Money and Finance
The Death of the Dollar? – By Rob Arnott
To no one’s surprise, the Fed announced that it will replace the expiring “Operation Twist”—in which it was selling $45 billion of short maturity treasuries and buying a like amount of long maturity treasuries every month—with continued purchases of long bonds. The Fed announced in September that it will buy $40 billion per month in mortgage-backed bonds, to help bring life back into the real estate market.
The Federal Reserve Board will now be “printing” $85 billion a month in new U.S. dollars in order to buy $85 billion a month in bonds, up from $40 billion a month previously. Doing the math, that’s $1,020 billion—just over $1 trillion—a year. The Fed’s balance sheet had $800 billion in assets before the Global Financial Crisis started in 2008; it’s now over $3 trillion, set to rise $1 trillion a year.
If we’re spending $1 trillion a year more than we produce as a nation (the national deficit) and are financing it by printing $1 trillion a year of crisp newly printed bills (actually, bits in a computer), we’re on a dangerous path. Printing our own money to buy our own debt works fine… until it doesn’t.
-
Links
Ginni Rometty, chairman and CEO of IBM, on Charlie Rose (video) (LINK) A breakdown of some of Michael Burry's posts on the Silicon Investor message boards from the late 90's (LINK) The great bond conundrum (LINK) AT THE start of 2015, the yield...
-
The Taper: Recalibrating Liquidity - By Richard Duncan
The “Taper” has begun. It’s important to understand why. On December 18th, the Fed announced that it will begin to taper the amount of fiat money it creates each month from $85 billion to $75 billion starting in January. Chairman Bernanke also indicated...
-
The Gutenberg Economy - By Michael Lewitt
Adam Smith is spoken of as the father of modern laissez faire capitalism, as well he should be. But the market system Smith described in The Wealth of Nations (1776) no longer exists. Instead, it has morphed into a system of fiat money that owes its existence...
-
Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion From Fed
Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits. By 2008, the housing market’s...
-
Sprott December Comment: Is It All Just A Ponzi Scheme?
In the latest Treasury Bulletin published in December 2009, ownership data reveals that the United States increased the public debt by $1.885 trillion dollars in fiscal 2009. So who bought all the new Treasury securities to finance the massive increase...
Money and Finance