Comments on: Ben Bernanke's Greatest Challenge
Add a Comment
- Why Are So Many Companies Collapsing So Suddenly?
"Because Alan Greenspan hit the breaks suddenly" according to my teacher Dr. Hugh Ching who has asked his students to visit this web site of Paul Solman.
Former Fed Chairman Greenspan might need new glasses driving. Anytime he sees a boom, he thinks it is a bubble. There is always a long line of cars following him, driving at very high speed because he has removed the speed limit in the free market. As soon as he thinks he has seen a bubble he hits the breaks and causes a big market crash. I would be interested in seeing his driving record, too.
The sudden collapse of many companies in 2007, as well as the collapse of the Internet industry in 2000, before 911, and the collapse of the subprime real estate market, shows that the Federal Reserve, mostly Alan Greenspan (who even tried to blame 911 in his book) causes the crashes. We might also expect that the future recuperation from the injury be painful.
Greenspan follows the instruction of his teacher Milton Friedman, who, however, has WARNED against Fed hitting the breaks, which in the words of Friedman "caused the Japanese stock market skid into a ditch."
The top businessmen in the world are trying to control USA, which controls the world. Even though the businessmen are powerful, the Federal Reserve or Alan Greenspan is even more powerful. The most powerful is the non-violable laws of nature, as taught to me by my post-science teachers.
Thank God we have an absent-minded Fed Chief so that the AIGs did not win in their gamble to control the world finance. One of the most important things for the non-businessmen to know is that the current crisis offers them a rare chance to get back the control of USA from the grip of the businessmen. I and my teachers hope that this time Obama, Bernanke, Summers, Arrow, etc. can put knowledge above money. We believe that the world should be led by good intentions (Obama) and knowledge, but Einstein said once: "We lack everything (knowledge?), but good intentions."
USA should collect all the knowledge for solving the crisis and sell it to the rest of the world to fund the recovery. This is the rational development. I thank you for your consideration.
I am the Chinese editor for post-science. I posted the above in the web site of Paul Solman of NewsHour (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/). Please pardon my inaccuracy and random English. I hope that I can make some contribution to this site, making it as popular as my post at tennis.com > Message Board > Instruction > Jumpulse. Many professional tennis players follow my thread and change their ways as soon as our jumpulse coaches post a new method of play.
### Chien Yi Lee, Student of Post-Science, Inventor of Universal Computer Source Code, 3-15-2009 - Reply to this comment
- It is very hard to take any part of this interview seriously. First of all, it was almost certainly done at Bernanke's instigation to counter the increasing feeling not only among the public, the Chinese, the Europeans, and the Republican party that his course has been wrong, but I believe among a good part of the administration and probably the president, himself. We saw Geithner on Charlie Rose for an hour last week, and Summers on the Sunday morning talk shows. So far from being in the interest of transparency, it smacks of using the Fed chairman's pulpit to spark what in the early 1930's became known as a "sucker's rally."
Then he told us how he is not a Wall St minion, but was born in the equivalent of a log cabin, working his way through Harvard and MIT. Though the right age he did not serve in Vietnam, however, and most wannabe mathematicians do not go into economics by choice, or have in mind either to make a lot of money or do a lot of good. In Bernanke's case it appears he decided that the central bank should be a no-fault insurance co.
If he did not intend to be serving Wall St, he certainly has allowed himself to be used by them. He shares their understanding of the economic system as motivated by the creation and funding of plans requiring credit and usually called by Keynesians like Summers and himself, demand. There is little or no thought given to savings, or the means to supply that credit, rather it is viewed as being wrung from the hands of greedy ppl with a "liquidity preference." Bernanke, honestly, called it printing money. But because our money is debt and because we have so little savings, it is very hard indeed to see how a crisis brought about by ppl being unable to pay their debts, can in any way be improved by the creation of more debt. And yet we are told we must do exactly that by the Keynesians, while later we can consider what can be done to improve the ability to pay. In the Depression and in the many earlier such panics that brought on the creation of the Fed it was immediately assumed that there was not enough credit for "needs of business" rather than too much. But they were thinking of money not as debt, but as some sort of bullion whose value consisted in its scarcity. It is the same attitude that confuses the Dow Jones average with the health of the economy. This was old-fashioned mercantilism, and the Keynesians took it up, along with admiration for Hitler's spending programs. It was a sort of economic appeasement.
