The Fed: What they are doing, why you want it to work and why it will fail

Posted by Ray on December 6, 2009 under Main | 2 Comments to Read

I have been a vocal critic of the Federal Reserve over the past decade as they have created this current mess and now demand credit for cleaning it up. I liken their current demand for praise to the following: Ben spilled a glass of cherry Kool-Aid on his white carpet then quickly ran over to my house finding my most expensive white cashmere sweater, taking back to his house and cleaning up his carpet. Those of us understanding the staining reaction of Kool-Aid know that his carpet is destroyed and my very expensive sweater is also destroyed, but this guy wants praise for fixing the problem even though the issues are still right there in front of us.

Ben deserves absolutely no credit for fixing anything and deserves to be fired along with having history branding him, and Greenspan, branding them as the two who destroyed the financial system. Of course there are a whole slew of Congresspersons and economists who  deserve to go down with them, they are too numerous to name, but I am sure you can guess the top 10 or 20 off the top of your head as they are still wildly popular and in office today. None of this changes the fact that I know exactly what Ben is trying to do and, this will be a shocker to most of you, I do support what he needs to do, but I have so little faith in the man that I know he will fail. My knowing he will fail is why I criticize him so.

We can all agree that the efforts of the government over the previous 12 months have benefits one group of Americans, bankers. Thinking that any of the actions have benefited anyone else is ridiculous to say the least. Your credit card rates have increased, your banking fees went up, people lost their jobs, credit is contracting, income for workers is down, taxes are heading up and banks are making record profits and bonuses that is a rather lopsided list. Ben is not oblivious to this fact, but what he was and is trying to do is create inflation. However, the Fed can create money at the stroke of a few keys on the computer keyboard, but what the government cannot do, ever, is create credit.

Without credit or credit demand, which there is very little of, there cannot be inflation. Another term for this is money velocity and, again, we can all agree that there is no money velocity happening as bank balance sheets are swelling at the Fed right now. This is why I firm believed that the government will open term lending facilities directly to the public or small business in the near future, which will be a huge mistake, in my opinion, because we will go from massive deflation to massive inflation overnight, but that is for another article and let’s focus on what Ben is trying to do.

We know that Ben knows what he and Congress have done is wildly unfair to the public and his inflation creation is his gift to you. What he is trying to do, through devaluing our currency, is raise your pay by weakening the currency through the printing press. By doing this your pay will increase, but your debts will remain the same and as long as he leaves interest rates at 0-.25% your debt servicing costs will also not spiral out of control. This was also taken care of for unsecured debt with the credit card reform act passed earlier this year, is this all making sense yet?

Now, this is not all for you, don’t be silly, this is also for Uncle Sam as well. We have $12T in total US debt, $7T in US treasuries with $2.8T maturing next year. We will also have to spend between $1-1.6T in deficit spending next year as well which means we, the US, will have to raise some $3.8-$4.4T in treasury sales next year, that has never been done before. The US has also restructured most of our debt to mature in <10 years on a rolling basis, I have no idea why other than creditors demand shorter maturities, which is scary. Regardless, the US cannot raise interest rates to a meaningful level ever again. Let me repeat that, the US cannot ever raise interest rates to a meaningful level ever again.

I can hear you saying that I am nuts or do not know what I am talking about. Maybe, but guess again. At the current rate of spending, not including health care, within 10 years at the current interest rate levels the debt servicing costs will be so great that we will not be able to spend money on anything else. It is not me saying this, it is mathematics based on demographics, projected unemployment rate and a bunch of other major issues. What I am getting to is the only way out for the US is to inflate our money supply, exactly what Ben is trying to do now. Who cares that we are the reserve currency, it doesn’t matter as everyone has accepted that this is our only solution or accept a US default on our debt. That is the truth and there is no strong dollar policy, that exists in media sound bites to make people like me happy, that is it.

Back to Ben and you. If Ben is successful, which is doubtful, then he will inflate our way out of this mess. You will earn more money and your debt will remain flat which means you will be able to pay it off in no time at all. However, new debt will be hard to obtain and terms will be very unfriendly as the administration has made rate increases for lenders difficult. Here is the real catch, while the Fed will not be able to raise interest rates, the market will demand much higher rates on government debt so kiss that 30 year bull market in treasuries goodbye. This will translate into higher rates on other debt across the spectrum. Basically, credit will continue to contract at a continued record pace for consumers and, in my opinion, high yield debt defaults will be through the roof.

