Federal Reserve: Lazy Americans Responsible for Economic Malaise

America’s employment participation rate is at a 40 year low.  We haven’t seen this kind of malaise since the Carter administration.  But according to the Federal Reserve, it’s not their policies, or the Obama administrations fault for this eye popping statistic; its lazy Americans who refuse to get off their asses and work.

The decrease in labor force participation among prime-age individuals has been driven mostly by the share who say they currently don't want a job. As of December 2014, prime-age labor force participation was 2.4 percentage points below its prerecession average. Of that, 0.5 percentage point is accounted for by a higher share who indicate they currently want a job; 2 percentage points can be attributed to a higher share who say they currently don't want a job.

Zero Hedge has a litany the Federal Reserve didn’t address.  Here are two of them:

Nothing about millions of aging, 55 and over, Americans refusing to retire or quit their job simply because they have no return on their savings to fall back on thank to the Fed's ZIRP, thus keeping the labor pipeline clogged and preventing younger Americans from getting promoted and achieving better paying jobs.

Nothing about a Millennial generation encumbered with $1 trillion in debt, that is so terrified of its job prospects and having to pay down its debt, it choose instead to keep rolling and piling on to this debt by remaining in college indefinitely

Nothing is the Federal Reserve’s fault.  They’re an infallible institution.  It has to be the fault of lazy Americans.  Yeah, that has to be it.

Source:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-02/they-just-dont-want-job-feds-stunning-explanation-why-946-million-americans-are-out-

Central Bankers Lost Pea in QE Shell Game

The world’s central bankers have lost their pea.  The big QE shell game has been exposed as a fraud.  It’s only a matter of time for the fallout.  China’s currency devaluation is just the beginning of what portends to be a global financial meltdown.  Here is an excerpt from Zero Hedge:

The perhaps most pivotal importance of China is that it was the world’s latest financial hope.The yuan devaluation shatters that hope once and for all. The global economy looks a lot more bleak for it, even if many people already didn’t believe official growth numbers anymore.

Because we’ve reached the end of the line, the game changes. Of course there will be additional attempts at stimulus, but China’s central bank has de facto conceded that its measures have failed. The yuan devaluations, three days in a row now, mean the central People’s Bank of China has, openly though reluctantly, acknowledged its QE has failed, and quite dramatically at that. They just hope you won’t notice, and try to bring it on with a positive spin.

Central banks are not “beginning” to lose control, they lost control a long time ago. The age of central bank omnipotence has “left and gone away” like Joltin’ Joe. Omnipotence has been replaced by impotence.

This admission will reverberate across the globe. China is simply that big. It may take a while longer for other central bankers to admit to their own failures (though ‘failures’, in view of the wealth transfer, is a relative term here), but it won’t really matter much. One is enough.

What will happen from here on in will be decided by how, where and in what amounts deleveraging will take place. This will of necessity be a chaotic process.

Source:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-14/weve-reached-end-line-now-game-changes

America is Overthrown, Abandon the System

H/T:  NCRenegade

Jim Rogers: Central Banks Are Making a Terrible Mistake

Central Banks Are Making a Terrible Mistake - Jim Rogers

Financial Calamity - It's Coming

H/T:  NC Renegade

Rick Santelli: All Roads Lead to the Fed

H/T:  NC Renegade

U.S. Economy is Chasing the Great White Whale

The Commerce Department made its final revision for the last quarter, and it isn’t good.  The only factor that seems to be keeping the U.S. economy afloat is the flooding of dollars by the Federal Reserve.  And sooner or later that whale is going to have to be harpooned.

Gross domestic product -- the broadest measure of economic activity -- rose at a mere 1.8% annual pace between January and March, marking a sharp downward revision from the 2.4% pace reported by the Commerce Department last month.

The government revises its GDP figures several times, but economists weren't expecting such a dramatic change from the third estimate.

"This was certainly unexpected and, I believe, rare," said Jennifer Lee, senior economist with BMO Capital Markets, referring to the revision.

The weaker figures came primarily from revisions to consumer spending, exports and commercial real estate.

 

The longer the Obama’s are on vacation, the better off we are.

 

Source:  http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/26/news/economy/gdp-revisions/

Is Big Health Insurance the Next Government Sponsored Cartel?

Is big health insurance on track to being the next government sponsored cartel?  Many believe the end game is to phase out private insurance companies in lieu of a single-payer system, and for all practical purposes it does seem that way.  But, the way Obamacare is currently setup, these state exchanges would provide insurance from a pool of preferred companies at discount rates, or subsidize those who can’t afford market priced premiums.  Can anyone say Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac?

