A FEDERAL Reserve official's doubts about the impact of the QE3
stimulus have pulled the rug from under US stock markets, sending them
lower after strong early gains.
The Nasdaq tumbled as major tech stocks sank, with Apple falling
2.5 per cent, Oracle 2.8 per cent, Facebook 2.4 per cent and eBay 2.6
per cent.
At the closing bell the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 64.87 points (0.48 per cent) at 13,494.05.
The S&P 500 lost 15.12 (1.04 per cent) at 1441.77.
The Nasdaq Composite shed 43.05 points (1.36 per cent) at 3117.73.
Markets opened higher on encouraging data on housing prices and consumer confidence.
But in afternoon trade, comments by Charles Plosser, head of the Fed's Philadelphia branch, appeared to spark a selloff.
Plosser
said he was doubtful the QE3 bond-buying program announced earlier this
month would have great impact on charging up the US economy, and warned
that the Fed could lose credibility.
I am increasingly annoyed at people concluding that
economic rationalist policies, or the World Bank's Structural Adjustment
policies, or the free market or financial deregulation have failed. If
that's what you think then you fail to understand the economic world.
You must be assuming a) that the policies were intended and designed to
meet the needs of people and the environment, b) that those framing and
implementing them are bungling idiots because their strategies somehow
always end up devastating the lives of most people and the ecosystems of
the planet.
The patently obvious fact is that these policies have been stunningly
and astronomically successful. The world economy is run by and for the
benefit of a tiny group of extraordinarily rich and powerful people.
They determine what will be done primarily through their capacity to
invest in those ventures that will be most profitable to themselves.
They have no interest whatsoever in the welfare of the people in general
or of the planet . (Indeed as David Korten explains in When Corporations Rule the World,
any corporation that devotes resources to good causes risks a lower
rate of return and therefore opens itself to hostile takeover.) In the
past 20 years they have been able to grab unprecedented power and
freedom to go anywhere and do anything they wish, greatly assisted by
governments whose advisers have had their minds warped by the study of
conventional economic theory which takes it for granted that increasing
business turnover and the GDP is all that matters.
Structural Adjustment Packages, the rules of the World Trade
Organisation, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment proposals, and
the economic rationalist philosophy in general are simply the
arrangements which suit the big corporations and banks (and their well
paid lackeys who do the technical, legal and managerial work). SAPs for
example dismantle an economy, junk the unprofitable bits, and enable
foreign investors to come in and take over the juicy bits at bargain
basement prices, while ensuring the banks get their reckless loans
repaid, and that there is increased freedom to get at cheaper labour and
forests etc now freed from protection. The corporations can buy Third
World resources at devalued prices and more productive capacity can be
taken from the poor majority.
Even without SAPs conventional development is little more than an
elaborate, legitimised and automatic form of plunder. When development
is driven by what will maximise profits and business turnover the
inevitable result is that local land, labour and capital are put into
producing for the benefit of local elites, transnational corporations
and rich world supermarket shoppers. Conventional development is almost
totally inappropriate to the basic needs of most people and their
ecosystems. We should therefore not be surprised that the UN's Human Development Report for 1966 states that now 1.6 billion people are actually getting poorer each year.
Were you thinking that all this is some kind of unfortunate mistake,
that those responsible were really trying to do what benefits people and
the environment, but somehow they just keep innocently getting it
wrong? The fact is that conventional economic strategies are designed to
and succeed brilliantly in delivering most of and an increasing
proportion of the world's wealth to the rich few. Globalisation is a
process of restructuring the system to give them far greater access to
the world's wealth than they had before. The failure is not in economic
rationalism; we are the ones who have failed, because we have let them
get away with it! http://socialsciences.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/D03EcRatHsNtFaild.html
Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) wins (again) the most significant victory of
his congressional career. He has taken his pet issue since the 1970s–the
unwarranted power and secrecy of the Federal Reserve–from something
pretty much no one but him cared about six years ago, through a bestselling book and
mass movement by 2009, the second time he’s gotten the House of
Representatives to vote to widen the government’s powers to audit the
Fed’s activities. Huffington Post with details about the vote , and on Paul’s Democratic ally equally upset with the Fed’s lack of transparency, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio): In a rare moment of bipartisanship, the House
overwhelmingly passed a bill by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) to audit the
Federal Reserve.
The first ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of the
Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron
Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last
year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an
independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the
Senate, but watered down the original language of the house
bill(HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out.
Ben Bernanke (pictured to the LEFT), Alan Greenspan, and various other
bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the
effects an audit would have on markets. Nevertheless, the results of the
first audit in the Federal Reserve’s nearly 100 year history were
posted on Senator Sander’s webpage earlier this morning. What was revealed in the audit was startling: $16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010,
the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks,
corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to
these secret bailouts as an all-inclusive loan program, but virtually
none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0%
interest. Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or
even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar
bailout is obvious – the American public would have been outraged to
find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while
Americans were struggling to find jobs.
To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that GDP of the
United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the
United States government spanning its 200+ year history is “only” $14.5
trillion. The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and
the Senate is “only” $3.5 trillion. Take all of the outrage and debate
over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red
pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be
given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.
In late 2008, the TARP Bailout bill was passed and loans of $800
billion were given to failing banks and companies. That was a blatant
lie considering the fact that Goldman Sachs alone received 814 billion
dollars. As is turns out, the Federal Reserve donated $2.5 trillion to
Citigroup, while Morgan Stanley received $2.04 trillion. The Royal Bank
of Scotland and Deutsche Bank, a German bank, split about a trillion and
numerous other banks received hefty chunks of the $16 trillion.
“This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged,
you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.”- Bernie Sanders
(I-VT)
When you have conservative Republican stalwarts like Jim DeMint(R-SC)
and Ron Paul(R-TX) as well as self identified Democratic socialists like
Bernie Sanders all fighting against the Federal Reserve, you know that
it is no longer an issue of Right versus Left. When you have every
single member of the Republican Party in Congress and progressive
Congressmen like Dennis Kucinich sponsoring a bill to audit the Federal
Reserve, you realize that the Federal Reserve is an entity onto itself,
which has no oversight and no accountability.
Americans should be swelled with anger and outrage at the abysmal
state of affairs when an unelected group of bankers can create money out
of thin air and give it out to megabanks and supercorporations like
Halloween candy. If the Federal Reserve and the bankers who control it
believe that they can continue to devalue the savings of Americans and
continue to destroy the US economy, they will have to face the
realization that their trillion dollar printing presses will eventually
plunder the world economy.
The list of institutions that received the most money from the Federal Reserve can be found on page 131of the GAO Audit and are as follows..
Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)
and many many more including banks in Belgium of all places
View the 266-page GAO audit of the Federal Reserve (July 21st, 2011):
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke participated in a live webcast
of a town hall meeting with educators on Thursday, September 30, 2010
from 2:30-3:30 p.m. EDT. During this session, Chairman Bernanke answered teachers’ questions about the Federal Reserve and the economy.
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