The Founding Fathers, The Economy And The Fed!

The Fed's $16 Trillion Bailouts Under-Reported - FORBES

$16 trillion in preferential loans to the banking cartel. Where is your evidence that most of it went to the government?

They already did raise taxes when they let the Bush tax cuts expire. They also raised taxes on working Americans with a two percent increase in payroll taxes. That is the only solution democrats seem to have, is to raise taxes. How about we just stop handing out trillions of dollars to the one percent instead?

This is just more partisan drivel. Obama and the Democrats have already raised taxes on both the rich and the working class. Now you want more tax hikes? Yea, that's great for the economy!

 

Old lie.

You've been duped by propaganda again. It wasn't $16 trillion loaned out. It was the same sort term loans rolled over again and again.

Now more than just over $1 trillion was every lent out at any given time, virtually every penny paid back.

If you think the rich are getting too much money raise their taxes. I'm good with not handing out trillions to the 1%. Who is doing that?

This is just more partisan drivel. It sure didn't hurt when Clinton did it, despite conservatives telling us his tax increase would wreck the economy and kill jobs. Could conservatives have been more wrong?

 

The FED is a cartel made up of several privately owned banking institutions.
https://archive.org/details/10ThingsThatEveryAmericanShouldKnowAboutThefederalReserve
http://www.themoneymasters.com/faqs/

 

Well gosh, if you read it on the internet, it must be true!

 

Who cares about history and its impact on future events? Educated people, I would imagine.

Most academics are part of the establishment that promotes bigger government and more centralization of power with politicians and central bankers. And when they are done with their appointments at the fed, they usually find gainful employment with private firms in the banking sector or lobbyist groups in Washington DC. It's all part of the revolving door policy in Washington where the distinction between government and private is virtually indistinguishable.

I didn't realize letting people keep more of the money they already earned was responsible for an increase in income disparity. I thought it was because the politicians in DC hand over trillions of dollars to bankers for absolutely nothing. Silly me.

You mean to keep the one percent from collapsing and facing the consequences of their greed, and the "depression" you speak of is pure speculation. There is no reason to believe that the bailout out a bunch of greedy, reckless banking institutions would have caused the recession to be any worse than it already has been, unless you believe that bad business models are the only thing standing between America and depression.

And the loans were a total of $16 trillion to the banking cartel in the aftermath of the recession.

You keep trying to change the subject to tax cuts, as if that were the thing holding average Americans back. Not only have those tax cuts been rescinded by Obama and the Democrats, they have absolutely no bearing on whether or not the average American is able to find gainful employment and to enjoy a good standard of living. The economy is not a zero-sum game where one person's gain is another person's loss. Letting a business owner keep more of the money they already earned in the market in no way disadvantages other people. In fact, profit is proof that they are doing something beneficial for other people, otherwise, they would not be making any money. Raising taxes only serves to hinder economic growth by taking resources from the productive sector of the economy and transferring it to politicians in Washington DC. No civilization in history has achieved prosperity by taking money from the private sector and handing it over to corrupt politicians, at least, none that I am aware of...

 

Good for you. What does that have to do with the fact that it is totally irrelevant to the make up of the FRB today?

Ah. Academics are part of the big conspiracy to enrich secret bankers now too. Of course.

Sure it is.

It's not pure speculation at all. The economy was headed down the tubes and the financial system frozen. For further details see the banking collapse in 1930-33.

Same loan rolled over. And paid back, with interest.

You keep trying to change the subject to tax cuts, as if that were the thing holding average Americans back. Not only have those tax cuts been rescinded by Obama and the Democrats, they have absolutely no bearing on whether or not the average American is able to find gainful employment and to enjoy a good standard of living. [/quote]

You keep trying to change to subject from the growing portion of America's income and wealth going to the 1% to your obsession with the Fed.

Of course it is. When the top 10% get 50% of the nation's wealth instead of 35% like they did 30 years ago, that means the bottom 90% are only getting 50% instead of 65%.

That is to the tune of about a trillion dollars each year going to the richest instead of the middle classes.

When workers are getting less pay, paying higher taxes because of it, it absolutely does.

I have no problem with someone making a profit.

Yeah, that's what the 1% apologists told us in the 1990s too. The Clinton tax increase would wreck the economy and kill jobs.

Could they be more wrong?

Let's not do that.

