Collapse of the Global Economy

Fed Announces QE2, Which Will Increase Inflation and Devastate the Global Economy

November 3, 2010

Infowars.com - Earlier today, the Federal Reserve decided to create and unleash destructive asset bubbles that will ultimately devastate the global economy.

QE2, or quantitative easing, has commenced, as feared.

“The Federal Reserve’s proposed policy of quantitative easing is a dangerous gamble with only a small potential upside benefit and substantial risks of creating asset bubbles that could destabilize the global economy,” notes Harvard economist Marty Feldstein.

“The Federal Reserve launched a controversial new policy on Wednesday, committing to buy $600 billion more in government bonds by the middle of next year in an attempt to breathe new life into a struggling U.S. economy,” reports CNBC with sunny optimism. “The decision, which takes the Fed into largely uncharted waters, is aimed at further lowering borrowing costs for consumers and businesses still suffering in the aftermath of the worst recession since the Great Depression.”

Instead, as a number of economists and analysts warn, the effort will produce a rise in commodity prices, trigger a rise in material prices and increase inflation.

“This could bring about inflation and possibly derail the recovery,” warned Eduardo Lopez, the International Energy Agency’s senior oil demand analyst, in late October.

Meanwhile, the Fed keeps repeating its for-public-consumption mantra that quantitative easing will raise asset values, spur the wealth effect, and magically lift the economy out of its doldrums.

The promised rise in GDP would, at best, be negligible and chaos will reign when interest rates return to normal levels.

Fed mob boss Ben Bernanke, of course, is merely following orders. The global economy must be destroyed at cost and the American middle class decimated.

Here is the press release issued earlier today by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System:

For immediate release

Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in September confirms that the pace of recovery in output and employment continues to be slow. Household spending is increasing gradually, but remains constrained by high unemployment, modest income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit. Business spending on equipment and software is rising, though less rapidly than earlier in the year, while investment in nonresidential structures continues to be weak. Employers remain reluctant to add to payrolls. Housing starts continue to be depressed. Longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable, but measures of underlying inflation have trended lower in recent quarters.

Consistent with its statutory mandate, the Committee seeks to foster maximum employment and price stability. Currently, the unemployment rate is elevated, and measures of underlying inflation are somewhat low, relative to levels that the Committee judges to be consistent, over the longer run, with its dual mandate. Although the Committee anticipates a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization in a context of price stability, progress toward its objectives has been disappointingly slow.

To promote a stronger pace of economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at levels consistent with its mandate, the Committee decided today to expand its holdings of securities. The Committee will maintain its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its securities holdings. In addition, the Committee intends to purchase a further $600 billion of longer-term Treasury securities by the end of the second quarter of 2011, a pace of about $75 billion per month. The Committee will regularly review the pace of its securities purchases and the overall size of the asset-purchase program in light of incoming information and will adjust the program as needed to best foster maximum employment and price stability.

The Committee will maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and continues to anticipate that economic conditions, including low rates of resource utilization, subdued inflation trends, and stable inflation expectations, are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate for an extended period.

The Committee will continue to monitor the economic outlook and financial developments and will employ its policy tools as necessary to support the economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at levels consistent with its mandate.

Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman; William C. Dudley, Vice Chairman; James Bullard; Elizabeth A. Duke; Sandra Pianalto; Sarah Bloom Raskin; Eric S. Rosengren; Daniel K. Tarullo; Kevin M. Warsh; and Janet L. Yellen.

Voting against the policy was Thomas M. Hoenig. Mr. Hoenig believed the risks of additional securities purchases outweighed the benefits. Mr. Hoenig also was concerned that this continued high level of monetary accommodation increased the risks of future financial imbalances and, over time, would cause an increase in long-term inflation expectations that could destabilize the economy.

Statement from Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Federal Reserve to Print Billions of Dollars in Massive Shadow Stimulus

November 2, 2010

AFP - The Federal Reserve's policy-setting panel began a crucial two-day meeting Tuesday, poised to cast aside its long-held reluctance to micro-manage the economy in a bid to avoid a lost decade of growth.

The central bank's open market committee (FOMC) is expected to approve massive stimulus spending not seen since the depths of the economic crisis.

At the conclusion of the meeting Wednesday, the Fed is expected to announce it will resume the large-scale purchase of long-term US bonds -- essentially printing billions of dollars -- in the hope of boosting a weak recovery.

While the Fed took similar measures during the crisis, it is unprecedented when the economy is not teetering on the edge of collapse, raising protests from some Fed members who fear it is unnecessary and will fuel long-term inflation.

Critics of the policy argue that although the recovery is painfully slow, markets should be allowed to do their work. They also worry that if the policy fails the Fed's credibility will be wrecked.

"I think that this will quite possibly be the worst mistake by the Fed in a generation," said Stephen Stanley of Pierpont Securities.

But supporters argue that the Fed is failing in both of the prongs of its dual mandate, with unemployment and inflation both at unsustainable levels and must act.

Since Fed chairman Ben Bernanke first suggested the possibility in late September, and confirmed it in October, markets and most economists have penciled in another round of quantitative easing (QE) as a solid bet.

Goldman Sachs analysts and others predicted the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee would start with a purchase of about 500 billion dollars in Treasury bonds.

The Fed already has poured in more than 1.5 trillion dollars to spark a recovery.

The FOMC meeting opened Tuesday in the thick of hotly contested congressional and local elections nationwide.

President Barack Obama's Democrats are poised to lose seats in Congress to Republicans, who oppose the administration's massive stimulus spending that dragged the economy out of the worst recession since the Great Depression, but ran up sky-high deficits doing it.

A government report Friday showing only modest third-quarter economic growth bolstered expectations of further Fed stimulus to lower long-term interest rates and fight off deflationary pressure in the slack economy.

The world's largest economy grew at a 2.0 percent annual rate in July-September, in line with expectations, slightly more than a 1.7 percent expansion in the second quarter.

Economists consider that economic growth must reach about three percent for some time to significantly reduce high unemployment.

But more than a year after the recession officially ended, unemployment has been hovering near double-digits.

When the government reports payroll data on Friday, the jobless rate was expected to remain stuck at 9.6 percent for the third straight month in October.

"The US economic recovery continues on, but growth remains too weak to cause a serious improvement in the labor market," said Augustine Faucher at Moody's Analytics.

Amid that backdrop the Fed has left interest rates at historic lows and is unlikely to change that stance any time soon.

Nomura Global Economics analysts predicted the FOMC statement would include a commitment to continue buying until the committee's forecasts show significant progress toward full employment and inflation approaches more acceptable levels.