Money and Finance
- Richard Fisher Interview Excerpts
Via ValueWalk: On recent reports from the San Francisco Federal Reserve that suggest bond buying and money printing has a very minimal effect on the GDP: “I argued that when I argued against this program so I am happy to see and they have one...
- 2010 Repost: Wsj Op-ed: Open Letter To Ben Bernanke
As talk of QE3 remains in the headlines, I thought it might be a good time to review this Op-Ed, which was signed by Seth Klarman, Jim Grant, Jim Chanos and Niall Ferguson, among others, in November of 2010. The following is the text of an open letter...
- The Villain – By Roger Lowenstein
Found via ValueWalk. THE U.S. FEDERAL RESERVE was founded 99 years ago, as a bulwark to the banking system and an antidote to its frequent runs and panics. Strictly speaking, it was America’s third attempt at a central bank. The first, organized by...
- Tradewinds - David Iben’s May 2011 Commentary: Weird Science
Link to: Weird Science - by David Iben ……….Excerpt:Just as the boys were inspired by the movie Frankenstein, one cannot help but imagine a younger Bernanke, back in 1985, watching Weird Science and hatching a plan to use a few computer models, some...
- Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Bubble, Crash, Bubble, Crash, Bubble...
Last week, the Federal Reserve confirmed its intention to engage in a second round of "quantitative easing" - purchasing about $600 billion of U.S. Treasury debt over the coming months, in addition to about $250 billion that it already planned to purchase...
Money and Finance
The Federal Reserve’s Framers Would Be Shocked - By Roger Lowenstein
ONE hundred years ago today, President Woodrow Wilson went before Congress and demanded that it “act now” to create the Federal Reserve System. His proposal set off a fierce debate. One of the plan’s most strident critics, Representative Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., the father of the aviator, predicted that the Federal Reserve Act would establish “the most gigantic trust on earth,” and that the Fed would become an economic dictator or, as he put it, an “invisible government by the money power.”
Had the congressman witnessed Ben S. Bernanke’s news conference last week, he surely would have felt vindicated. Investors, traders and ordinary citizens listened with rapt attention as Mr. Bernanke, the Fed chairman, spoke of his timetable for scaling down stimulative bond purchases. “If things are worse, we will do more,” he said of the nation’s economy. “If things are better, we will do less.”
In 1913, few of the framers of the Fed anticipated that the institution would do anything of the sort. The preamble to the act specified three purposes: to furnish “an elastic currency,” to provide a market for commercial paper so that banks would have more liquidity, and to improve supervision of banks. Regulating the economy was not among them.
- Richard Fisher Interview Excerpts
Via ValueWalk: On recent reports from the San Francisco Federal Reserve that suggest bond buying and money printing has a very minimal effect on the GDP: “I argued that when I argued against this program so I am happy to see and they have one...
- 2010 Repost: Wsj Op-ed: Open Letter To Ben Bernanke
As talk of QE3 remains in the headlines, I thought it might be a good time to review this Op-Ed, which was signed by Seth Klarman, Jim Grant, Jim Chanos and Niall Ferguson, among others, in November of 2010. The following is the text of an open letter...
- The Villain – By Roger Lowenstein
Found via ValueWalk. THE U.S. FEDERAL RESERVE was founded 99 years ago, as a bulwark to the banking system and an antidote to its frequent runs and panics. Strictly speaking, it was America’s third attempt at a central bank. The first, organized by...
- Tradewinds - David Iben’s May 2011 Commentary: Weird Science
Link to: Weird Science - by David Iben ……….Excerpt:Just as the boys were inspired by the movie Frankenstein, one cannot help but imagine a younger Bernanke, back in 1985, watching Weird Science and hatching a plan to use a few computer models, some...
- Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Bubble, Crash, Bubble, Crash, Bubble...
Last week, the Federal Reserve confirmed its intention to engage in a second round of "quantitative easing" - purchasing about $600 billion of U.S. Treasury debt over the coming months, in addition to about $250 billion that it already planned to purchase...