Tweet
Fed's Fisher dubious about easing policy
uh oh....
Fed's Fisher dubious about easing policy
well, whataya know - at least there's one of em who thinks pushin the string isnt working any more...
and then we have the debt monger himself - after screaming for years about the repub/bush deficits, now scolding the scolds -
for not borrowing/blowing enuf??? (in all the WRONG places, to boot)
Fighting fiscal phantoms
not to mention making our IMPORTS like oil etc etc, more EXPENSIVE
AND WE WOULDNT WANNA HAVE ANYBODY WITH ANY SAVINGS LEFT, NOW WOULD WE???
no sir, we'll all just go out and blow whatevah we have left, so we can continue to subsidize the 'profit margins' and bonuses of yer bankster buddies, over there at the squid
Fed's Fisher dubious about easing policy
By Greg Robb WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - The Federal Reserve should end its aggressive easing campaign, said Richard Fisher, the president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, on Tuesday. In remarks to reporters after a speech in Berlin, Fisher said the Fed's Operation Twist program should be allowed to expire on schedule next month. Under Twist, the Fed sells short-term securities and uses the proceeds to buy longer-term securities. "I question its efficacy," Fisher said, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Fed will meet on Dec. 11 and 12 and is generally expected by analysts to replace Twist with outright Treasury purchases. Fisher also said the Fed should also end its $40 billion per-month purchases of mortgage-backed securities, known as quantitative easing, or QE3. "My personal view is we don't need to do more," he said. The Fed's QE3 plan is open-ended with the central bankers saying it will continue the purchases until there is substantial improvement in the labor market. The central bank should consider setting limits to the size of its balance sheet, currently at $2.873 trillion, he said.
and then we have the debt monger himself - after screaming for years about the repub/bush deficits, now scolding the scolds -
for not borrowing/blowing enuf??? (in all the WRONG places, to boot)
Fighting fiscal phantoms
These are difficult times for the deficit scolds who have dominated policy discussion for almost three years. One could almost feel sorry for them, if it weren’t for their role in diverting attention from the ongoing problem of inadequate recovery, and thereby helping to perpetuate catastrophically high unemployment.
(well paul - maybe if the dems - with you cheerleading, all thru 2008-10 - hadnt blown/borrowed 6 T R I L L I O N on bailing out wall st, the auto/municipal unions, the med ins/drug/legal mob - there MIGHT'VE BEEN A RECOVERY??)
What has changed?
(you mean besides the point that we got the dems borrowing/blowing it this time round?)
For one thing, the crisis they predicted keeps not happening. Far from fleeing U.S. debt, investors have continued to pile in, driving interest rates to historical lows.
(what 'investors' - you mean sides the 70% of em being bought by bernanke&co ???)
Beyond that, suddenly the clear and present danger to the American economy isn’t that we’ll fail to reduce the deficit enough; it is, instead, that we’ll reduce the deficit too much. For that’s what the fiscal cliff — better described as the austerity bomb — is all about: The tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to kick in at the end of this year are precisely not what we want to see happen in a still-depressed economy.
Given these realities, the deficit-scold movement has lost some of its clout. That movement, by the way, is a hydra-headed beast, comprising many organizations that turn out, on inspection, to be financed and run by more or less the same people;
(yeah, mostly HIS buddies and the squid, there in lwr manhattan...)
dig down into many of these groups’ back stories and you will, in particular, find Peter Peterson, the private-equity billionaire, playing a key role.
But the deficit scolds aren’t giving up. Now yet another organization, Fix the Debt, is campaigning for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, even while making lower tax rates a "core principle." That last part makes no sense in terms of the group’s ostensible mission, but makes perfect sense if you look at the array of big corporations, from Goldman Sachs to the UnitedHealth Group, that are involved in the effort and would benefit from tax cuts. Hey, sacrifice is for the little people.
So should we take this latest push seriously? No — and not just because these people, aside from exhibiting a lot of hypocrisy, have been wrong about everything so far. The truth is that at a fundamental level the crisis story they’re trying to sell doesn’t make sense.
(and we know that you would never exhibit any hypocrisy - right?)
You’ve heard the story many times: Supposedly, any day now investors will lose faith in the United States’ ability to come to grips with its budget failures. When they do, there will be a run on Treasury bonds, interest rates will spike, and the U.S. economy will plunge back into recession.
This sounds plausible to many people, because it’s roughly speaking what happened to Greece. But we’re not Greece, and it’s almost impossible to see how this could actually happen to a country in our situation.
