Posts Tagged ‘Ben Bernanke’
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
As the twin pillars of international monetary system threaten to come tumbling down in unison, gold has reclaimed its ancient status as the anchor of stability. The spot price surged to an all-time high of $1,594 an ounce in London, lifting silver to $39 in its train.
On one side of the Atlantic, the eurozone debt crisis has spread to the countries that may be too big to save – Spain and Italy – though RBS thinks a €3.5 trillion rescue fund would ensure survival of Europe’s currency union.
On the other side, the recovery has sputtered out and the printing presses are being oiled again. Brinkmanship between the Congress and the White House over the US debt ceiling has compelled Moody’s to warn of a “very small but rising risk” that the world’s paramount power may default within two weeks. “The unthinkable is now thinkable,” said Ross Norman, director of thebulliondesk.com.
Moody’s Investors Service said Wednesday it has put the U.S. government’s top-notch credit rating on review for a possible downgrade because of the risk that Washington will not raise the federal debt ceiling in time to avoid a default.The firm added that even a brief failure of the government to pay its bills would mean that the United States’s Aaa rating “would likely no longer be appropriate.”
July 13 (Bloomberg) — U.S. Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, talks about negotiations between lawmakers to raise the U.S. debt ceiling. Frank also discusses Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s testimony today before Congress. He speaks with Michael McKee on Bloomberg Television’s “Fast Forward.” (Source: Bloomberg)
Budget, debt ceiling glossaryA cheat sheet for understanding the debateThe announcement comes after Standard & Poor’s, another of the major credit rating agencies, has said that it would dramatically downgrade the U.S. government’s credit rating if payments were missed.
The U.S. has long been able to borrow money cheaply because global investors believe the government can be counted on to repay its debts. If credit rating agencies downgrade the U.S. and investors lose their faith in the creditworthiness of the government, the cost of borrowing money — in other words, the interest rate — could rise.The Treasury Department has said that on Aug. 2, it will run out of legal tools to meet the government’s financial obligations in the absence of an agreement to raise the $14.3 trillion legal limit on how much debt the government can maintain.The Moody’s review is prompted by “the possibility that the debt limit will not be raised in time to prevent a missed payment of interest or principal on outstanding bonds and notes,” an announcement from the firm said Wednesday. “Moody’s considers the probability of a default on interest payments to be low but no longer to be de minimis.”
It added that an actual default, or failure by the federal government to pay its bills, “would fundamentally alter Moody’s assessment of the timeliness of future payments.”
In early June, Moody’s had said it would likely review the federal government’s credit rating in mid-July if there were no “meaningful progress” in negotiations over raising the debt limit. That review is now happening.
Moody’s also has placed on review several companies that enjoy implicit backing of the federal government, most notably the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
A senior Treasury Department official pointed to the Moody’s announcement as evidence that Congress needs to act to raise the debt ceiling.
“Moody’s assessment is a timely reminder of the need for Congress to move quickly to avoid defaulting on the country’s obligations and agree upon a substantial deficit reduction package,” said Jeffrey A. Goldstein, the Treasury undersecretary for domestic finance, in a statement.
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by Bob Chapman
June 18 2011: Pensions borrowed (plundered) from heavily, nobody wants QE3, debt used to wage war, Fed Chair Bernanke acts like an elitist, a short term debt limit to deal with, a Greek default could bring the Euro down, a disease of debt, IMF pessimistic.
As far as we can discern the US Treasury thus far has spent and borrowed about $100 billion from the federal pension accounts. Unless there is a vote on the cash debt extension prior to August 2nd, government will probably have borrowed some $250 billion to $300 billion. The Treasury is paying virtually no interest on this debt. Three-month Treasury bills are currently yielding zero percent. Our question is how will the funds be generated to fulfill the Treasury’s obligation to the pension fund? What happens if on August 2nd if legislation is not passed? Does this go on forever? We will keep you apprised on new developments.
The current situation regarding the state of recovery in the US has turned from precarious to dismal and as we predicted a year ago May we will have to be treated to QE3 something no one really wants, but as we said before it is inevitable. The Fed and their controllers, the member bank owners of the Fed, know the present approach doesn’t work and it is only a matter of time, as a result of their policies, when more stimulus will be needed, which in turn leads to more inflation.