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Belongs here: http://www.politicalforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=63

 

Okay here ya go!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHep3xgGGNc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB5LK-jihgk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6pGQa6goj8

 

That is the figure given by the GAO. $16 trillion is the total amount of loans given. Not sure how that is a lie: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/the-fed-audit

I'm aware of how the loans were structured. It doesn't change the fact that the totality of the loan amount was $16 trillion. For example, if I borrowed a billion and paid it back over a one week period, and then was loaned another billion the next week, the total loan amount I received would two billion. That is just simple addition, really.

I wish I could get trillions of dollars of low-interest loans after making bad investments out of pure greed. Must be nice.

I think the banking cartel is getting too many handouts. Apparently, you disagree.

The Congress and the central bank.

You have no idea if it hurt the economy when Clinton raised taxes. For all you know, economic growth would have been even better in their absence. All we can really do is look at the fundamentals of economics and attempt to extrapolate them to real-world scenarios. What we do know is that taxes take money from productive private enterprises like a grocery store or a medical practice, and transfer them to corrupt politicians and special interest groups in Washington DC. We also know that taxes create what are known as deadweight losses, which result in lower quantity supplied and higher prices. I'm not aware of any civilization in history which was able to achieve prosperity by taking limited resources from productive enterprises and transferring it to politicians and special interest groups. To me, that seems like a recipe for economic stagnation and corruption.

 

Youtube videos of Ron Paul, Glenn Beck, and some guy on the Bill Maher explaining that John Kennedy was really killed by the Fed.

Can't get much more solid evidence than that.

 

our central banks were built on the british model

it's not like morgan invented what he contributed

the significant aspect for a tycoon, is who controls the money

which is why the money trust drafted the aldrich plan with private bankers in control of money printing et al

of course congress and the president weren't going to allow the same people that caused the financial problems

be in charge of the new central banking system, what would be the point of that from the public's perspective? there isn't one

bernanke and yellen are academics, not a professional, commercial bankers

although greenspan did work for an investment bank at one point, he wasn't a banker, he was an economic analyst

nearly the same with volcker, he was an economist, not a banker

miller was a lawyer and businessman, burns was an academic

they certainly are not, that's ridiculous, the federal reserve is at the top of the credit pyramid

the 'one percent' are not the money trust, they're all long dead

 

Read the report itself instead of relying on hearsay, and you'll see how propaganda works.

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/GAO Fed Investigation.pdf

It's a big report, but you only need to read the first two sentences to learn the truth from the distortion.

Total loans outstanding peaked at a little more than one trillion. You've been duped by propaganda to believe they actually lent out $16 trillion dollars, more than the total GDP!

Your credit isn't as good.

What "handouts" are you referring to?

How are they handing out trillions to the 1%?

We do know that it was the longest growth period in post WWII history. We know it was the strongest average economic growth since the 1960s. We know it achieved decades low rates of poverty and unemployment. We know a record 22 million jobs were added. We know real incomes rose for all income groups. We know stock markets boomed.

We know that Conservatives told us that the tax increase would wreck the economy and destroy jobs.

And we know that with lower tax rates in the 00s, the economy sucked by comparison.

So I suppose it is possible to theorize that with tax cuts in the 1990s the economy would have done better.

Those aren't fundamentals of economics. For example, in a slack economy where the economy is performing below capacity because so much of the nation's income and wealth has been transferred to the uber rich who stick it in their offshore accounts instead of spending it, Govt spending can take up some of the slack, and depending how its spending is funding, use some of the otherwise unproductive money to generate jobs, income, and spending and production in the economy.

 

lots of that stuff is based on jim marrs' book, 'crossfire: the plot that killed kennedy'

marrs also wrote, 'alien agenda', you know the book where he says he has evidence that extraterrestrials have not only visited our planet in the past, but live among us in present times



Debunking the Federal Reserve Conspiracy Theories (and other financial myths)

Kennedy wrote executive order 11110 to phase out silver certificate currency, not to issue more of it. Records show Kennedy and the Federal Reserve were almost always in agreement on policy matters. He even signed legislation to give the Fed more authority to issue currency.

by Edward Flaherty, Ph.D. Department of Economics College of Charleston, S.C.

http://hidhist.wordpress.com/banksters/debunking-the-federal-reserve-conspiracy-theories-and-other-financial-myths


The facts, by Edward Flaherty, Ph.D. Department of Economics College of Charleston, S.C.

