Tag Archives: Ben Bernanke

QE ad infinitum

Last week, Ben Bernanke announced that the FED would continue to inflate the dollar on an ongoing basis for “as long as it takes.”

As I’ve said before, purchases of securities by the FED amounts to the injection of counterfeit money into the economy under color of law. It’s bad enough when FED purchases are limited to federal government securities. In that case, it is federal budget deficits that are enabled. Now, the FED is buying, at inflated prices, “junk” (securities of little worth) from banks, financial institutions, and speculators, enriching those who caused the bubble in the first place, and enabling more of the same.

This is just another move by the banking and financial elite to take ownership of the entire world.

A recent article in ZNet by Jack Rasmus concludes,

The significance of the Fed’s QE3 move therefore is there will continue to be free money in unlimited amounts to banks and investors to hoard or to speculate and play with, while it’s cuts in spending and disposable income for the rest of us. But ‘QEs for them’ and ‘Austerity for the rest of us’ will mean continued economic slowdown and recession, accelerating in Europe, more slowly coming in the US, and increasingly on the horizon for even Asia.

That continued economic slowdown—in the US and globally—will make the private banking system in turn even more unstable, regardless of how many FED QEs are introduced.  So why do governments continue with ‘austerity’ policies on the fiscal side that ultimately negate QE policies on the monetary side?  Because QEs are more profitable to bankers and investors. And those bankers and investors believe if they can just hold out in the short run—with the government and central bank making up for their short term losses with trillions of ‘free money’ injections, in the longer run the capitalist system will self-correct itself on its own. But that proposition—i.e. bail out investors and bankers and let the markets do the rest—is economic ‘ideology’ and not economic fact or science.

As governments, bankers, and financial elites continue to abuse the currency, the economy, and our political institutions, it becomes ever more urgent that people cooperate in organizing new structures of exchange and finance that empower them sufficiently to meet their basic needs and build “the Butterfly Society” to save the planet and provide a dignified life for everyone. — t.h.g.

Who is the world’s most powerful person?

Congressman Ron Paul says it’s TIME magazine person-of-the-year, FED Chairman Ben Bernanke. While I agree that  Bernanke is more powerful than the President, he’s only the front man and a hired hand for the real power — the banking elite and hidden oligarchy who’s agenda is to arrogate to themselves ever more power and control.

The level of fraud, theft, and expropriation being suffered by the American people today has reached such astounding proportions as to be almost laughable. The US is on the verge of financial ruin, civil unrest, and political despotism.

As that drama unfolds, it is crucial that people remain calm and behave in ways that express their highest ideals. It is time to cooperate and share and organize ourselves into mutual support associations to provide all of us with the things we need to thrive as we transition to “the Butterfly economy.” The following prayer from long-time friend and colleague, Rev. John Papworth, expresses very well the kind of sentiment that should inspire us. – t.h.g.

LORD make me an instrument of Thy war against evil;

Where there is vandalism against Thy creation,

Let me campaign to stop it.

Where there is sabotage of Thy genetic ordainings,

Let me fight like hell to prevent it and to safeguard Thy works.

Where there is conspiracy of boardroom greed to dominate and destroy Thy creation,

Let me join with others to wage an unremitting struggle to oppose it.

Where giant political and money forces combine to control local neighbourhood life,

Let me be quick to affirm the overriding need for strong community power so that Thy moral laws may prevail.

Where there is passivity, deference and conformism to the giant powers of darkness which are degrading society and its individual members,

Let me be a powerful witness to oppose them.

DIVINE MASTER, grant that I may not so much seek to live a quiet life as to be in the vanguard of those who would enhance life, not so much to grab as to give, not to evade my social obligations as to shoulder them, not to be afraid of power as to be imbued with courage to control it with others for worthy ends.

For it is in striving to act with love that we affirm love, and in devoting ourselves to noble causes we are redeemed, and in giving ourselves utterly to the service of truth, beauty and the well-being of our neighbours, we rise to the life immortal.  AMEN.

(Based on an old, mush loved, prayer of St. Francis of Assisi).

JOHN PAPWORTH