Health insurance companies see gathering clouds on the horizon.  The U.S. has an aging baby boomer population who will need plenty of care.  At the same time they need new customers to offset the cost.  The numbers don’t add up.  They need to force healthy, young people onto their rolls.  And who else can be a better enforcer/protector than the federal government?

As it stands now, a handful of health insurance companies have “most favored status” in individual states.  Blue Cross and Blue Shield dominate 44 of these markets.  As a result, they are facing class-action lawsuits for price fixing and stifling competition.  The federal government has also investigated BCBS for violating antitrust laws.  All of these problems could go away if Big Health Insurance could replicate what the banks did during the Progressive Era.

At the turn of the 20^th century, big bankers and progressive politicians wanted a central bank.  The country had disbanded two in the past.  But that wasn’t about to stop them.  The bankers wanted to stifle competition and establish a safety net; the politicians wanted an unlimited credit line, hence, the Federal Reserve.  And we’ve all seen the intended results after the 2008 crash.  Big banks we’re bailed out while the taxpayers got screwed.

Could the Progressives model for banking actually be the endgame for big health insurance?  I believe they’re well on their way.

 

Source:  http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/02/08/3842399/lawsuit-blue-cross-stifles-competition.html

'Fiscal Cliff' Doesn't Surprise Santelli

Watch all the way through.  An analyst discusses how the Fed has distorted the prices of treasuries with its reserve purchases.  Our situation is much worse than is being reported.

H/T:  NC Renegade

Fed is Building an Economy by Counterfeiting

H/T: NC Renegade

Got Cronies?

Americans Lose 40% of Their Wealth in Recession

What do you get, when you cross loose monetary policy from the Federal Reserve with government sanctioned success? A big ass bubble! And that’s exactly what happened to us in 2008. The cards came crashing down, and all the players responsible blamed everyone but themselves for this disaster. Here is a report from one of the instigators of our economic crisis, as reported by the Washington Post:

The recent recession wiped out nearly two decades of Americans’ wealth, according to government data released Monday, with ­middle-class families bearing the brunt of the decline.

The Federal Reserve said the median net worth of families plunged by 39 percent in just three years, from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010. That puts Americans roughly on par with where they were in 1992.

The data represent one of the most detailed looks at how the economic downturn altered the landscape of family finance. Over a span of three years, Americans watched progress that took almost a generation to accumulate evaporate. The promise of retirement built on the inevitable rise of the stock market proved illusory for most. Homeownership, once heralded as a pathway to wealth, became an albatross.

Americans are back to 1992 status? That’s weird. Wasn’t it in 1993, when Bill Clinton and the Democrats started their housing initiatives? Isn’t that around the time James Johnson of Fannie Mae fame began his schemes with that G.S.E.? Could this just be a coincidence?

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/fed-americans-wealth-dropped-40-percent/2012/06/11/gJQAlIsCVV_story.html

Is China Betting an International Currency Will Replace U.S. Dollar?

China’s state owned PetroChina has surpassed Exxon/Mobile in oil production. The Associated Press reported the following:

PetroChina (PTR) announced Thursday that it pumped 2.4 million barrels a day last year, passing Exxon by 100,000 barrels. The company has grown rapidly the last decade by squeezing more from China's aging oil fields and outspending Western companies to buy petroleum reserves in countries including Canada, Iraq and Qatar. It's motivated by a need to lock up as much oil as possible.

Considering China’s investments, you have to take a look at their bottom line, which is not impressive:

In 2009 and 2010, PetroChina's profit margins for its exploration and production business were only about two-thirds that of Exxon Mobil's. Its stock price has climbed less than 1%, in the past year, compared with a 3.7% rise in the stock of Exxon Mobil.

"You have to ask yourself: What is the purpose of PetroChina?" Bellinski says. "It is to fuel China. That's it. Although they're a public company, I'm very skeptical that they have any interest in shareholder value creation."

Well, that’s one motive. But is there another? Could the U.S. economy and the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve have anything to do with China’s acquisition in commodities such as oil and gold? Since the formation of OPEC and the demise of the gold standard, oil has been pegged to the dollar; it has remained the world’s reserve currency. And it’s no secret that Russia, Iran, Venezuela and China have all openly called for an international currency to replace the dollar.

