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On Janet Yellen as Federal Reserve Chair

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 10, 2013| 5 Comments »

On October 9, 2013, President Obama announced his nomination of Janet Yellen, current vice-chair of the Federal Reserve, as the new Fed chair, to replace Ben Bernanke expected to retire at year’s end.

Obama’s appointment, subject to Senate confirmation that is likely, comes after a general consensus in recent weeks that Yellen would be the President’s choice. That followed weeks of heated public debate and maneuvering, identifying Yellen as the favorite of liberals in and out of Congress, and Larry Summers the prefered choice of Obama administration staffers and insiders. Summers withdrew his candidacy several weeks ago, however, under pressure from conservative elements, who viewed his role as former Obama adviser, as too liberal on fiscal spending in Obama’s administration, and liberal elements, who viewed his role as former Clinton administration Secretary of the Treasury as too accommodating to bankers and financial deregulation.

It has been interesting to watch how liberals, within and without the Obama administration in recent weeks organized aggressively on behalf of Yellen. Yellen was the ‘Fed Dove’, willing to continue Ben Bernanke’s generous free money policies of QE (quantitative easing) and near zero interest rates. In contrast, Summers was the monetary ‘hawk’ that would likely accelerate a withdrawal from QE faster. Of course, both profiles were mostly spin.

Noted liberal economists, like Paul Krugman of the New York Times, fell completely into the Yellen camp, praising her policies and more liberal credentials. Even progressives of the moderate persuasion fell for the ‘Yellen as Fed Dove’ fiction. But a closer inspection would have revealed that neither Summers nor Yellen would have departed much, if at all, from current chair Bernanke’s policies.

Those policies, in the form of QE and ‘zero bound interest rates’, since 2009 have had little if any impact or effect on the real economy—and therefore on housing recovery, jobs, or middle class incomes.

In the course of four years of both QE and zero rates, the Federal Reserve has pumped more than $13 trillion in liquidity (money) into the US and global banking system (and shadow banking system) to bailout the banks. In terms of QE alone, this occurred in at least three versions—QE1, QE2, and now currently QE3—which together will have provided by year end 2013 (along with QE 2.5—called ‘operation twist’), nearly $4 trillion of liquidity injections to bankers as well as individual wealthy investors seeking to dump their collapse subprime mortgage bonds on the Federal Reserve.

QE and the $13 trillion resulted in record booms in the stock and bond markets in the US and globally. Much of that likely flowed out of the US into the global economy, serving to stimulate real growth in emerging markets and generating financial asset speculative bubbles around the world. There is in fact a very high correlation between the announcement, introduction, and conclusion of QE programs and stock-bond, derivative, and other financial asset booms and declines since 2009. Conversely, there is virtually no such connection between housing, jobs, and other real sectors of the US economy.
Bernanke Fed monetary policies have thus boosted financial capital gains and in turn the incomes of the wealthiest in the US and globally, as real disposable income for US households has consistently declined for four consecutive years.

As recent data on income distribution from studies of economists at the University of California have shown this past summer: The wealthiest US 1% households have accrued for themselves no less than 95% of all the income gains in the US since 2009.

Yellen has been perhaps the strongest supporter of out-going Fed Chair, Ben Bernanke’s policies of QE and zero bound rates, which have directly resulted in this lopsided income inequality. So why were liberals so impressed with her as the preferred choice for next Fed chair? It certainly wasn’t for her policies. Or was it?

Perhaps some still labor under the false notion that, in the world of 21st century global finance capitalism, low interest rates create jobs. But that academic economics fiction no longer has evidence in reality. It belongs in the same trash bin with other fictions, like business tax cuts create jobs. Or that more free trade agreements , like the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership, pushed by the Obama administration and liberals, will create jobs. Here again, the empirical track record shows that neither have, or will, create jobs. Liberals nonetheless adhere to these false notions, in essence believing in the various forms of ‘trickle down’ economics. Regardless, Yellen was given the ‘dove’ tag, and therefore the liberal endorsement.

Yellen as Fed Chair will continue policies no different in content than has Ben Bernanke. Yellen will continue to pump QE into bankers and investors, stocks and bond markets, global speculators and offshore investors, as had Bernanke. If she really were liberal, she’d take the $1 trillion given them in just the past year of QE3 liquidity injections and use it to fund a government direct job creation program. That would create 20 million $50k a year jobs, and jump start the economic recovery overnight.