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Margins will continue to rise on the COMEX until it reaches the cash price of silver. This works for the shorts as their hammer on the silver market reduced the equity of low cost positions.
The efficacy is short term and made no difference whatsoever in 1980 as the silver market made its highs.
What broke silver in 1980 was a unilateral change (novation) of the silver contract, which went to “sellers only.” Under contract law that is simply not permitted. They got away with a violation in 1980, but the corporate changes in structure at the COMEX that have occurred since 1980 makes the COMEX less able to pull that trick off successfully in 2011.
Silver is simply being silver. Silver did help gold therefore the 25% drop in value has to pressure the gold price.
The USDX is simply having a weak rally off a totally oversold on every internal indicator short side trade.
The dollar has no future. The supply wishing to diversify is simply too big to allow any rally to have legs.
I have told you silver is a game. That being said, it is a great game.
Certainly as the silver price approached the 1980 high, you might have considered selling 1/3.
The high trade on silver was $54 in 1980. Silver’s round numbers are at $50 and $100. Both will function as such in trading.
Silver is not money. It is simply too bulky to be freely and universally fungible. After this short play, which had to follow the spike intermediary top, silver will rise as fast as it did again.
Chairman Bernanke has placed himself in a box. It is not a box of his choosing, but rather the result of his misguided economic beliefs, use of flawed statistical data, geo-political events occurring during his watch, poor decisions and a penchant for political pandering. Some of these may be requirements for academia success but not for leading global financial markets during turbulent times.
It is time for Professor Bernanke to return to the collegial setting of Princeton University while the world still has time to correct the path he has mistakenly set us on.
I was angry during most of former Chairman Greenspan’s tenure because of his persistent use of liquidity pumping to solve every problem from Y2K to the Peso crisis. Greenspan’s inability to see a bubble two inches from his nose and yet still pontificate about irrational exuberance, rather than taking the punch bowl away from the party, incited me. Bernanke does not affect me that way. He simply disappoints and leaves a taste like eating dry shredded wheat, with the hope of a child, to eventually get the prize at the bottom of the box.
Character flaws show during times of stress. Honesty, integrity, value systems and beliefs are put to test and are highlighted under the public media microscope. I’m sure Chairman Bernanke is a nice guy, loved by his family but he is missing a backbone. On April 27th, 2011, that will become obvious to all.
Why is the Federal Reserve forking over $220 million in bailout money to the wives of two Morgan Stanley bigwigs?
America has two national budgets, one official, one unofficial. The official budget is public record and hotly debated: Money comes in as taxes and goes out as jet fighters, DEA agents, wheat subsidies and Medicare, plus pensions and bennies for that great untamed socialist menace called a unionized public-sector workforce that Republicans are always complaining about. According to popular legend, we’re broke and in so much debt that 40 years from now our granddaughters will still be hooking on weekends to pay the medical bills of this year’s retirees from the IRS, the SEC and the Department of Energy.
Most Americans know about that budget. What they don’t know is that there is another budget of roughly equal heft, traditionally maintained in complete secrecy. After the financial crash of 2008, it grew to monstrous dimensions, as the government attempted to unfreeze the credit markets by handing out trillions to banks and hedge funds. And thanks to a whole galaxy of obscure, acronym-laden bailout programs, it eventually rivaled the “official” budget in size — a huge roaring river of cash flowing out of the Federal Reserve to destinations neither chosen by the president nor reviewed by Congress, but instead handed out by fiat by unelected Fed officials using a seemingly nonsensical and apparently unknowable methodology.
Antal E. Fekete
On April 6 last I sent an open letter Congressmen Ron Paul of Texas accusing the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, Dr. Ben Bernanke, that
(1) his program of Quantitative Easing (QE) whereby the Federal Reserve banks purchase U.S. Treasury paper directly from the U.S. Treasury is not authorized by the Federal Reserve Act and is therefore unlawful;
(2) even if for the sake of argument we disregard where the Fed buysits paper, the sum appears to be higher than all available Federal Reserve credit outstanding and, moreover, the F.R. banks do not have unencumbered collateral to post in order to create more to conclude these purchases.
I have received an unusually large feedback in my e-mail. People want to know how I can substantiate these accusations against Dr. Bernanke. Of course I cannot say that I have caught Dr. Bernanke red-handed. All I can do is to present circumstantial evidence.
