Dollar Rally Crumbles as Fed Ramps Up Printing Press (Update3) (click here)
By Oliver Biggadike and Ye Xie
... Fed policy makers said yesterday they plan to buy as much as $300 billion of U.S. government bonds and step up purchases of mortgage bonds, expanding the central bank’s balance sheet by as much as $1.15 trillion. The extra supply of dollars threatens to overwhelm investors just as the budget deficit swells.
The trade-weighted Dollar Index, which tracks the currency’s performance against the euro, yen, pound, Canadian dollar, Swiss franc and Swedish krona, tumbled 2.7 percent to 84.595, its biggest one-day drop since 1971. That pushed its decline to 5.6 percent since reaching 89.62 on March 4, the highest in almost four years....
...sell the dollar!” said Scott Ainsbury, a portfolio manager who helps manage about $12 billion in currencies at New York-based hedge fund FX Concepts Inc. “This is huge, huge. It’s equivalent to the Plaza accord. This is the last thing they have in the closet, and they used it a bit early.”...
...Yields on 10-year Treasuries declined the most since 1962 after the Fed said it would concentrate purchases in notes due from two to 10 years. The central bank is expanding its quantitative easing policy, which already includes agency and mortgage debt, to more than $1.85 trillion in securities....
"...where the standard rules don't apply. In particular, the argument goes, when there are idle resources lying around, the traditional economic problem of scarcity disappears. The government can prime the pump by throwing borrowed money around, and this can only boost total output, because employed workers produce more than unemployed workers."
He is processing the gross misunderstanding that 'tickle down' works. We know from Bush 41 that 'tickle down' is a myth. It doesn't work. Bernanke is infusing money into the "W"rong place. By indulging financial institutions, Ben Bernanke is stating the old method of trickle down will actually produce jobs in the USA. It won't. The financial institutions that Mr. Bernanke caters to are global international entities with interests in far different places than the USA's backyard.
If Bernanke is allowed to continue in his 'dreamscape' the monies will disappear no different than the Bush/Paulson TARP funds. Bernanke is known for lacking structure in all his policies. He has no intention of defining the use of these funds, monitoring their distribution and quite frankly what will occur is that the USA Fed will be bailing out the entire global economy while being tied to insoluable debt without a growing work force and tax base.
Those monies will disappear, but, they will not generate jobs and hence there will be no house sales. Bernanke cannot make consumers spend and there in lies the problem. The majority of the USA's GDP, to date, relies on consumer spending. It is an economy based on the idea that Americans are wealthy and don't need to work so much as invest.
Bernanke and those like him lack the insight to realize until the USA changes its methods of generating GDP as translated into labor there won't be a recovery. Bernanke can't give houses away, even with a record low mortgage rate, no matter what he tries, simply because, there aren't people 'solvent' to pay for them. The tragic reality of this economic train wreck is when home owners declared bankruptcy it wasn't simply to get out of debt they can't afford and start over, it is because they lost everything. They lost their jobs, equity and assets. There is nothing on the other side of the bankruptcy that can act as a mechanism to 'rebuild' lives.
The crash occurred because of exploitive government with literally no direction except the purpose of exploitation for greed. The hollow Republican adminnistration literally crashed an economy that has no way of regenerating itself. The purpose of the USA over the past eight years has been meaningless. The huge pork barrel budgets of the Republicans dominated the legislature for 'ideological' reasons. There was no solid substance to any of it. It is nearly unfathomable to realize eight years of Republican pork and legislature had no purpose except to legislate morality and defense spending. Even the defense spending served no purpose. The war in Iraq had no basis of purpose and still doesn't except for the fear of the unknown should we leave. The Republican crony spending achieved nothing but a government supported economy in areas that could not be outsourced for greater profit taking. There was no substantive growth in job sectors and when the USA stopped funding an ideology, the economy tanked.
Bernanke's trillion has no meaning, it is not linked with supportive structures that will infuse monies to producing jobs. The Bernanke trillion will go to institutions with debt in other markets and will have no return to economic revitalization of the USA.
Bernanke's only reason for putting forth a trillion US for the global institutions is that it wasn't done during The Great Depression and the lack of monies caused an increase in the contracture for business. That is not the case here. Since the years of the Great Depression, USA businesses and interests have too many tenticles to other markets and foreign lending with obligations outside the USA. The stimulus packages President Obama has put forward including his 2010 budget specifically addresses the revitalization of the USA and its labor force to bring about personal incomes that translate into economic regrowth.
Bernanke is "W"rong and sadly he has no 'idea' for anything different except the lessons of the past which he disregards when it comes to regulation, which the lack of caused these problems in the first place. He needs to be removed from the Fed. There is no predicting his next move and the demise of the USA dollar and vastly increasing debt.
This is profoundly where everything Bernanke is doing falls apart.
President Obama has developed an 'Auto Team' to revitalize the auto industry. In the article below there are guaranteed loans to auto supplier in the amount of $5 billion. Those loan guarantees coming directly from the USA Treasury to banks should not be necessary as the Fed just released an additional trillion US dollar bills to supposedly 'shore up' the banks to they could lend to the auto suppliers and the auto makers. If the suppliers already have made deliveries to the auto makers and are waiting for payment which is slowed by the credit crunch Bernanke's trillion is all that should have to be accessed. The suppliers delivered their product and the automakers have to pay their invoices. Why are there guarantees attached to these monies with a new glut of a trillion US sitting around for the banks to simply pay the suppliers? There are monies available for GM to borrow and it eliminates the need for bailout funds.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Auto panel focuses on help for suppliers (click here)
Obama administration seeks to guarantee loans in effort to infuse cash to struggling parts makers.
David Shepardson and Gordon Trowbridge / Detroit News Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration's effort to aid struggling auto suppliers is focused on a program to provide guarantees for billions of dollars in money owed to parts makers -- a move that could provide them with badly needed cash.
A number of major suppliers are on the brink of bankruptcy in the face of dramatically lower auto production, and the so-called "credit insurance" program, would enable them to borrow from banks based on what they are owed from automakers.
The government would guarantee the payments if the automaker went bankrupt and could not pay the suppliers' bills....
As far as I am concerned this is double dipping. The bailout of any entity, be it auto makers or banks is completely unnecessary with this new glut of monies, UNLESS, one is stating the 'viability / solvency' of these industries is doomed. Is it? Is the future of automakers doomed and therefore bankruptcy is inevitable and they are not credit worthy? Really? Could have fooled me.
Bernanke's actions are meaningless because they don't have 'targets' as do the stimulus or the automaker bailout funds. The monies proposed to rescue the automakers are for the purpose of revitalizing the USA industry. If not, then there is no reason to proceed. In the case of GM, I do believe their direct funding by the bailout will result in USA jobs and a stable auto economy. The monies Bernanke flooded the market with yesterday have no sincere delivery point except banks and it could be any bank funding anyone or any company. His actions make no sense in the face of a bailout for industries sensitive to the USA recovery.
The Obama Administration needs to concentrate on issues of regulation across the spectrum of the cabinet and stop playing with faux monies.
If this administration wants to stop the continually growing 'complications' of Wall Street to the global economic crisis, then dissove the Fed. That would be a good start.