For we have our own currency — and almost all of our debt, both private and public, is denominated in dollars. So our government, unlike the Greek government, literally can’t run out of money. After all, it can print the stuff. So there’s almost no risk that the U.S. will default on its debt — I’d say no risk at all if it weren’t for the possibility that Republicans would once again try to hold the nation hostage over the debt ceiling.
But if the U.S. government prints money to pay its bills, won’t that lead to inflation? No, not if the economy is still depressed.
(uh huh - yeah right paul - we know you never hafta go into the supermarkets, pay for med ins, and get to ride aound nyc in the bernank's choppers - so OF COURSE there's 'no inflation')
(and - WAIT FOR IT NOW.....)
Now, it’s true that investors might start to expect higher inflation some years down the road. They might also push down the value of the dollar. Both of these things, however, would actually help rather than hurt the U.S. economy right now: Expected inflation would discourage corporations and families from sitting on cash, while a weaker dollar would make our exports more competitive.
(well paul - maybe if the dems - with you cheerleading, all thru 2008-10 - hadnt blown/borrowed 6 T R I L L I O N on bailing out wall st, the auto/municipal unions, the med ins/drug/legal mob - there MIGHT'VE BEEN A RECOVERY??)
What has changed?
(you mean besides the point that we got the dems borrowing/blowing it this time round?)
For one thing, the crisis they predicted keeps not happening. Far from fleeing U.S. debt, investors have continued to pile in, driving interest rates to historical lows.
(what 'investors' - you mean sides the 70% of em being bought by bernanke&co ???)
Beyond that, suddenly the clear and present danger to the American economy isn’t that we’ll fail to reduce the deficit enough; it is, instead, that we’ll reduce the deficit too much. For that’s what the fiscal cliff — better described as the austerity bomb — is all about: The tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to kick in at the end of this year are precisely not what we want to see happen in a still-depressed economy.
Given these realities, the deficit-scold movement has lost some of its clout. That movement, by the way, is a hydra-headed beast, comprising many organizations that turn out, on inspection, to be financed and run by more or less the same people;
(yeah, mostly HIS buddies and the squid, there in lwr manhattan...)
dig down into many of these groups’ back stories and you will, in particular, find Peter Peterson, the private-equity billionaire, playing a key role.
But the deficit scolds aren’t giving up. Now yet another organization, Fix the Debt, is campaigning for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, even while making lower tax rates a "core principle." That last part makes no sense in terms of the group’s ostensible mission, but makes perfect sense if you look at the array of big corporations, from Goldman Sachs to the UnitedHealth Group, that are involved in the effort and would benefit from tax cuts. Hey, sacrifice is for the little people.
So should we take this latest push seriously? No — and not just because these people, aside from exhibiting a lot of hypocrisy, have been wrong about everything so far. The truth is that at a fundamental level the crisis story they’re trying to sell doesn’t make sense.
(and we know that you would never exhibit any hypocrisy - right?)
You’ve heard the story many times: Supposedly, any day now investors will lose faith in the United States’ ability to come to grips with its budget failures. When they do, there will be a run on Treasury bonds, interest rates will spike, and the U.S. economy will plunge back into recession.
This sounds plausible to many people, because it’s roughly speaking what happened to Greece. But we’re not Greece, and it’s almost impossible to see how this could actually happen to a country in our situation.
For we have our own currency — and almost all of our debt, both private and public, is denominated in dollars. So our government, unlike the Greek government, literally can’t run out of money. After all, it can print the stuff. So there’s almost no risk that the U.S. will default on its debt — I’d say no risk at all if it weren’t for the possibility that Republicans would once again try to hold the nation hostage over the debt ceiling.
But if the U.S. government prints money to pay its bills, won’t that lead to inflation? No, not if the economy is still depressed.
(uh huh - yeah right paul - we know you never hafta go into the supermarkets, pay for med ins, and get to ride aound nyc in the bernank's choppers - so OF COURSE there's 'no inflation')
(and - WAIT FOR IT NOW.....)
Now, it’s true that investors might start to expect higher inflation some years down the road. They might also push down the value of the dollar. Both of these things, however, would actually help rather than hurt the U.S. economy right now: Expected inflation would discourage corporations and families from sitting on cash, while a weaker dollar would make our exports more competitive.
AND WE WOULDNT WANNA HAVE ANYBODY WITH ANY SAVINGS LEFT, NOW WOULD WE???
no sir, we'll all just go out and blow whatevah we have left, so we can continue to subsidize the 'profit margins' and bonuses of yer bankster buddies, over there at the squid
