Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Christian Johnson's Paper on the FED

Christian Johnson just posted a new paper on the Fed: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1584731. I highly recommend this paper to all that have interest in the financial crisis. I do not agree with the paper on every point and/or implication. But, I must say it is the finest exposition of exactly what the Fed what was up to during the crisis I have seen.

I am beginning to think the Fed pursued a contractionary monetary policy based upon this paper, not an expansionary policy. And, they just might have pulled it off.

4 comments:

  1. One thing I hope to see in my lifetime is the Federal Reserve come to an end and the economy backed by gold. Texas Libertarian Ron Paul, who authored H.R. 1207 has recently passed the House, but to my knowledge, and according to this paper, has not been passed by the Senate yet.
    As the paper discusses, H.R. 1207 would allow Congress to audit the Fed, although it would not hinder their lending powers.
    Bernanke publicly opposes this, arguing that it would politicize the process, however this argument is extremely weak, considering that it does not affect their actual powers. It simply would leave the Fed open to scrutiny. Of course, what a lot of people don’t realize is that the Fed is about as federal as federal express. Make no mistake, these are private bankers.
    The article demonstrates that we have a small group of private bankers who can print money as they please, and loan billions, even trillions of dollars to financial institutions, both domestic and abroad, with no Congressional oversight.
    We do not know what they do with the money. Ron Paul, during a recent hearing on H.R. 1207 accused Bernanke and the Fed of secretly giving Sadaam Hussein 5.5 billion dollars in the 1980’s so that they could turn around and use that money to purchase weapons from the United States, who of course later went to war with Iraq. (This can be seen on youtube).
    Many believe the Fed is going to intentionally destroy the dollar which will pave the way for the “Amero,” a new currency that the United States will share with Mexico and Canada.
    My prediction for the future is that by 2012 there will be a “false flag” attack that will be blamed on Iran and used as a pretext for war. (If you don’t know what a “false flag” attack is, Wikipedia “operation northwoods” or google “Gulf of Tonkin declassified”). The media right now has begun to lay the foundation down for a war on Iran. Our “intelligence” has stated that Iran has nukes or is close to getting nukes. We all remember our “intelligence” that said Iraq had WMDs, which caused us to go to war with Iraq. Our “bad intelligence” also got us into Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin incident (the sinking of a U.S. Navy ship), although in 2005 it was admitted by the NSA, that this was not “bad intelligence” but a staged “false flag” attack by our own government to gain public support for the war.
    When you combine an Iran war with the passage of the Healthcare Bill, the Federal Reserve will have an opportunity to print off trillions of dollars to fund both the war and healthcare. When you combine this with all the recent money printed off for the bailouts discussed in this paper we will see hyperinflation ensue and the dollar will be destroyed. Enter the Amero.
    All of North America will be under one currency, and thus under the control of the Federal Reserve. When you combine this with the NAFTA agreement, our North American borders basically become meaningless, and we are thus one giant step closer to one world government.
    This is not a Republican vs. Democrat issue, as the neo-con-Republicans equally want the one world government. In fact a lot of people don’t realize that the NAFTA agreement, signed by neo-con globalist and war criminal George W. Bush, contains provisions that expressly trump the U.S. Constitution. I challenge any reader to research the Council of Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group and you will find many world leaders publicly admitting and calling for this one world government.
    As Thomas Jefferson said: “If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.”
    Steve Newbold 3L St. Thomas

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  2. Shiny rocks is no basis for a modern capitalist economy. We learned that during the Great Depression.

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  3. I'm certainly not an expert on economics and I understand backing the dollar with gold seems radical. But I believe placing the entire money supply (backed by nothing), in the hands of a few with no government oversight is an invitation to corruption.

    I can't think of a more powerful position to have in the entire world than to control the money supply in the world's most powerful nation. It is certainly in their best interst to make us all feel like dinosaurs for wanting gold to back our economy.

    Although gold did back the dollar during the Great Depression, the Fed had been in power for about 16 years at that point, and could still increase or decrease the money supply at will, with no oversight.

    Although the causes of the Great Depression are debated by many economists and historians, it was Bernanke himself who said the actions taken by the Fed are to blame. It was the Fed who lowered interest rates to increase inflation and devalue the dollar in the early 1920's, and then during the recession the Fed actually decreased the money supply to cause more businesses to declare bankruptcy. http://useconomy.about.com/od/grossdomesticproduct/p/1929_Depression.htm

    I'm not saying the Fed ever cause such destruction on purpose, but it's not hard to see why people would think so. As is repeatedly the case throughout American history, if people are scared enough you can pass anything into law. Following The Great Depression the Federal Reserve Act was amended to drastically expand their powers.

    I just have a hard time trusting so much in the hands of so few.

    Steve Newbold 3L St. Thomas

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  4. HOW THE FED KILLED H.R. 1207

    Anyone who underestimates the power of the Fed is a fool. These elites are brilliant and they know how to work the system.

    I remembered seeing the paper provided by Mr. Ramirez that H.R. 1207 went from a single bill about auditing the Fed, and then just became amendment to a larger bill, H.R. 3996 entitled "The Financial Stability Improvement Act."

    Although just a small note in the paper, I immediately suspected that this was no small detail. I thought to myself, now that's funny, in the House we have a bill introduced that Democrats and Republicans both like, why not just quickly vote on it in the Senate and we can start auditing the Fed.

    Everyone wanted the Fed auditied for the very bailouts stated in this article (including the fact that the Fed lended half a trillion dollars to banks over seas. . . and not one person in Congress knows where).

    But when I saw it was attached to H.R. 3996, I decided to check that Bill out, because I just knew the Fed was up to something.

    I'm not going to go through all of H.R. 3996, all you need to know for the purposes of this post is that it deals with heightened regulation and heightened standards for banks (nothing to do with the Federal Reserve).

    I'm not here to debate the merits of heightened regulation. The point is, that it's a BIPARTISAN ISSUE.

    In other words, auditing the Fed went from a Bipartisan bill (H.R. 1207) that could be agreed on by both Democrats and Republicans and was snuck onto a bill that will be strongly opposed by Republicans (H.R. 3996).

    I'm sure Bernanke is sipping a Cognac right now out of a huge brandy glass and puffing a fancy cigar, discussing his strategy, which is simple: "When the Democrats and Republicans gang up on us, I simply find a way to pit them against each other."

    The elites are good at what they do. It would be naive to think they would give up their secrecy lying down.

    Now all they have to do is stall this thing from getting voted on until November, hope that a few Republicans steal some seats in Congress, and their culture of secrecy will live another day.

    Steve Newbold 3L St. Thomas

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