http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing
Bernanke Makes Quantum Leap
Backward with “Quantitative Easing”
Most of us have heard “never use an elephant gun when a fly-swatter will do” or similar sayings reminding us to balance problem-solving responses with problem severity. Our dear friend Ben Bernanke, however, is currently brandishing nuclear weapons where most might consider a teaspoonful of radioactive-dye sufficient. Perhaps one day soon Federal Reserve Chief Ben will be explaining to us how the “operation was a success, too bad the patient died.”
The patient, as you know, is the United States economy. Dear Ben is so concerned about depressions lurking underneath his bedsprings that he multiplied the amount of circulating money in the country fifteen-fold between late 2008 and mid-2009. Thanks to Ben, technically speaking the present U.S. dollar bill is worth 6.7 cents of the 2008 dollar’s value. Nice job, Benny Boy!
Of course, tradition is what Ben has been counting on. The dollar has been the international storehouse of value for over three-score years now and people, even astute foreign investors and governments, don’t adapt as quickly as they might to the shifting reality known as hyper-inflation. The only problem is that someone in China someday soon might notice that fiscal-emperor Ben is running around buck naked and charge him with indecently dipping of super-skinny value. We’re talking about QE which is short for “Quantitative Easing” which under present conditions might be considered using a nine-pound sledge hammer against the mosquito in your friend’s ear. Ah, me.
The Fed Chief has a few problems in the economy to deal with: 1) jobs creation is worse than lackluster 2) homes are being foreclosed upon at a record rate well in excess of last year’s record rate 3) home prices are artificially high and threatening to plummet at the first wave of panic selling 4) the incredible size ($114 TRillion) of the UNfunded liabilites the government’s responsible for 5) severe recent increases in deficit and National Debt 6) the inflationary weight of all the money he printed just a few months back 7) a record setting run of bank failures and 8) most crucially, his normal tool for controlling the economy (interest rate variation) is largely denied him because he doesn’t want to discourage credit by raising rates and the present rates are so low that further lowering would be all but useless . . . so now he pulls quantative easing (QE) out of his quiver, Gentle Ben does . . . .
Just in case the term “quantitative easing” is unfamiliar to you . . . It’s sometimes known as “monetizing the debt.” You owe $95,000 to banks + a $325,000 mortgage debt, so Ben astutely gives you $420,000 monetizing your debt . . . sound fishy? It is. If you think of printing presses initiating a process of taking a perfectly useful product (paper) and making it valueless except for papering walls and use in outhouses . . . was that harsh . . . in any case, QE is the process of allowing banks to (effectively) print air-money just because, well because, they feel like it. This is pretty much the bank stupidity, now encouraged-earlier discouraged by the Federal Reserve, which exacerbated the meltdown we’ve suffered from over the last three plus years.
Think about it, since we’ve had a record series of bank failures due to forced mortgage-lending at less than 3% down** payments (usually 0%) mandated by federal law (CRA ’77 and three Bill Clinton legislative expansions + two Clinton regulatory expansions of CRA ’77 and the deliberate abetting of such stupid loans from ACORN seeking home loans for . . . .
1. The unemployed
2. Those with bad credit
3. Those with no rental history
4. Those whose only “income” is food stamps
5. Others on welfare
6. Illegal aliens
7. Those fitting all of the above categories
8. All given loans under duress by shakedowns from ACORN lawyer Barack Obama and others of his community organizing ilk . . . .
And since ACORN discovered shortly after Clinton’s ’98 steroid-version of CRA ’77 that it was almost as easy getting a dirt-poor person a loan for a $450,000 home as it previously had been for a home of $120-$150,000 . . . while banks were lumping all these loans together for profitable actions to intensify the meltdown that the sub-prime loan crisis itself was bringing our way . . . . and here Benny-Boy is setting us up again . . . . you get the picture, once again the fox in the henhouse is being given a cleaver and night-vision goggles. So, who exactly might be negatively impacted by QE? Anyone who holds or relies on the dollar. No, no, NOT just the Chinese, Americans too, especially Americans!
Once he’d already gone loco with the money printing presses, the process of “Quantative Easing” should be the last and least used of the armaments available to a Fed Chief. Big Ben, up to now has been imitating Japan during their lost (dozen) -economy years in the late 80’s and 90’s. Now thanks to employing QE to enlarge the bankers’ power, Ben may well have the ability to get America role-playing the Weimar Republic that brought Germany 100,000,000,000% inflation and made Adolf Hitler look like an inspiring political choice. God bless you, Ben, you’re a madman.
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
** such loans were reserved for the highest quality veterans’ credit in 1975 when they amounted to 1/404 of all home loans; by 2005 they amounted to 34/100 of all home loans
