More Grim Comedy from Ben Bernanke

Bernanke Told America 2 Massive Lies On 60 Minutes
This past Sunday on the CBS program "60 Minutes", Americans received a massive dose of mendacity from our Fed Chairman. Mr. Bernanke's shaky delivery, and even shakier logic may cause faith in America's economic leadership to evaporate faster than the value of our dollar. In particular, Bernanke delivered two massive distortions: Lie #1 - The Fed isn't printing money . Bernanke stated: "The amount of currency in circulation is not changing...the Money Supply is not changing in any significant wa...

Ditch the Fed? Not so fast!
gives us an economy we don't deserve! my Mortgage is now in arrears! A Central Bank! A Central Bank? they're cycles we have to endure. The Central Bank's motives are pure! True or false: the United States did not have a central bank before 1913, the year the Federal Reserve system was established. Answer to follow. First, consider the growing numbers of voices these days urging either to dis-establish the Fed or to revise its charter (which would not be the first time). Gerald O'Driscoll, writi...

The Fed and Money Printing
As I said in the last post regarding Jon Stewart’s take on Ben Bernanke’s "60 Minutes" interview, the Fed has lost the PR war on QE2.  The reality is, as Ben Bernanke said, there will likely be no appreciable increase in credit - what he calls ‘money’ in the 60 Minutes interview.  I don’t see ‘credit’ as ‘money.’ To me, any dollar credits are money. Regardless of whether you call dollar credits the Fed creates ‘...

Michael Pento On The Two Biggest Lies In Bernanke's Latest 60 Minutes Episode
Bernanke: 60 Minutes, 2 Big Lies This past Sunday on the CBS program “60 Minutes”, Americans received a massive dose of mendacity from our Fed Chairman. Mr. Bernanke’s shaky delivery, and even shakier logic may cause faith in America’s economic leadership to evaporate faster than the value of our dollar. In particular, Bernanke delivered two massive distortions: Lie #1 - The Fed isn’t printing money . Bernanke stated: “The amount of currency in circulation i...

Guest Post: Let's Get With The Program Already
China has made it clear that it is NOT pleased with the US’s current Monetary Policy (China has blamed the Fed for its Inflation woes with some officials going so far as to label The Dollar’s status as a reserve currency, “absurd”). The US has in turn responded by labeling China a currency manipulator and blaming it for the US’s economic woes. Indeed, it seems almost every other week that some US Government official comes out with a “it’s ALL China’...

Emerging Market Mania: China Tells Bernanke to Take a Hike
dynamic for the Financial Markets going forward. How this plays out will impact everything from the US Dollar’s reserve currency status to where the Stock Markets will head. With that in mind, we need to consider the power dynamics between these two countries from a monetary perspective. China has made it clear that it is NOT pleased with the US’s current Monetary Policy (China has blamed the Fed for its Inflation woes with some officials going so far as to label The Dollar’s...

Brazil Rate Hike Chatter Picks Up
Chatter about possible Brazil Rate Hike today is picking up after November IPCA Inflation rose 0.83% m/m and 5.63% y/y.  The y/y rate is the highest since February 2009, when the SELIC policy rate was 12.75%.  While there is a risk of a surprise move today, we think it more likely that the tightening cycle starts next month, when incoming Central Bank chief Tombini will likely hike the SELIC policy rate 50 BP at his first meeting January 18/19.  The Central Bank hiked reserve requ...

Housing deflation hiding inflation in other goods
Image by Getty Images via @daylife Telegraph: Leading investor Jim Rogers has blasted the US government's Inflation data as a "sham" that is causing the Central Bank to massively understate price pressures. Rogers, who shot to fame after co-founding Quantum Fund with George Soros, argued the Federal Reserve uses information that relies too heavily on housing prices. "I expect Interest Rates in the US to go much, much, much higher over the next few years," he said, adding that he is betting ag...

Fallout After The Credit Bomb
. Bank credit and liquidity is something I follow closely because it is a key to economic revival. Presently banks have been more aggressive in cleaning up their loan books which has required them to recognize troubled loans and reserve more for loan losses. Part of the trend is that bank Regulators have been stricter with banks, requiring them to move loans to non-accrual status or "other Real Estate owned" status. Most of these loans are commercial Real Estate loans (CRE). Another part of the ...

Sanders Statement on Fed Disclosure
WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 - Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement on today's disclosure by the Federal Reserve that banks and other institutions received an estimated $3.3 Trillion in emergency loans and other assistance during the Financial Crisis: "After years of stonewalling by the Fed, the American People are finally learning the incredible and jaw-dropping details of the Fed's multi-trillion-dollar Bailout of Wall Street and Corporate America. Perhaps most surprising is the hu...

Tax deal squeezes potential home buyers
By Al Yoon and Daniel Trotta NEW YORK | Wed Dec 8, 2010 6:05pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - For Kathryn Confer, refinancing the Mortgage on her home in Erie, Pennsylvania, became a race against time -- first because she was drowning under a 10.5 percent Interest Rate and then because of the U.S. Congress. Confer wanted to avoid the Unintended Consequences of the political Compromise struck by President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans to extend lower Tax Rates to all Americans, includin...

Michael Pento: Bernanke: 60 Minutes, 2 Big Lies
This past Sunday on the CBS program "60 Minutes", Americans received a massive dose of mendacity from our Fed Chairman. Mr. Bernanke's shaky delivery, and even shakier logic may cause faith in America's economic leadership to evaporate faster than the value of our dollar. In particular, Bernanke delivered two massive distortions: Lie #1 - The Fed isn't printing money. Bernanke stated: "The amount of currency in circulation is not changing...the Money Supply is not changing in any significant w...