Presidential Executive Order 11110 is quite infamous among conspiracy buffs. Jim Marrs, author of Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, writes that the order instructs the Treasury secretary to issue about $4.2 billion in silver certificates as a form of currency in place of Federal Reserve Notes.1 Written by John F. Kennedy, Marrs also speculates this order was part of a larger plan by Kennedy to reduce the influence of the Federal Reserve by giving the Treasury more power to issue currency. The order was signed June 4, 1963. A few months later, of course, Kennedy was killed, and conspiracy theorists hypothesize a link between the murder and E.O. 11,110. They argue that the Federal Reserve was somehow involved in the assassination to protect its power over monetary policy.

The executive order modifies a pre-existing order issued by Harry Truman in 1951. E.O. 10,289 states "The Secretary of the Treasury is hereby designated and empowered to perform the following-described functions of the President without the approval, ratification, or other action of the President..." The order then lists tasks (a) through (h) which the Treasurer can now do without bothering the President. None of the powers assigned to the Treasury in E.O. 10,289 relate to money or to monetary policy.

In summary, E.O. 11,110 did not create new authority to issue additional silver certificates. In fact, its intention was to ease the process for their removal so that small denomination Federal Reserve Notes could replace them in accordance with a law Kennedy himself signed. If Kennedy had really sought to reduce Federal Reserve power, then why did he sign a bill that gave the Fed still more power?

Marrs also makes some other factual errors in his conspiracy tale that suggest he is not very familiar with the Federal Reserve or the financial system. He writes that a source of tension between the Federal Reserve and the Kennedy Administration was the Treasury´s desire to allow banks to underwrite state and local government bonds, thereby weakening the "dominant" Federal Reserve banks. However, such a move, which was later permitted by Congress, would not have affected the Federal Reserve system because it had never been involved in underwriting bond issues. Marrs also claims that Kennedy signed a bill that changed the backing of small denomination currency from silver to gold to "add strength to the weakened U.S. currency." This is completely false. U.S. currency has not been on the gold standard since 1934, and silver certificates, as their name suggests, had never been redeemable in anything but silver. In addition, U.S. currency was not "weak" during Kennedy´s time: There had not been any significant inflation since the late forties, and the exchange rate value of the dollar was fixed according to the Bretton Woods agreement.

In the introduction to his book, Marrs advises the reader not to trust his book. This appears to be good advice.

References:
1. Marrs, Jim (1989), Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers.

2. Woodward, G. Thomas (1996), "Money and the Federal Reserve System: Myth and Reality," Congressional Research Service.


http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/flaherty/flaherty9.html

 

You claim it is irrelevant, but any educated person will tell you that history has an impact on future events. The same is true of the federal reserve's historical composition and operations. You cannot divorce them from the present without falling victim to a narrow and myopic interpretation of contemporary circumstances.

Academia is one of the biggest benefactors of bigger government and increased centralization with the central bank. Without it, they couldn't charge exorbitant tuition to their student body. Academia has been getting subsidized by federal spending and borrowing for decades now, which is why they keep increasing tuition for their students and compensation for their staff. That is why the student loan bubble has exceeded a trillion dollars. And it's not really a "conspiracy" to enrich bankers, it's a conspiracy to enrich themselves, because in a real free market, nobody would pay a Marxist professor more than five dollars and hour for their skills.

Of course it is, unless you are claiming the ability to predict what would happen in an alternate reality. Are you?

The economy went "down the tubes" anyway, and loan activity has been relatively anemic since then, so I fail to see your point.

Different situation entirely, and past results are not a necessarily a predictor of future outcomes. You can only project or estimate given past results, but you cannot say with any kind of certainty that it will repeat itself.

Doesn't change the fact that the totality of the loan amount was $16 trillion, and that the interest rates were far more preferential than anything regular Americans have access to. Must be nice to be able to get trillions of dollars of preferential loans that you can arbitrage into billions of new profits.

I'm not trying to change the subject at all. The main reason why they are getting rich at everyone else's expense is because they are getting preferential treatment from the central bank, the side effect of which is to devalue the wages and savings of every American. You're the one who wants to ignore this and fixate on tax cuts, which have absolutely nothing to do with a normal American's ability to get a good job or maintain a good standard of living.

No, the economy is not a zero-sum game. If someone profits in a market economy, it is because they are providing some kind of benefit or utility to their customer, whether it's a grocery store or a medical practice. That is the entire basis of trade, mutually beneficial transactions. People who think the economy is some fixed pie simply don't understand how market economies work.

Because their wages and savings are being devalued by inflation.

If it were up to me, they'd pay no taxes. It's people like you who insist that they give up more and more of their money so that politicians in DC can have more and more to spend on special interest groups and pet projects. It was Obama who let their payroll tax liability go up, so maybe you should take it up with him.