But the Bernanke-Yellen policy of giving that $1 trillion (and $12 trillion more) to bankers and investors will instead continue to prop up the stock, bond and other speculative financial markets. Just as Bernanke ‘chickened out’ this past summer when he rapidly backed off suggesting the $85 billion a month QE3 injections might be reduced by modest $5 billion, so too will Yellen.

There will be no fundamental change, in other words, from a Bernanke Fed to a Yellen Fed. The US Federal Reserve under its current structure and leadership is an institution serving bankers and wealthy investors. Before the Fed can ever begin serving the rest of the economy, the country and its citizens, it will have to be radically restructured.

The Federal Reserve will have to be democratized and become an institution that functions as a ‘public banking entity’, not a private banking conduit. It will then provide low money cost loans to households, small businesses, students, and workers—instead of wealthy investors, bankers, and speculators.

Instead of issuing QE for the 1%, the Fed could issue QE designed to create jobs, raise incomes, and generate a sustained economic recovery for all. But that won’t happen under a Yellen Fed. The false ‘hawk/dove’ options for leadership in the Fed Reserve reflects the U.S. political system – a dual one-party system with corporate interest at its heart. It will take a new, grassroots movement calling for real choice, and real democracy to fix our government, and institutions like the Federal Reserve.

~ Jack Rasmus serves as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve System in the Economy Branch of the Green Shadow Cabinet of the United States

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From ‘Taper Tantrum’ & ‘Token Taper’ to ‘Taper Tomorrow’-Fed Policy in Crisis’

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 22, 2013| 2 Comments »

This past week the US central bank, the Federal Reserve (Fed), opted not to change its current 3rd Quantitative Easing (QE) policy providing $85 billion a month in bond purchases from bankers and investors. The Fed’s QE3 policy has been in effect for about a year, injecting in excess of $1 trillion in subsidized money into the US and global economy. Since QEs began in 2009, the total injection will have exceeded $4 trillion by the end of this year.

Consensus was strong in recent weeks that the Fed would at least slightly reduce that $85 billion, by a token $5-$10 billion a month. That would have provided a mild, second signal it would begin reducing its $85 billion a month money injection.

Last May-June 2013, the Fed’s chairman, Ben Bernanke, initially signaled to the markets the Fed might soon start ‘reducing QE. That set off what has been called the ‘taper tantrum’ by investors. Almost immediately in response to the Fed’s suggestion, rates on bonds in the US began to escalate, including mortgage rates, corporate bond rates and US Treasury bonds—all of which surged by more than a full 1% in a matter of weeks.

The outcome of the rapid rate rise was the tepid US housing market recovery almost stalled, stock and bond prices began to tank, and investment into ‘emerging markets’—where much of the total $4 trillion in QEs since 2009 has gone—began to reverse and flow back from abroad to the US and Europe. Emerging markets’ currencies in turn began to decline, the global currency war ratcheted up another notch, and capital flight from those economies to the west accelerated.

Faced with the ‘taper tantrum’ by global high net worth investors and their institutions—aka ‘the markets’—the Fed and Bernanke quickly changed their tune by early July, reassuring investors and speculators that s significant retraction of QE3’s $85 billion wasn’t really their intention. The ‘markets’ quickly sighed with relief and stock, bond, property, and other financial asset prices rose again.

As part of its so-called ‘forward guidance’ policy—notifying markets of its future intentions—the Fed in August took another shot, this time more cautiously, at trying to extricate itself once again from its massive, five year, $4 trillion QE program.

The extrication has become increasingly necessary, since QEs—together with the Fed’s accompanying policy of ‘zero bound’ interest rates—have been force-feeding financial asset bubbles globally—threatening to destabilize the global money system. Simultaneously, it has become no less clear that these dual Fed policies have become increasingly ‘inefficient’—that is, while feeding financial speculation and asset bubbles they have not resulted in much real investment in goods and services.

