Central Banking: From Bad to Worse
Ben Bernanke under pressure to spell out QE timeline ... Ben Bernanke under pressure to spell out QE timeline. US stocks jumped and the dollar climbed against the yen on Monday, amid expectations that Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke will spell out how it will decide when to put the brakes on America's quantitative easing programme, at its two-day meeting this week. Ben Bernanke cautioned strongly that halting America's fiscal stimulus measures too suddenly could jeopardise the country's recovery. – UK Telegraph
Dominant Social Theme: One man stands between civilization and chaos.
Free-Market Analysis: Another quietly adulatory article.
One would not think, given the continued coverage of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and other powerful central bankers, that the prestige of the entire institution has come under considerable attack in the past decade and the past five years in particular.
Gone are the days when Alan Greenspan , Bernanke's predecessor, was greeted as a kind of deity by US politicians when he made a rare appearance to explain the Fed's current actions in loquacious, indecipherable detail.
Watching Alan Greenspan was like watching a Hollywood version of what a Federal Reserve chairman was supposed to be like. Narrow, gaunt, as angular as a number, Greenspan spoke an elegant mumbo jumbo that everyone appreciated with the exception of perhaps his old nemesis, the libertarian-conservative Congressman Ron Paul .
In those days, Ron Paul was nothing but a curiosity to most observers on the Hill. Nicknamed "Dr. No" because he tended to vote "no" on any legislation he believed ran counter to the Constitution, Paul was regarded with the same kind of benevolent amusement as Greenspan himself, with a difference, though ...
Paul was amusing because he was Congress's resident crank. Greenspan was amusing because he was perhaps the world's most powerful man and relished the role. People laughed at Ron Paul, and then they laughed WITH Alan Greenspan.
How things have changed. Ron Paul is one of the most popular politicians in the US and Alan Greenspan has virtually retired from public life, unable to command the kind of adulatory audiences he once did. His is widely blamed, along with Ben Bernanke, for engineering the current, ongoing Great Recession by allowing monetary stimulation to get out of control.
The mainstream media still doesn't "get it," however. In this article excerpted above, we find an unchanged and quietly adulatory perspective. Mainstream journalism treads the weary narrative furrow much as it did in the 20th century even though public opinion has moved on.
People don't trust either central banking or central bankers these days, blaming them correctly for the latest global economic downturn. You won't know it from this article.
Here's more:
Mr Bernanke is also expected to reassure investors that the $85bn a month bond buying scheme can be stepped up again, even after the brakes are applied, in an attempt to ease market concerns that America is about to embark on a total withdrawal from QE.
Markets have experiences an unusually volatile few weeks, following the Fed chairman's warning last month that it could start winding down the programme "in the next few meetings" if economic data continued to show that America was well on the road to recovery.
He also cautioned strongly that halting America's fiscal stimulus measures too suddenly could jeopardise the country's recovery, but investors focused on the possibility of the US reining in its bond buying sooner than previously expected. Since then, most positive data which shows America is returning to health has sparked a drop in markets, whilst bad news about the economy has bolstered investor confidence.
... Some economists have predicted that the Fed will map out a detailed timeline for tapering after its meeting this week, but others think that it does not have enough information for this to have any real meaning at this stage.
This article provides a 20th century analysis (as much of the mainstream still does) of central banking establishment still firmly in control of its destiny and the world's economic future.
But people are not laughing with the Fed anymore, as they did in the latter part of the 20th century and especially under parts of Greenspan's regime. There is no subdued affection for the Fed chairman. There is no reservoir of good will for an institution that has virtually bankrupted billions of people around the world.
Today, thanks to what we call the Internet Reformation , people do understand once again the true price-fixing nature of central banking. They have seen the destruction of its policies and they have no faith, nor should they.
Conclusion: And as the Fed and other central banks try to remove the tens of trillions that they have injected into the world's economy over the past five years – and inevitably fail – we can say with some certainty that the worst is yet to come.
