Meet The New Boss

Bill Bonner: A Barbarous Fed…

"Barbaric people used force and violence to get what they wanted; civilized transactions are based on mutual consent and cooperation. We know that the economy of the Soviet Union, driven by brute force, was a disaster. How do you think the economy of the US – heavily persuaded by the padded force of the Yellen-led Fed – will fare? Is today’s Fed a modern, civilized institution? Or an archaic throw-back to the past? And what about the dollar itself? Is it a form of modern money… or a barbarous relic, depending on the police power of the state to give it value?" Continue reading →

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Barack Obama’s Nixonian Fed Pick

"As a result of the Fed’s Quantitative Easing programs, banks are now sitting on more than $2.2 trillion in excess reserves. How the Fed eliminates these excess reserves before they produce an explosive growth in the money supply and surging inflation should be more of a concern to the next Fed Chair than an unemployment rate that is more the product of uncertainties associated with deficit spending and business fears about Obamacare than any lack of liquidity caused by the Fed. Yellen’s defenders say there’s nothing to worry about. As Georgetown University professor Henry Holzer put it, Yellen is fully aware of inflation and not a 'mindless stimulator.' Others aren’t so sure." Continue reading →

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We All Know Who Janet Yellen Is, And That’s Terrifying

"The acclaim in the media sends a shiver down the spine. Janet Yellen, just nominated by President Obama as the next head of his Federal Reserve, will be 'the most powerful woman in the planet'. If we were living in a stable monetary order she would be the least powerful woman in the world. Think back to the era of the gold standard before 1914. Britain was the leader of the orchestra in the monetary system. But no one outside a few discount brokers in London knew the name of the Bank of England Governor, who changed each 2 years." Continue reading →

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Janet Yellen: An Insane Choice for a Debt-Crazed Economy

"I have no idea if she is competent. Competence in an economist is hard to measure, like knowing whether your auto mechanic is really any good. As for vital attributes, the Times did get one right. 'She represents continuity,' the Times wrote. That pretty much says it all. Janet Yellen is establishment all the way. She won’t wobble the canoe. She’s not a Paul Volcker coming in to break things up. And that’s all you need to know about Yellen. She’s got the same playbook in her pocket as Bernanke. If anything, there are hints she’ll be even more aggressive in printing money than Bernanke." Continue reading →

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Bill Bonner: The Fed Chief America Deserves

"If it were that easy to create real wealth, of course, everybody would be doing it. Real wealth – like everything else that is precious – takes time, patience, and forbearance. You don’t get it by using cheap tricks and economic gimmickry. Instead, you have to pay for it. That is, you have to give something up in the present to gain more prosperity in the future. The feds’ programs promise the opposite: Americans will get something now… and pay (dearly) later. Eventually – sooner or later – Mr. Market will come down hard on investors’ heads, like a murderer armed with a claw hammer." Continue reading →

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The Most Qualified Fed Chair Since Arthur Burns

"It is not possible for any one human to have the knowledge needed to accomplish the goals established for the Federal Reserve. No person can assure Mr. Wolfers’ daughter her economic future will be bright. Ironically, that might only happen if Yellen took the job but then stepped aside to let the market determine interest rates and the flow of capital. Given Yellen’s views and experience, best case, the professor’s daughter can look forward to a world of no-growth punctuated with the occasional banking crisis. In the worst case, Ms. Yellen will conjure up the memory of Arthur Burns." Continue reading →

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Ron Paul: New Fed Boss Same as the Old Boss

"The news that Janet Yellen was nominated to become the next Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System was greeted with joy by financial markets and the financial press. Wall Street saw Yellen's nomination as a harbinger of continued easy money. Contrast this with the hand-wringing that took place when Larry Summers' name was still in the running. Pundits worried that Summers would be too cautious, too hawkish on inflation, or too close to big banks. The reality is that there wouldn't have been a dime's worth of difference between Yellen's and Summers' monetary policy. No matter who is at the top, the conduct of monetary policy will be largely unchanged." Continue reading →

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‘Rejoice: the Yellen Fed will print money forever to create jobs’

"We now know where we stand. Janet Yellen is to take over the US Federal Reserve, the world's monetary hegemon, the master of all our lives. The Fed will be looser for longer. The FOMC will continue to print money until the US economy creates enough jobs to reignite wage pressures and inflation, regardless of asset bubbles, or collateral damage along the way. No Fed chief in history has been better qualified. She has pedigree. Her husband is Nobel laureate George Akerlof, the scourge of efficient markets theory. Her lodestar is the 'non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment' (NAIRU). When the rate is above NAIRU, she is a dove: when below, she is a hawk." Continue reading →

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Seymour Hersh on bin Laden death: ‘One big lie, not one word of it is true’

"Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism – close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider. Holding court to a packed audience at City University in London’s summer school on investigative journalism, 76-year-old Hersh is on full throttle, a whirlwind of amazing stories of how journalism used to be; how he exposed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, how he got the Abu Ghraib pictures of American soldiers brutalising Iraqi prisoners, and what he thinks of Edward Snowden." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingSeymour Hersh on bin Laden death: ‘One big lie, not one word of it is true’

Seymour Hersh on bin Laden death: ‘One big lie, not one word of it is true’

"Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism – close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider. Holding court to a packed audience at City University in London’s summer school on investigative journalism, 76-year-old Hersh is on full throttle, a whirlwind of amazing stories of how journalism used to be; how he exposed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, how he got the Abu Ghraib pictures of American soldiers brutalising Iraqi prisoners, and what he thinks of Edward Snowden." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingSeymour Hersh on bin Laden death: ‘One big lie, not one word of it is true’