Is China playing the long game? Are they betting that the asinine policies of the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve will bring about the demise of the dollar? Will an international currency replace the green back? Here is an excerpt from a Mises Institute article published in 2009:

Skeptics regarding the rise of China as a major economic power doubt that China can profit from a weaker US dollar through a stronger yuan or develop a sufficient domestic consumer market quickly enough to offset reduced exports. However, while China contributes to US consumption as an export-dependent supplier, as well as a financier, their exposure to losses resulting from a declining US dollar is limited. A stronger yuan would mean that, after a period of adjustment, China would import more goods and services and that, in real terms, wages of Chinese workers would increase, thus supporting a higher standard of living. What is more important is that a stronger yuan, implicitly backed by growing gold reserves (not to mention by a large and fully modern navy), is exactly what will guarantee China's oil supply.

The struggling US economy, burdened with excessive levels of debt, cannot support a sustained rise of the US dollar against the currencies of growing economies in Asia. Growing demand for resources, especially oil, as well as gold, contrasted with the inflationary policies of the US, will maintain the upward trajectory of commodity prices measured in US dollars indefinitely. In the near term, the end of the petrodollar standard will cause a sharp decline in the value of the US dollar and a marked increase in the prices of oil and of gold measured in US dollars.

Today’s gas prices are a direct result of the inflationary policies of the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve. How much longer will the international community tolerate the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency? Time will tell.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/story/2012-03-29/oil-production-petrochina-exxonmobil/53851876/1

https://mises.org/Community/blogs/hera/archive/2009/10/23/china-s-dragons-oil-gold-and-the-us-dollar.aspx

The Federal Reserve Bailed Out Foreign Banks

The Masons have nothing over the Federal Reserve when it comes to secrecy. The leviathan does its best to keep its records closed. The Feds argument is that their transactions with other financial institutions could harm that banks reputation and stock prices. However, Bloomberg News was able to discover just how badly our banks were in trouble:

“Data gleaned from 29,346 pages of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and from other Fed databases of more than 21,000 transactions make clear for the first time how deeply the world’s largest banks depended on the U.S. central bank to stave off cash shortfalls,” write Bloomberg News’s Bradley Keoun and Phil Kuntz.

The Federal Reserve didn’t just bailout our banks; they also bailed out over 30 foreign ones as well:

The Royal Bank of Scotland took $84.5 billion, the most of any foreign borrower, while Swiss bank UBS got $77.2 billion and Germany’s Hypo Real Estate Holding received $28.7 billion in loans. Belgium’s biggest bank, Dexia, and France’s Societe Generale also took in loans.

Of course, American firms also got in on the publicly funded loans.

The largest borrower was Morgan Stanley, which received as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion and Bank of America $91.4 billion. In comparison, TARP, a $700 billion bank bailout fund that was passed by Congress in late 2008, gave $45 billion each to Citigroup and Bank of America and only $10 billion to Morgan Stanley.

Of course the Federal Reserve claims that they didn’t lose any money:

The Federal Reserve claims that it has not lost money on these emergency loans and that, in fact, it has netted $13 billion in interest from these programs from August 2007 through December 2009.

My question is how are we to know that when they refuse to open their books?

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61822.html#ixzz1VuGqmaDW

Americans Reliving Carter Era Sentiment

They say Americans have a short memory. And I’m beginning to believe that is true. We are now reliving the Carter era. That is something I hoped we would never experience again:

(Reuters) - U.S. consumer sentiment worsened sharply in early August, falling to the lowest level in more than three decades, after retail sales posted the biggest gain in four months in July.

High unemployment, stagnant wages, gridlock in Congress, and a stock market slump all contributed to a consumer mood that was as grim as when Jimmy Carter was President during the recession of 1980 and interest rates were more than 20 percent.

We haven’t reached the high interest rates yet. But Bernanke and the Feds are doing their damnedest to destroy the value of the dollar.

Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/08/12/uk-usa-economy-idUKTRE77B36G20110812

Central Banking and The Wizard of Oz

I don’t know how many times I’ve watched the Wizard of Oz; it is too numerous to calculate. I thought it was just some fanciful story for children; that was until I read Hamilton’s Curse by Thomas J. Dilorenzo. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, but I was dumbstruck by the hypotheses that the Wizard of Oz was actually about the dangers of centralized banking.