With all of that said, you want Ben to succeed, as strange as that sounds. You want him to implement this plan and then pull it in on a timely basis because that means banks will be made whole and the consumer, yes, something for the consumer, will also be made whole. Not only that, but it will allow the government to continue down its reckless path of spending and funding its idiotic projects without directly taxing you to death. Notice I said directly taxing you to death? Because you have to remember if Ben pulls this off your energy bill, on top of and cap and trade BS, will go through the roof, your food bill will go through the roof and any other commodity based purchases will be sky high which is a hidden tax. All of those purchases have a hidden tax that you are unaware of, they are always buried in the small print, but nevertheless they are there and fund the government especially on the state and local levels. In this case, the higher the prices, the higher the tax revenue which will fund the local, state and federal governments without taxing you directly. Don’t blame me, you all voted for these people.

Never fear though, this plan by Ben is failing and will fail. As I said earlier, the Fed can print all the money it wants, but it cannot create credit no matter what it does. That is our issue right now, not only do banks not want to extend credit, but no one wants credit. Without extending credit we do not get the important inflationary impact of money velocity which makes Ben’s plan useless. Never fear though, President Obama and Tiny Tim is here to mess everything up as I bet they will announce a public lending facility very soon to “initiate job creation” with leftover TARP funds. This will not only create some perverted unforeseen form of inflation that no one has ever seen before, but it will skew all sorts of numbers as well. I cannot wait to see how the employment report looks after these new programs are announced!

Even if I am wrong about Obama and Tim the Fed will fail at what it is trying to do, I am sure f it. The organization has failed at everything it has tried to do previously and no one should have faith that it can succeed in doing what it is trying to do. Ben tried to talk the Japanese into monetizing their debt in 2003, that made sense. Ben applauded Greenspan’s cheap money policy in 2003 and said he should keep it longer, what? He did not see the asset bubble building when you could get a $500K no document, nothing down mortgage, are you kidding me? I am sorry, but if you did not see this coming with that type of garbage out there you are an idiot, but this guy is running the Fed and says no one can see bubbles coming. The irony is the market is the next big bubble to pop because of his cheap money policy, for the love of God, it trades with the USD/EURO pair, that is the sign of a bubble!

If we look at the Fed’s balance sheet it is impossible for them to drain the liquidity in an orderly fashion. Banks are basically refusing to reverse repo out the liquidity, why would they want to? I wouldn’t when I am making riskless money by borrowing at .13% and loaning it to the government at 1% for a year. Not to mention that the banking system itself, because they will have to bring their SIV’s on balance sheets, are very insolvent in reality so the Fed cannot bring in the liquidity for only God knows how long. Frankly, with the current US debt load and projected debt load, combined with the Fed’s balance sheet we are not getting the inflationary impact Ben wants. We are getting the worst part of it, a falling dollar (Just a note here, the dollar was much worse under Bush before the crisis than under Obama, so cut the guy some slack there) without wage inflation. That means you pay more for gas and food while earning less, not a good thing.

In my opinion, Ben has failed as Fed Chairman and should go back to teaching and that is even questionable. There is no way his plan will work because there is simply no demand for credit out there. Americans are in the middle of a secular shift to frugality and not willing to expand their balance sheets. This is especially true with unemployment ballooning up to where it is and sure to get worse, unless you believe the last employment report (if you did believe the report than please contact me for some excellent investment opportunities in Pakistan and Afghanistan). I hope his plan does work because the consumer could use the wage inflation to pay down their debt, but given the last reports about consumer credit, fat chance. Companies desperately need credit, but they are closing shop so fast that banks do not want the risk. Basically, if you are IBM, you got credit, but if you are Ma and Pa Kettle, sorry, too risky.

The worst part of it all is that while Ben is trying to devalue the dollar to create inflation, which is dumb without any money velocity, he will lose control of the process. When FDR did this in the past, which is what Obama likens himself to, he had one very important thing going in his favor, the gold standard which allowed him to set the devaluation amount. Obama and Ben do not have that luxury. This time there are 100,000 trades around the world that will pile onto a short sale of the USD driving the value down to nothing. This is the primary issue that has me concerned, they ultimately have zero control over the devaluation process. What can they do to stop the devaluation process, print more money? That makes the problem worse, not better. Luckily, for now, we have deflation in the US with an international problem of devaluation so we simply exported our problem, thanks China.

Deflation is here to stay, get used to it. High unemployment is here to stay, get used to it. The federal government will continually interfere and make things worse, get used to it. We will see some funky things happen from some very self important, politically motivated individuals that will create problems we have never seen before, so be prepared. The Fed will fail in its attempt to fix what is created, but you knew that. Wait for gold to come down in price a little more and buy a ton of it because while we will not get inflation like Ben wants, we will get massive dollar devaluation that will eventually come home to roost and it will not be pretty when it comes home.