The 1929 crash was itself caused in no small part by the mercantilist Progressive permissiveness of the whole business community from the turn of the century onward, and Hoover was one of them, not as he is commonly portrayed by the same ppl nowadays. Bernanke says the Fed in the 1930s made the Depression worse by not printing more money, when clearly it was brought on like all the other crises by having too much money, in this case not only by setting interest rates too low, but also by allowing the Chinese to subsidize our profligacy by buying up the govt bonds used to fund the Iraq war instead of increased taxes. These policies got us into the same kind of corner the Fed got itself into in the late 1920's, and in the spring of 2007 instead of lowering nominal interest rates, he should have, if anything, raised them. The effect of continually printing more money, which the banking system routinely does, is exactly the same as continually running a govt deficit, inflation of asset values and ultimately of essential commodities and other goods or, in other words, decline of the value of the dollar and the standard of living, for all except those holding those assets, commodities and essentials. These are not the same ppl, because besides reducing the buying power of the dollar and creating a moral hazard, i.e., rewarding bad behavior, inflation transfers wealth increasingly to the wealthy and impoverishes the rest around the world, with all of the social problems attendant on that. - Reply to this comment
- That host... *wow*. He's no Mike Wallace that's for sure.
You have the Fed chairman on and you don't ask him WHO owns America's PRIVATE bank? It's only a question people have wanted to know the answer to for eighty YEARS.
How about why they stopped publishing the M3 number?
This guy has "green shoots" growing out of his ears. All those dollars aren't magic beans, there the destruction of the nations wealth via inflation.
A worthless interview. Utterly shameful fluff piece. - Reply to this comment
- The primary mandate of the Federal Reserve and Treasury is to supplicate to Goldman Sachs, in order to minimize any friction in the revolving door.
It is my strongly-held belief that the current crisis is significant enough that that mandate should be put aside in order to serve the broader economy.
Sadly, it is clear that Bernanke does not share that opinion.
We are probably stuck with Bernanke until the end of his term.
Thankfully, I find it to be improbable that Bernanke will be appointed again.
Bernanke inherited this crisis; it is not his fault.
However, it is clear that he is unable to look beyond the thought of his own eventual payday at Goldman Sachs. - Reply to this comment
- When the Fed props up a company, the management who make all the foolish investments does not take the hit. It is the shareholders.
- Reply to this comment
- Dear Ben;
What will you be prepared to do when another terrorist incident occurs within the borders of the USA? I watched your interview with Scott Pelly yesterday. When will someone realize that some method is necessary to repay all of the debt that is being created by just printing money? - Reply to this comment
- Back to the Banks. The top three US Banks as of the first quarter of 2008 were flush in the trading of 165 TRILLION dollars in derivatives. SOURCE: Tables 1, 2, 3, and 4 of the US Treasury Auditor General's Report (shown in millions so add the zeros)- http://taxretirement.com/REPORTS/FEDERALTreasuryReports/BankDerivativesMarch08.pdf
To access this report on the banks, it can be downloaded at - http://cafr1.com/STATES/US-TreasuryReports/BankDerivativesMarch08.pdf
When you view this report scroll down over 2/3rd through the report until you get to the ?Table Section? pages 22-33. As copied from page one of this report: ?Derivatives activity in the U.S. banking system is dominated by a small group of large financial institutions. Five large commercial banks represent 97% of the total industry notional amount, 93% of total trading revenues, and 85% of industry net current credit exposure.?