Mr. Dilorenzo is not the only one who has made this analogy, as he states in his book:

Your author is not the first to note the similarity between central bankers and the Wizard of Oz. L. Frank Baum’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, on which the famous movie was based, was a commentary on the growing monetary problems of the late nineteenth century that were created by centralized banking. As the economists Mark Thornton and Robert B. Ekelund explain:


The Emerald (green) City is Washington and the Wizard of Oz (ounce of gold) is the president, who manipulates the population on behalf of the big-city banks. The Tin Man, Scarecrow, and Munchkins represent different groups of people while the Cowardly Lion represents William Jennings Bryan [an opponent of the gold standard] and Dorothy stands for “everyman,” the average, good natured citizen, who does not have a clue about the underlying causes of the problems of society. The Yellow Brick Road is the gold standard…Baum’s story parallels the American banking system where the government and big banks controlled the economy in support of the industrial and financial interests in the East to the detriment of farmers, labor, and rural America, especially in the South and West.


Baum’s book was written after only three decades of nationalized banking; the creation of the Fed in 1913 produced a system even more centralized than the one the Lincoln administration had recreated.

Well, what do you know? I will never be able to watch that movie again without thinking of Ben Bernanke pulling the levers behind the curtain.

Federal Reserve to Tax the World

The Federal Reserve is about to impose a tax upon the whole world through Bernanke’s quantitative easing scheme. Germany and other countries have been outspoken on the U.S. debt and possible currency crisis:


BERLIN - German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble lashed out Friday at the United States' move of printing huge money to stimulate its slow recovery, saying that these policies would not help but create more troubles.


"With all due respect, my feeling is that the United States is at a loss," Schaeuble told reporters in Berlin, two days after the US Federal Reserve (the Fed) announced it would purchase 600 billion dollars of long-term government bonds by mid-2011, in a new round of "quantitative easing".


"Saying now that we once again make an additional $600 billion available will not solve any problem." Schaeuble said. The difficulties faced by Americans had nothing to do with " liquidity drain."



“Helicopter Bob” Bernanke should take the advice of Germany’s Finance Minister. After all, I’m sure Mr.Schaeble remembers what his parents and grandparents went through with the Weimar Republic.

Celebrating a Monster: The Federal Reserve and Jekyll Island

This past weekend the Master’s of the United States of America journeyed to the birth place of a monster that was created on Jekyll Island, Georgia a hundred years ago. That monster is the Federal Reserve. Today’s bureaucrats celebrated the anniversary of this creation in the open, unlike their forbearers.


Bertie Charles Forbes, founder of Forbes Magazine, described secretive nature of this cabal:

Picture a party of the nation's greatest bankers stealing out of New York on a private railroad car under cover of darkness, stealthily riding hundred of miles South, embarking on a mysterious launch, sneaking onto an island deserted by all but a few servants, living there a full week under such rigid secrecy that the names of not one of them was once mentioned, lest the servants learn the identity and disclose to the world this strangest, most secret expedition in the history of American finance. I am not romancing; I am giving to the world, for the first time, the real story of how the famous Aldrich currency report, the foundation of our new currency system, was written... The utmost secrecy was enjoined upon all. The public must not glean a hint of what was to be done. Senator Aldrich notified each one to go quietly into a private car of which the railroad had received orders to draw up on an unfrequented platform. Off the party set. New York's ubiquitous reporters had been foiled... Nelson (Aldrich) had confided to Henry, Frank, Paul and Piatt that he was to keep them locked up at Jekyll Island, out of the rest of the world, until they had evolved and compiled a scientific currency system for the United States, the real birth of the present Federal Reserve System, the plan done on Jekyll Island in the conference with Paul, Frank and Henry... Warburg is the link that binds the Aldrich system and the present system together. He more than any one man has made the system possible as a working reality



After the panic of 1907, New York’s biggest bankers were wary of another financial crisis. They wanted an apparatus that would put a strangle hold on smaller banks and at the same time insulate them from the huge losses in a bust cycle; but more importantly, an entity that would give them – the big financial institutions – the run of the banking industry. The only way they could accomplish this was through the federal government. The people were wary of a national bank. We already had two others that failed miserably. No, the big bankers needed something more deceptive. They needed the appearance of a decentralized banking system; hence, The Federal Reserve.

So, the bureaucrats meet again at the place where the nation’s future was discussed in secret. And this conference is no different than the one a hundred years ago: invitation only.

Video H/T:  Randy's Right

Source:  http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2010/11/05/5119687.htm
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rep/fed-returns-to-jekyll-island.html

The Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department is Committing Financial Incest

We Americans instinctively know something is wrong. Ben Bernanke declared that the Federal Reserve would never monetize our debt. It is happening now.

Rick Santelli is spot on. We could become just like Argentina.