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The Fed Fuming over the Audit the Fed Bill

Posted by Ray on November 28, 2009 under Main | Be the First to Comment

Uncle Ben is fighting like no tomorrow to kill the Fed bill in the court of public opinion using the same tactics that the banks used last fall. Basically he is saying if you audit us you risk the entire financial health of the US economy. This is the equivalent of putting a gun to your own head and saying; “if you don’t let me go I fill pull the trigger!” You know what Ben, go for it because what you have done is far worse than the financial system imploding on itself all at once. Instead you opted to destroy our currency system so pull the trigger, you will not be missed.

It is beyond me how an audit 180 days AFTER an FOMC meeting would jeopardize the independence of the Fed in any way. I fail to see how the US taxpayer, the money the Fed is playing with, would be hurt by knowing what Ben is taking in as collateral at the discount window. I fail to see how asking for the Treasury Secretaries signature before issuing $500B in currency swaps would be a “bad thing.” However, Uncle Ben says otherwise and the end of his world is at hand, so I hope.

Even though the likes of Mishkin, Steve Liesman and a host of other idiotic economic commentator’s say the Fed will lose its independence and it will be politicized, I am sorry, but $1T in QE in MBS, and how much in treasury QE again, later and you are already politicized. In fact the mere appointment by the President of the United States makes pretty much makes the Chairmanship of the Fed a political position, kind of. The bottom line is that the Fed is a political machine, it has lobbyists for crying out loud!

What Uncle Ben does not want you to know is what he and his cronies have been doing for the past year and you know what? I am not sure even I want to know. What I do know is that since the secret creation of the Fed in 1913, read The Creatures of Jekyll Island, and the late night passage of the Federal Reserve Act with some 3 affirmative votes on it the US has had more crisis than at any point in our history and our dollar has lost 96% of its buying power. Those are facts the Fed denies, but they are true. What the Fed likes to point out are banking panics prior to its creation, but if we made the Treasury the lender of last resort problem solved.

However, did we ever have a Great Depression before the Fed was created? Did we ever have these massive asset booms so close together, see junk bonds in the 1980’s, internet stocks 1990’s, mortgage crisis 2000’s, before the Fed? Did we ever have stagflation, see the 1970’s, before the Fed? Did we have our currency basically become worthless, except in times of war, see Revolutionary War Continental Notes, the Civil War Greenbacks, before the Fed? The answer to all those questions are NO.

I am not saying the Fed does not have a purpose, it is perfect for printing pieces of paper and wasting trillions of dollars per year, but I thought that was Congress’s job. The Federal Reserve system is old, antiquated and needs to be replaced now, not later. It operates in complete secrecy and is accountable to no one, think about that for a minute. It is more powerful and secretive than the CIA, but the CIA has oversight committees, but the Fed really does not. Yes, the Fed has superficial GAO audits now, but it is an operational audit, yes your operations work, that is the extent of the audit. Wow, I wish the IRS would be that lenient on me if I was audited, yeah, we see you made money and filed the proper paperwork, thanks! However, in real life that is not how things work and the Fed needs to be accountable for its actions.

After all, I have yet to hear Greenspan or Bernanke officially take responsibility for blowing up the economy yet. In fact, I still hear those wonderful words, “the sub-prime crisis is contained” and everything is fine. Either Bernanke is a complete moron or he just relies on old economic models that clearly do not work, either way the Fed deserves oversight. Considering this administration has taken it upon itself to declare itself the “transparent administration” and has also taken it upon itself to make most of the decisions for the American people , or risk imprisonment, why should the Fed not be held to the same standards as the rest of us?

Clearly they are no smarter than the rest of us as they missed the greatest asset bubble in the history of man hit them head on. Not only that, but their response was to expand the same policy that created that enormous asset bubble for “an extended period of time” or forever. In other words, they missed one huge bubble only to create an even larger bubble via the USD carry trade or dollar devaluation, take you pick, and they deserve no oversight? To make matters worse, if you read the Lehman bankruptcy documents you begin to see an ugly picture of the Fed, they were taking stocks as collateral at the discount window, stocks! That is against their charter and it is also no wonder why the market goes straight up if the Fed is taking stocks as collateral at the discount window.

This leads to a bigger question, what other junk is the Fed taking at the window? CDO’s, derivatives, options, junk bonds or what? We don’t know. Considering we, the US citizen, is backstopping their reckless behavior so JP Morgan and Goldman can receive billions in bonuses, we deserve to know what is going on. After all, the American people are the ones suffering, not Wall Street or Uncle Ben who are all gainfully employed and living off of our generosity via our annual tax bill. We are the ones who end up bearing the responsibility for all the executive decisions made in secret, or in public by our wonderful elected officials, so we deserve to know what is going on. You, Uncle Ben, have done your damage to us, so while we may not like what we see and while you may end up embarrassed at what we find, so what. You should have thought about that before you secretly bailed out all those insolvent banks and began destroying our dollar for fun.

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