You have a problem with them keeping more of that profit to reinvest, spend, or save. You would rather see their profits go to corrupt politicians and lawyers in DC. That sure sounds like a recipe for economic success.

Perhaps it did.

We will never know who is right or wrong, because there is no way to test what would have happened had taxes been lower. You're free to assume that you're right and they were wrong, but no one is obligated to take your assumptions as gospel.

 

You keep conflating loans outstanding with the totality of the loan amount. Fact is, the totality of the loans was $16 trillion. That is what the GAO says in the report. The fact that the total outstanding loans at any one time was $1 trillion does not change that fact in the slightest.

The GAO report is not propaganda, sorry. Like I explained earlier, loans outstanding and the total loan amount are two different things. If I borrowed one billion dollars and paid it back in a week, and then borrowed another billion and paid it back the next week, you could say the total outstanding loans at any time were only one billion dollars, but that would not change the fact that the total loan amount was two billion dollars. Not sure why this is so hard for you to understand.

As good as insolvent banking institutions with trillions of toxic securities on their balance sheets? I'm pretty sure everyone in America had a better credit rating than they did. And let's assume you're right, why should that matter? I thought you were all about helping the common folks. We could have used some of that money. Instead, you'd rather see it go straight into the pockets of the one percent.

Well, there was TARP, and then there has been the trillions in loans and quantitative easing, not a single dollar of which went to decent, hard-working Americans and small business owners.

Yes, the economy could have done even better with tax cuts in the 1990's. It's entirely possible and plausible.

What isn't? Deadweight loss? Productive private enterprises? Be specific.

Below what capacity? How do you know what "capacity" the economy should be performing at?

 

:Hmm! I watched the Glenn Beck video all the way through and found it to be well done, with good guests discussing the FED! What part of it did you have issue with? None of it, because you NEVER WATCHED IT!!! LOL! Never mind, I think that if I could find 100 different sources of information for you, you'd write them all off as lies and conspiracy theories anyway without even considering the evidence presented.

 

Beating the dead horse again Ethereal?

The economy does not need to grow. The S&P 500 is what matter to sugar mama Yellen. Thank you very much.

For the havenots, don't be jealous, myRA will fix that so sleep well at night, Obama will take care of you.

 

g edward griffin was one of the guests, what do you think of his video?

 

You never know who is reading the discussions, so I like to provide them with an alternative viewpoint to consider. I also like to stay sharp on my writing and my economics.

The only thing keeping the economy from imploding is the remnants of the free market. Lots of technological innovation is helping to keep productivity advancing which helps to prop up the crooks in DC. It's sad to think how much better things could be if they would just back off and let the private sector do what it does best. I think we could average around 3.5% real growth annually if the politicians in DC would just simplify their tax and regulatory framework, which would actually help them accrue more tax revenues in the longrun. But these are mostly lawyers we're talking about, so economics isn't really their strong suit.

 

i'm pretty sure yellen is light years ahead of you in economics

 

How wonderful.

Today 4 of the 5 FRB members have no prior employment history with private banks. And the 5th worked at a investing firm.

Academics are part of the big bank/fed conspiracy in your world. Got it.

No, because we have facts as I stated. Of course, you're denial that the economy would have been worse is more speculative and less based in logic and fact.

So you're argument is that we could have had a total collapse of the banking system with hundreds of thousands more losing their jobs and countless businesses going bankrupt because they couldn't get finance plus the effects of the stock market crashing much further and there would be no negative effect on the economy?

Pure, and illogical, speculation.

LMFAO!!!
"Who cares about history and its impact on future events? Educated people, I would imagine.

You claim it is irrelevant, but any educated person will tell you that history has an impact on future events. The same is true of the federal reserve's historical composition and operations. You cannot divorce them from the present without falling victim to a narrow and myopic interpretation of contemporary circumstances."

Funny how you use totally different rules for yourself.

The totality could have been $100 trillion if they rolled it over enough times. It would be like saying the US Govt has borrowed $50 trillion. So what? There was never more about than $1 trillion lent out at any given time. And paid back with interest.

Any entity with better credit gets preferential loan rates.

What the economy produces is 100%. When the richest 10% get 50% of that instead of 35%, the bottom 90% are getting 50% instead of 65%.

Didn't happen to CEO salaries. So much for that theory.

I've always argued taxes should be increased on the richest, not middle class workers.

Strawman.

It didn't wreck the economy at all.