I start with a statement that I am fully aware of the seriousness of my accusations, and my responsibility in making them. I do not make them frivolously. I have been contemplating to do it for decades. My reasons for postponing have to do with calculating for maximum impact. I am but an isolated individual trying to take on the incumbent of one of the most powerful officesever created on this earth. Wrong timing may be suicidal.
~the king needs $$$~
By Rachelle Younglai
WASHINGTON | Mon Apr 4, 2011 6:17pm EDT
(Reuters) – The United States will hit the legal limit on its ability to borrow no later than May 16, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Monday, ramping up pressure on Congress to act to avoid a debt default.
“The longer Congress fails to act, the more we risk that investors here and around the world will lose confidence in our ability to meet our commitments and our obligations,” Geithner said in a letter to congressional leaders.
“Default by the United States is unthinkable.”
Previously, the Treasury had forecast that the $14.3 trillion statutory debt limit would be reached between April 15 and May 31. As of Friday, Treasury borrowing stood just $95 billion from the ceiling.
Some Republican lawmakers have sought to use the need to raise the debt limit as a lever to pressure the Obama administration into agreeing on large-scale budget cuts.
The debt-limit showdown comes as Congress struggles to complete a spending package that would keep the government operating beyond Friday.
Republicans are seeking to use that bill to enact deep spending cuts and lawmakers are focusing on a proposal to trim this year’s budget by $33 billion, a relatively small amount compared with a projected $1.4 trillion deficit.
Geithner said a failure to raise the debt ceiling in a timely way would push interest rates higher and spark “a financial crisis potentially more severe than the crisis from which we are only starting to recover.”
Both Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have said a failure to raise the ceiling could have “catastrophic consequences.”
By MATT TAIBBI
Barack Obama recently issued an executive order imposing a wave of sanctions against Libya, not only freezing Libyan assets, but barring Americans from having business dealings with Libyan banks.
So raise your hand if you knew that the United States has been extending billions of dollars in aid to Qaddafi and to the Central Bank of Libya, through a Libyan-owned subsidiary bank operating out of Bahrain. And raise your hand if you knew that, just a week or so after Obama’s executive order, the U.S. Treasury Department quietly issued an order exempting this and other Libyan-owned banks to continue operating without sanction.
I came across the curious case of the Arab Banking Corporation, better known as ABC, while researching a story about the results of the audit of the Federal Reserve. That story, which will be coming out in Rolling Stone in two weeks, will examine in detail some of the many lunacies uncovered by Senate investigators amid the recently-released list of bailout and emergency aid recipients – a list that includes many extremely shocking names, from foreign industrial competitors to hedge funds in tax-haven nations to various Wall Street figures of note (and some of their relatives). You will want to see this amazing list when it comes out, so please make sure to check the newsstands in two weeks’ time.
This list became public as a result of an amendment added to the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill that was sponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The amendment forced the Federal Reserve to open its books for the first time and make public the names of those individuals and corporations who received emergency loans and bailout monies during the roughly two year period between the crash of 2008 and the passage of the Dodd-Frank bill.
Posted on 2011 02, 21 by duo
Yes, you.
And Trichet, and the rest of the Central Bank fools.
But especially you, Bernanke.
There’s dumb and then there’s really dumb. Let’s take a short walk back down history lane.
You were sure there was no housing bubble.
Then you were sure it wouldn’t pop.
Then you were sure when the subprime problem hit, that it wouldn’t cause a recession.
Then you were sure you had it under control with Bear Stearns’ hedge funds.
Then you were sure you had it under control with Bear Stearns itself.
Then you were sure it was under control with Lehman, even though you had to know Citibank and others were refusing their collateral in the repo market.
You were sure QE would support higher bond prices – and lower yields. The exact opposite thing happened.
You were sure QE2 would suppress long end yields. The exact opposite thing happened.
Oh yeah, you made excuses both times, but in fact you publicly said that in both cases the exact opposite thing would happen that did.
Now let’s look at what happened just today.
Oil went up almost $7 today for the WTI contract. For each dollar that crude oil rises, we transfer roughly $95 billion (estimates vary from $90-100) outside of the United States.
That’s a direct hit to GDP.
In ONE DAY the entire impact of your so-called “QE2″ was ERASED.
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