Here on TABLE 1 on page 22, the numbers are listed in ?millions? so add six zeros to the numbers listed in the tables. JP Morgan Chase comes in at #1 in their derivative holdings with $89,997,271,000,000 (90 Trillion). They expanded their TOTAL CREDIT EXPOSURE TO CAPITAL RATIO to (411.6) TABLE 4 page 25 and it appears picked up a net appreciation of a little over two trillion dollars. Not a bad cash pick up in their pool of funds to buy out their competition at 10c on the dollar of whom were not part of the market manipulation game that got smashed in the derivative ?forced majeure? play? And just think, government then used one-trillion in taxpayer funds to secure up their own casino in which they just crucified all other outside players in.. ( they rape you and then attach your checking account to pay themselves for having done so in the first place stabilizing their own playing field) Now that?s the definition of arrogance!
Any Company or in fact Country can be "made" or "broken" through the use of those government investment funds. China and India in 2007 restricted new US "Government" investments, now several trillion dollars strong in China and India so that US Government investments would not further increase control (take-over) in their own markets. China and India learned by seeing what happened to Mexico then Russia when the US Government investment machine came rolling on in. Now for the reality per the present state of: "Who Owns this Country." The CAFR is the accounting Bible for all local government. It shows the total gross income, investment structure, and also shows the general purpose operating budget as is "selectively" created by your local government. I note that the selectively created operating budget usually amounts to one-third of the gross income and is where 100% of tax income is shown. The other two-thirds of the gross income is shown only in the CAFR report and the other two-thirds is derived from return on investments and enterprise operations of which said enterprise operations will have their own CAFR or Annual Financial Report listing their own investments and gross income separate from the local government they are under. (many games are played here) DUE TO THE MONEY INVOLVED and the financial fortunes that this money is, has, and will create for the inside players. The people are considered by these inside players to be nothing more than resources to be managed, controlled, and marginalized if the are contrary to the inside players own self-serving intent of wealth creation. They will continue doing what they do until they are stopped, and as required, stopped with true applied force. - Reply to this comment
- Has anyone at 60 Seconds looked in the Compound Annual Financial Report .
The "Biggest Piece" of the Puzzle
The CAFR is the "Comprehensive Annual Financial Report" for all local governments in the United States with over 84,000 individual Annual Financial Reports completed each year by local government. School Districts, Cities, Counties, Enterprise Authorities, and Government Pension funds complete a CAFR each year starting with the first in the year 1945 and yet not a peep from the syndicated media, organized education, the political parties. Is Silence is Golden true in this respect?
I think you will find a CAFR Image search on Google very informative as you scroll through the covers of different CAFRs shown.
Also the Google group search for CAFR has some very informative writings shown and there are 78,000 results.
The bailout of the banks and financial institutions gives the impression to the people of a government run amok throwing trillions out the window as if they are crack addicts eager to keep the fixes coming. This is the impression shown by emotion but it is not the case in practice. In practice government is shrewdly, methodically, and with intent are protecting their own investments and the structure in analogy is that of a fixed international casino for government's behalf that the public is not even aware of and that the true beneficiaries thereof after having a masterfully managed intentional void created in their own comprehension being government's own massive participation in "the take". Non-tax gross income for government which has been separated from the general purpose operating budgets that are "selective" groupings of government service agencies spoon fed the people almost exclusively reflect where tax income is collected and spent. Investment and enterprise income for that same government entity is reflected in the corresponding Annual Financial Report or as government after adding one word calls it the: Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) - Reply to this comment
- This is why the hopeium is flowing. China is extremely nervous about all of the U.S. debt it holds. Barry attempted to alleviate it?s fears, which are shared with many foreign investors, by pumping up the U.S. and sending a message to the G-20 that America is the best place to invest. It remains to see if the world buys it.China reads, and knows that the Fed IS basically printing money, which will continue to devalue the dollar. Great con I am sure David Rockefeller , Brezinski along with all the Builderberger brethren are all proud of you Ben you followed the directions of the Fheuer so as to get the market happy again drinking the Kool Aide and now that they have come to 60 Minutes kumbyya meeting they will place their bets in the markets only to be taken for a ride once again.
- Reply to this comment
- The Great Recession, as the IMF calls it, has severed a crucial link in the global economy. U.S. consumer spending has been the main engine of growth for the whole world, but that spending was based largely on phantom gains in asset prices, inflated by cheap money from abroad, that has now been destroyed.
- Reply to this comment
