Listen to my latest Alternative Visions radio show of last friday, March 24, 2023 and my discussion how the Fed and its decades-long free money policies are the fundamental cause of the repeated financial crises, including this latest; how the Fed also then precipitates the crisis by raising interest rates; and then throws more money at it, which becomes the basis for more financial market speculation, bubbles, and the next crisis.
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SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT
Dr. Rasmus explains how the Fed is ultimately behind the current banking crisis. Distinguishing between causes of the crisis that are ‘fundamental’, ‘enabling’, and ‘precipitating’, Dr. Rasmus explains how the Fed’s pumping $9T of free money (lowering rates to zero in the process) since 2008 created the recent bubbles in Tech and Cryptos that burst and is now bringing down regional banks exposed and over-invested in those sectors. Fed is the ultimate ‘fundamental’ cause. Rasmus explains the ‘enabling’ and further contributing causes of banks’ mismanagement and government deregulation of the sector. And the Fed once again as the ‘precipitating’ cause as result of its unprecedented rapid rise in interest rates over the past year. How the US banking crisis has contributed in part to the simultaneous collapse of Credit Suisse bank in Europe and what’s happening their in its wake. How the current crisis in US and Europe is both similar and different from the crisis of 2008-10 (and 2010-14 in southern Europe’s banks). Rasmus notes how all this was predicted in his 2017 book, ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes’ and why it represents a general contradiction and crisis of capitalist monetary policy in the 21st century. (for print version analyses of the banking crisis and the Fed’s role, check out Dr. Rasmus’s blog, http://jackrasmus.com for posting of recent articles on the crisis and the Fed)
As Dr Rasmus concluded in 2017, it is critical to nationalize the Fed to place it firmly under the people’s control: as a creature of the 5%/Fortune 500 it is a weapon of mass financial destruction. To paraphrase, instead of rescuing failing banks, the Fed is the primary engine of bank failures and has turned the banks into a conduit from the US Treasury to the 5%/Fortune 500 with resulting vicious and grotesque financial inequality.
Great podcast, catch it most weeks.
That said, how do you reconcile the $29 tn bailout as of 2011 per https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_698.pdf with the $9 tn you always mention?
Btb, would love to get you Dean Baker and Stephanie Kelton together on a debate (discussion?) on how much the Fed has printed (keyed) since 2008.
Thanks for all your work.