The Fed claims we’re not in a bubble.
This, like the Fed’s claims inflation is too low, is hogwash.
As I outline in my bestselling book The Everything Bubble: The Endgame For Central Bank Policy, the reality is that the Fed’s entire monetary focus is on papering over declining living standards in the US.
First, the facts:
At Powell's Nov 28th 2017 testimony to Congress, Powell said that as the Fed allows its 4 trillion dollar balance sheet to wind down, the US Treasury would issue new bonds to the market to replace them (so, technically, US notional debt will neither increase nor decrease as a result of QE).
Authored by Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com,
But savers are still getting shafted.
Outstanding “revolving credit” owed by consumers – such as bank-issued and private-label credit cards – jumped 6.1% year-over-year to $977 billion in the third quarter, according to the Fed’s Board of Governors. When the holiday shopping season is over, it will exceed $1 trillion. At the same time, the Fed has set out to make this type of debt a lot more expensive.
Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,
In 1791, the first Secretary of the Treasury of the US, Alexander Hamilton, convinced then-new president George Washington to create a central bank for the country.
Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson opposed the idea, as he felt that it would lead to speculation, financial manipulation, and corruption. He was correct, and in 1811, its charter was not renewed by Congress.
Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,
And so, as they say in the horror movies, it begins…! The unwinding of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. Such an esoteric concept!
Is there one in ten thousand of the millions of people who sit at desks all day long from sea to shining sea who have a clue how this works? Or what its relationship is to the real world?