Quantitative Easing: Misunderstood by Popular Demand

[peristaltor]

Here's a video. You've probably seen it already.

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I tripped across it some time ago and dismissed it as, well, wrong. When you base your criticisms on elements that are factually inaccurate, you fail. It's as simple as that. Sadly, last night I caught up a bit with my podcast list and heard kmo chatting with Jim Kunstler about the current

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[l33tminion]

in which incoming data have not readily conformed to historical experience

Greenspan, of course, uses "historical relationship" to mean "Randian free-market theory". He's a de facto historical revisionist.

For example, note that they said cutting the Fed prime rate "makes it cheaper to borrow." True; but it makes it cheaper for banks to borrow, not for consumers.

The problem isn't just that banks prefer to loan to those who takes loans out of desperation (though they do). The banks would also be happy to make loans to those that can afford it, at lower rates than in 2008. The problem is that those who can afford loans presently would rather not take out loans at all, and for good reason.

It does society at large no good to see new money rotting in a vault.And it does society negative good to see new money distributed as executive bonuses, which will be mostly be spent on the sort of speculation that results in the production of no goods or services but still manages to endanger the entire financial system

[peristaltor]

I think the "historical relationship" to which he referred is that between the prime rate and the inflation (or money creation) rate. After the Folly of '99, banks no longer needed the Fed to back their loan reserves. They could make their own; create open-ended debt, invest it in the stock and bond markets and could party like it was 1928.

Greenspan should have smelled something gone very wrong, as they say, with capitalism, and at least investigated with fervor. His Randian rose-colored glasses, the one that thought Da Market hunted all evildoers and punished them, allowed the revisionism to kick in and help him see "no alternatives." Willful blindness.

Sadly, most of the stories I'm banging out lately read like doomer donkey dildo porn, don't they?

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[anonymous]

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