Iceland cuts key interest rate by to 4.5 percent
Iceland's Central Bank has cut its key Interest Rate by 1 percentage point to 4.5 percent. Wednesday's announcement by Sedlabanki continues the bank's gradual lowering of the seven-day collateral Lending rate as Iceland recovers from the global Financial Crisis. The rate peaked at 18 percent in October 2008, when the country's banking system collapsed under the strain of the worldwide credit squeeze. Sedlabanki also lowered its deposit and overnight Lending rates. Recent data has shown that Icel...

Emerging Markets on A Tear; Uruguay Latest Upgrade by Moodys
Moody’s upgraded Uruguay two notches to Ba1 from Ba3 previously, bringing it into line with S&P’s BB+.  We recently added Uruguay to our sovereign Ratings model universe, bringing the total number of EM countries ranked to 39.  As we wrote earlier this week, “Uruguay has an implied rating of BBB+/Baa1/BBB+ and so actual Ratings of BB+/Ba3/BB are subject to upgrades.”  Fitch’s BB remains way too low, but at least the other  agencies are moving...

The Fed's Commercial Paper Buying Knew No National Boundaries
During the heat of the Financial Crisis, Ben Bernanke's Federal Reserve doled out a mountain of money to keep the damage from getting any worse. But if you think American companies were the biggest beneficiaries of this largess, you'd be wrong. Foreign companies landed a whopping 68% of the billions of dollars the Fed spent as part of its lender-of-last-resort Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF), according to a DailyFinance review of data the Fed has recently released. During the nearly 1...

What is a Bubble?, by Arnold Kling
Scott Sumner writes, if the term "bubble" is to mean anything useful, it must contain an implied prediction of the future course of asset prices. I read this as saying that a bubble is when someone can correctly predict that an asset price will fall. I think this is not a useful definition, for a number of reasons. Instead, I would borrow from Robert Shiller the notion that a bubble is characterized by unreasonably high expectations for continued appreciation. When the Housing Market was bouy...

Investors continue to demand more yield
Investors around the globe are continuing to demand more yield in return for Lending money to sovereign governments and it’s no longer just the PIIGS countries. Yields in Germany and France are rising to 7 month highs and yields in the UK, US and Japan are approaching 6 month highs. Whether its optimism on global growth and higher Inflation expectations and/or concerns with debts and Deficits, higher yields on still very levered developed economies will create quite a challenge if sustai...

Why Is the Fed's Action Failing to Keep Rates Down?
One of the explicit purposes of the Federal Reserve's latest Quantitative Easing effort ("QE2") is to keep Interest Rates low. By purchasing Treasuries, it creates greater demand for the securities, which reduces their yield and should help to keep down Interest Rates on other financial products as well. So why, a few weeks after QE2 was initiated, do rates appear to be climbing? It might have something to do with the big Tax Cut Compromise announced this week. On Tuesday, Treasury yields rose s...

Ease the Day
Of all the strange things that Republicans have freaked out over during the last two years—a federal version of Mitt Romney’s Health Care plan, a continuation of George W. Bush’s bank Bailout, a failed attempt to implement John McCain’s Climate Bill—perhaps the strangest target is Milton Friedman’s monetary policies. Yet here we are. Last month, the Federal Reserve announced it would purchase $600 billion in Treasury Bonds in order to push down long-term inter...

Ease the Day
Of all the strange things that Republicans have freaked out over during the last two years—a federal version of Mitt Romney’s Health Care plan, a continuation of George W. Bush’s bank Bailout, a failed attempt to implement John McCain’s Climate Bill—perhaps the strangest target is Milton Friedman’s monetary policies. Yet here we are. Last month, the Federal Reserve announced it would purchase $600 billion in Treasury Bonds in order to push down long-term inter...

House Republicans Continue Drumbeat Against Feds Role
By Michael Crittenden Top members of the incoming Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives continued to level broadsides against the Federal Reserve Tuesday, questioning its proper role in shaping U.S. Economic Policy. Reps. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Indiana’s Mike Pence both repeated calls for an end to the Central Bank’s dual mandate to promote both jobs and maintain price stability. Members of Congress aren’t trying to encroach on the Fed’s independen...

Electronic payments crowd out checks in US: Fed
A man uses a Laptop computer at a wireless cafe. Electronic payments have s... Electronic payments have surged in the United States to more than 75 percent of all noncash payments as check usage continues to fall by the wayside, a Federal Reserve report showed Wednesday. All types of US electronic payments grew in the 2006-2009 period studied, with the exception of Credit Cards, the Fed said. Wire transfers were not included in the triannual study, whose latest edition spans the worst US reces...

If Paul Ryan was touting an ANTI-corporate line, he'd already be a marked man
Where might the political-cash flow come from to hold the economic royalists of the 112th Congress accountable? "So this is the smartest Republican Congress has to offer?" -- Paul Krugman, in a July 30 blogpost, "Don't Know Much About Economics" by Ken Howie has referred to it, as you can see on the Blue America page Stop Paul Ryan, but I think it's worth resurrecting in full this July 30 blogpost of Paul Krugman's (many more links in the posted version): JULY 30, 2010, 2:21 PM Don’t Know Mu...

Bernanke on 60 Minutes two days ago: "We're not printing money." Bernanke on 60 Minutes 16 months ago: "We're printi...
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Central bank or teenage girl?
In which Jon Stewart attempts to figure out if Ben Bernanke is printing money or not: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor The Daily Show on Facebook ...