It's asinine, apologetic articles like this that have completed soured me on the banking mouthpieces of the corporate media -- and judging by newspaper circulation figures I am far from alone.
"Economists say Fed’s stimulus plan has had mixed results; Despite market uptick, many not feeling a recovery" April 24, 2011|By Binyamin Appelbaum, New York Times
How poetically ironic.
WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve’s experimental effort to spur a recovery by purchasing vast quantities of federal debt has pumped up the stock market, reduced the cost of American exports, and allowed companies to borrow money at lower interest rates.
And destroyed the purchasing power of your dollar, Americans. That's why prices are flying through the roof.
But most Americans are not feeling the difference, in part because those benefits have been surprisingly small.
Yes, the small sector of wealthy elite have really made out during this Grand Depression of which we are in the middle.
The latest estimates from economists, in fact, suggest that the pace of recovery from the global financial crisis has flagged since November, when the Fed started buying $600 billion in Treasury securities to push private dollars into investments that create jobs.
Where did those jobs go because all that money went into the pockets of bankers for bonuses and buybacks of their mortgage security s***.
The Fed’s policy-making board will meet Tuesday and Wednesday, after which the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, will hold a news conference for the first time to explain its decisions to the public.
As if were interested in lies being reported by liars.
But a broad range of economists say the disappointing economic results show the limits of the central bank’s ability to lift the nation from its malaise....
This is such insulting crap when we have been told for two years the economy is growing, and every day brings good news headlines in the Boston Globe business section.
And HOW could the FED lift the nation from its malaise when ITS POLICIES PUT US THERE?
Btw, if they CAN'T DO the JOB maybe it is time to GET RID of THEM, 'eh?
Bernanke and his supporters say the purchases have improved economic conditions, all but erasing fears of deflation, a pattern of falling prices that can delay purchases and stall growth. Inflation, which is beneficial in moderation, has returned to healthy levels since the Fed started buying bonds.
Is the man insane, or is it just the driver that fills up the gas tank?
Butlers and maids buying the food, right?
“These actions had the expected effects on markets and are thereby providing significant support to job creation and the economy,’’ Bernanke said in a February speech, an argument he has repeated frequently.
But growth remains slow, jobs remain scarce, and, with the debt purchases scheduled to end in June, the Fed must now decide what comes next....
Translation: The bankers are out of bullets and all they can do is PRINT MORE MONEY!
What comes next is RUNAWAY INFLATION and a COLLAPSE of the DOLLAR and AmeriKan Empire!!
And not one "terrorist" had to lift a finger.
Related: If I Were A Terrorist
Also see:
BANKERS GONE WILD
WALL STREET'S MORTGAGE-BACKED SECURITY FRAUD DESTROYED BOTH THE US AND EU ECONOMIES!
The true terrorists!
A growing body of research suggests that the Fed could have a larger impact by spending more money on a broader range of debt, like mortgage bonds.
In other words, keep buying back the crap no one wants and sticking the taxpayers with the bill.
The Fed limited the program to $600 billion under considerable political pressure. While that sounds like a lot of money, the purchases have not even kept pace with the government’s issuance of new debt, so that in key respects the effort has amounted to treading water....
How long can you tread water, American taxpayer?
Related: In boon for taxpayers, Fed has $82b profit
This is really getting to be sickening, dear reader.
The Fed’s decision to buy bonds, known as quantitative easing, emulated Japan’s central bank, which started buying bonds in 2001 to break a deflationary cycle.
And the Japanese had a 200% deficit to GDP ratio that has destroyed their economy -- and this before Fukushima.
The American version worked well at first. Between November 2008 and March 2010, the Fed bought more than $1.7 trillion in mortgage and Treasury bonds, holding down mortgage rates and reducing borrowing costs for well-regarded companies by about half a percentage point, according to several studies. That is an annual savings of $5 million on every $1 billion borrowed.
Yeah, bailing out Wall Street worked real well.
As the economy sputtered last summer, Bernanke indicated in an August speech at a Wyoming resort that the Fed would start a second round of quantitative easing, soon nicknamed QE 2.
Meaning the first one did not work.
The initial response was the same: Asset prices rose, interest rates fell, and the dollar declined in value.
But in addition to being smaller, and solely focused on Treasury bonds, there also was a problem of diminishing returns. The first round of purchases reduced the cost of borrowing by persuading skittish investors to accept lower risk premiums.
With markets closer to normalcy, Bernanke warned in his August speech that it was not clear that the Fed would have comparable success in persuading investors to accept even lower rates of return.
“Such purchases seem likely to have their largest effects during periods of economic and financial stress,’’ he said.
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