes must be stopped, no matter who does them,” read another, beside head shots of President George W. Bush and President Obama.

One man, wearing a mask of the president’s face and holding a cigar, carried a sign that read, “I sold out!”

Regardless if you feel that both parties are the same — much of the support coming to the Occupy movement from ‘average’ working and middle class people would have been from which voting block, do ya think: Democrats or Republicans? Union members: Democrats or Republicans? Want tax increases only on the wealthy so spending cuts for the rest of us don’t need to be as deep: Democrats or Republicans? Are they planning to occupy the NRCC or any GOP presidential candidate forums?

I give up.

DEFINITION OF LIBERTARIAN:

A libertarian is someone who wants to take America back to the way it was run in the 1800s, regardless of how much the world has changed since then. Libertarians also have mean hard-ons for unregulated capitalism, believing that the “Invisible Hand” will erase poverty and create a utopia instead of what ACTUALLY happens when you let companies do whatever they want, which is:

-Children working in factories and mines

-Corporate monopolies

-Workplaces where death is likely

-Low, low wages

-Shit in your food (Read Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”)

-Even more extreme corporate corruption and political pawns than we have now.

-Getting the living fuck stomped out of you by company-hired goons for trying to organize a union (Battle of the Overpass)

via: ryking

“Monetary policy can do a lot, but monetary policy is not a panacea.” ~ Ben Bernanke

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Business Insider: Chairman Bernanke spoke in Cleveland at 5:00 (EDT) last night. The speech was interesting but it was the Q&A that produced the stir. Here’s a bit from an AP report on the event.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday that long-term unemployment is an American “national crisis” and suggested that Congress should take further action to combat it. He also said lawmakers should provide more help to the battered housing industry.

Bernanke noted that about 45 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for at least six months.

“This is unheard of,” he said in a question-and-answer session after a speech in Cleveland. “This has never happened in the post-war period in the United States. They are losing the skills they had, they are losing their connections, their attachment to the labor force.”

He added: “The unemployment situation we have, the job situation, is really a national crisis.”

Bernanke said the government needs to provide support to help the long-term unemployed retrain for jobs and find work. And he suggested that Congress should take more responsibility.

Here’s a first step: some in Congress need to stop listening to the Teaparty, who represent 20% of the country — MAYBE — and who have given us nothing but bad ideas and misspelled signs for three years. It’s time for those in Washington to serve the people, not just the loudest wingnuts.

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What Bernanke should say today

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Via Ezra Klein:

“I have a lot of power. But I’m not a dictator. The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee has 12 members. If I’m being generous, five or six of them seriously understand how bad things are right now. And outside these walls, a guy who wrote a book called ‘End the Fed’ now chairs the House committee that oversees us. Sarah Palin appears to be developing strong and incoherent views on monetary policy. Paul Ryan dabbles in this stuff. If I went public with what really needs to be done — buying bonds related to the real economy rather than Treasury bonds, paying a negative rate on bank reserves so they move the money we’ve given them out of our coffers and into the labor market, doing price-level targeting so we make up for the years of sub-2 percent inflation with a few years where inflation is above 2 percent — I’d be strung up tomorrow. I’d go from having the freedom to talk half-measures to maybe — maybe! — having the freedom to take quarter-measures.”

“And that’s fine. I understand why people are freaked out by the idea of some group of bearded economists getting together to decide what’s going to happen in the economy next year. But you know when exactly you get bearded economists making the big decisions? When Congress becomes too paralyzed and polarized to make them itself. I mean, good Lord. The division of labor here is — or at least is supposed to be — that the Federal Reserve holds interest rates down while Congress spends money to stimulate the economy. Then, in a few years, when the economy is working again, we begin tightening and they begin reducing the deficit. That’s what Japan should’ve done. In fact, I got hired for this job because I was one of the people telling Japan to do it. And now we should be doing it. But we’re not. Or, more precisely, Congress is not.”

Continued…

Bernanke will give his much-anticipated address at the annual Fed retreat in the Wyoming resort town of Jackson Hole, and financial markets may soar or plunge based on what he says. (McClatchey)

 

Your new definition of “traitor” — someone who makes things better for the USA before the 2012 election

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RICK PERRY LABELED BEN BERNANKE A TRAITOR not because Perry has strong beliefs about the Fed and printing money — or any of that. It will come as no surprise that it’s simply because Perry wants to win an election. It’s pure Texas politics:

Rick Perry appears to be saying that a new round of quantitative easing “between now and the election” would improve the economy. That, he holds, would not be a good thing, but a crime. Because it would tilt the political balance in a way that harms Rick Perry’s chances of defeating the incumbent President.

The ‘old’ definitions of traitor and treason:

Trai·tor/ˈtrātər/ Noun: A person who betrays a friend, country, principle, etc.

Trea·son/ˈtrēzən/Noun 1. The crime of betraying one’s country, esp. by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government.

Just saying: could the old definitions be used for someone who wanted to secede from the Union?

Related:

Turkeys voting for Thanksgiving: The Teaparty Republican baseRick Perry, who talked about secession, questions Obama’s patriotism and military service“I dunno what y’all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas.”

Serenity now!

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I’ve been going through my RSS feed reader for the past 45 minutes and here’s what I have:

  1. Is the Tea Party still racist? Affirmative.
  2. Is Fox News still ‘informing’ it’s viewers? Definitely. In fact, O’Reilly and John Stossel have no qualms about interpreting actual dates and history into personal opinion or belief.
  3. Has Tim Pawlenty lost his mind? CLEARLY. But is this what the average GOP Teaparty voter thinks is ‘the solution’? Of course — they get their news from Fox (see #2).
  4. Is the Tea Party planning to indoctrinate children on the ideals of Republican Jesus (i.e. Selfish Christianity)? Yep.
  5. Can Michele Bachmann react sanely to people who are NOT in the Tea Party? Not at all. Two middle-aged lesbians wanting to talk caused Crazy Eyes to scream, bolt for her car in tears, and file a police report because she was ‘terrorized’ and ‘terrified.’
  6. Guess what Rush is selling his ditto sheeple-heads now.
  7. Would it surprise you to know that Ron Paul, the loudest advocate for returning the dollar back to the gold standard, has hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in several gold mining companies?
  8. GOP Cuts To Food Aid For Seniors And Food Banks Equals One Day Of Bush Tax Cuts For Millionaires. One day.
  9. Here is the only way to watch a GOP debate — as interpreted through Jon Stewart:

One thing The Unemployed can do about Unemployment

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Krugman predicts “unfocused public outrage” will add to ongoing apathy over unemployment:

Thanks, TeaParty!

Two years from now unemployment will still be extremely high, quite possibly higher than it is now. But instead of taking responsibility for fixing the situation, politicians and Fed officials alike will declare that high unemployment is structural, beyond their control. And as I said, over time these excuses may turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the long-term unemployed lose their skills and their connections with the work force, and become unemployable.

I’d like to imagine that public outrage will prevent this outcome. But while Americans are indeed angry, their anger is unfocused. And so I worry that our governing elite, which just isn’t all that into the unemployed, will allow the jobs slump to go on and on and on.

What do the unemployed need to do? ORGANIZE.

AndrewSullivan: Avent thinks the unemployed are organizing:

What’s happening now, with the increase in duration of unemployment, is that you’re starting to get large numbers of people with good organisational skills and lots and lots of time on their hands. And they’re spending enough time without jobs that they are beginning to self-identify as unemployed, and to form bonds with others in the same situation. This is a phenomenon that I don’t think has been seen in America since Martin Luther King’s marches against poverty in the 1960s, if not since the Depression, and it will be interesting to see what comes of it.

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