Sure we can. Conservatives claimed the Clinton tax increase would wreck the economy and destroy jobs.

Instead we saw the longest sustained period of growth post WWII, 22 million additional jobs created, poverty levels dropping to all time lows, stock markets tripling even with the correction, the unemployment rate dropping to the lowest level in decades, and the best average GDP growth since the 1960s. Oh yeah, and a then record deficit turning into a surplus.

Could conservatives be more wrong?

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Understatement of the year.

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Now there's a shocker. Tell us about how the Fed killed Kennedy again.

 

Academia is a special interest group that is subsidized by federal spending and borrowing, so clearly it's in their self-interest to promote central banking, high taxes, and big spending.

You claim to know what would happen in an alternate reality. That's interesting.

No. That's just your strawman.

How do you figure?

$16 trillion is the total loan amount. That's what the GAO report says.

Except they were on the brink of insolvency because they had trillions in toxic securities on their balance sheets. To suggest they had "better credit" than me or any other American is ridiculous on its face. It also avoids the underlying issue of fairness and equality. You portray yourself as some kind of a champion of the people by hurling invective on the "one percent" and calling for tax hikes, yet you have no problem with trillions in preferential loans being given to insolvent Wall Street bankers instead of Main Street workers and business owners because, as you absurdly claim, they had "better credit", even though they were effectively insolvent at the time they sought the loans. This is what psychologists refer to as "cognitive dissonance".

But you have no problem with this arrangement. You think handouts to Wall Street bankers are just fine. After all, they have "better credit" than hard-working Americans, so they deserve trillions in preferential loans and new liquidity. Decent, hard-working Americans can just wait for the table scraps in the form of handouts and welfare.

The banking CEO's you favor giving handouts to are able to get ahead of the inflation by arbitraging the loans and new liquidity the second they obtain them. Once that money finds its way into the economy, particularly in commodities, the inflation hits and wages are devalued. But the Wall Street bankers you favor subsidizing have already hedged their position. That's how the inflationary scam has worked since the beginning, when Chinese oligarchs in the 11th century thought up FIAT money.

Yet Obama and the Democrats allowed payroll taxes to increase on middle class workers. Let me know when you plan on taking them to task for that. I won't be holding my breath. And taxes were already increased on the rich. You got what you wanted when the Bush tax cuts expired. Typical, that once you get your tax hike, you ask for "more" tax hikes. It's always "more".

You want to increase taxes on the profits of productive, private enterprises. So while you may have no problem with profits, you clearly have a problem with them keeping more of what they earned in the market where mutually beneficial exchanges serve to make both parties better off. You would rather see that money go to Washington DC, to be wasted by corrupt politicians on special interest groups and pet projects like Solyndra.

But it's certainly possible and entirely plausible that the economy would have performed even better had taxes been lower.

And how do you know the economy wouldn't have been even better in the absence of those tax increases? Oh, I forgot, you have the ability to predict what would happen in an alternate reality.

 

Of course. That is why they are in the big Fed conspiracy with the rich banks. Peas in a pod, them.

You claim to know what would happen in an alternate reality. That's interesting.

So you don't deny that the economy could have been much worse without the intervention?

History is critical to the present when you bring it up (e.g. the Fed board members in 1913) but meaningless to the present when I brought it up (1933 banking collapse)

False. Please prove your BS claim and quote the page where the GAO report says the total loan amount was $16 trillion.

That's true, the loans were given to prevent unnecessary collapse of the banking system, and the economy.

Yet another false statement. Prove your BS and quote my post where I said "handouts to Wall Street bankers are just fine".

Americans get billions in handouts too. The banking system was saved so they wouldn't need a lot more.

.

What? Who said anything about banking CEOs?

Again, why didn't CEO salaries not keep up with inflation?

How do all the other CEOs do it? There salaries have risen in multiples ahead of inflation.

Obama and the Dems where the ones who got the temporary tax cut first.

But by all means. Write your Tea Party Republican reps and tell them to cut FICA taxes on middle class workers. I'm sure the Dems will go along with that.

We have a lot more debt now.

I said nothing about corporate taxes.

Upon what basis do you claim that?

But it's certainly possible and entirely plausible that the economy would have gone into a depression had the banking system collapsed.

Because it already was better, by far. It was better than Reagan's economy and far better than either Bush's. It certainly wasn't wrecked and jobs weren't destroyed as conservative claimed would happen. Could conservatives be more wrong? It certainly wasn't better with the massive tax cuts Bush passed like conservatives said it would be. Could conservatives be more wrong?