As more and more reports and articles have begun to show, as QE continues to grow and financial asset market prices rise, the growth of real investment in goods and services continue to slow. According to one report, only 15% of financial flows since 2009 are now going into real investment in goods and services, according to a recent article in the global news daily, the Financial Times, this past September 20.

However, the Fed’s second ‘forward guidance’ second suggestion to taper in August led to still more capital flight and currency declines in emerging markets. At the same time, by late summer in the US, a number of economic indicators began to show that the US economic recovery is not as strong as the press hype has been suggesting. Even the Fed itself has been lowering its own forecast for the US economy, from 2.5% earlier in 2013 down, most recently, to 2% GDP growth. (That downward revised forecast was not the first. In fact, the Fed has consistently reduced its US economic forecasts for the past three years, from an originally predicted 4.3% annual GDP growth).
Given the obvious concern with Fed monetary policies’ growing ‘inefficiency’ stimulating the real economy and the growing effects of QE and zero rates feeding financial speculation and bubbles, the Fed last week on September 16, shook markets and investors by deciding not to ‘taper’ at all for the moment, suspending its August implied ‘token taper’ of $5 or $10 billion a month.

To recap these Fed events over the summer: in a matter of just a few months the Fed has shifted from responding to the ‘Taper Tantrum’ to the ‘Token Taper’ retreat. This has left its policy of ‘forward guidance’—i.e. signaling its intentions to the markets—in a shambles. In recent days, several Fed board governors have returned to suggesting a third time that a reduction of the $85 billion will occur before year end, and perhaps even start in October—i.e. what might be called a ‘Taper Tomorrow’.

What all this policy shifting signifies is, in the last several months, Fed monetary policy is perhaps beginning to unwind in more ways than one.
On the other hand, the Fed’s retreat from the ‘Tantrum’ and the ‘Token’ has left speculators, investors and banksters quite happy. The stock and bond markets surged in September once again, emerging market currencies recovered a little, and other financial markets moved once more to the upside—illustrating the tight positive correlation that has evident for four years now between financial asset inflation and Fed QE policies (and the equal lack of any correlation between QEs and the real economy).

To employ a metaphor, as a consequence of its ‘on-off’ QE policy the Fed is beginning to appear like the drunk driver stopped by police after appearing to ‘weave back and forth’ on the highway. It is being asked to hold its finger to its nose and walk a straight line, to give evidence if it is indeed drunk or not. And it’s not succeeding. Instead, its stumbling to either side of the line.

What the Fed’s ‘stop-go’, on and off, QE policy signifies in a broader sense is threefold:

First, that investors and banksters have become addicted to the QE, low interest and free money policies of the Fed that have been in effect the past five years. (see this writer’s March 7, 2012 article and prediction, ‘Are Capitalists Becoming Addicted to Free Money’, on his blog at jackrasmus.com). The mere suggestion of a QE retraction, even when token, results in financial asset price declines and rising interest rates. Banksters-investors simply want the free subsidies to continue and they expect that to happen. A ‘cold-turkey’ withdrawal of liquidity sends them into ‘financial fits’.

Moreover, each time the Fed retreats on its signal to taper, it makes the next attempt even more difficult as investors anticipate and become even more predisposed to quickly respond to counter any Fed suggested move. As the Fed repeatedly retreats, the financial bubbles continue, emerging markets’ problems of currency volatility and capital flight grow, China’s real estate market becomes more fragile as hot money inflows return from the west to Chinese ‘shadow’ banks, and US monetary policy becomes even less ‘efficient’ stimulating the real US economy.

Secondly, Fed recent stop-go policies suggest the real economy has become super-sensitive to interest rate hikes—just as it has become ‘super-Insensitive’ to interest rate reductions over the past five years. (In economists’ parlance, this is expressed as the economy having become ‘increasingly inelastic’ to interest rate declines—i.e. falling rates generating little real growth—while conversely becoming ‘increasingly elastic’—rising rates quickly slowing real growth—to interest rate hikes).

QE is showing the real economy is responding less and less positively to money supply injections and interest rate declines, while more and more negatively to money supply reductions and interest rate hikes. Furthermore, the Fed’s key policy of ‘forward guidance’—i.e. telling the markets what it plans to do in order to avoid severe volatility response by investors—is now unraveling as well. No one really knows what the Fed is going to do now, how it plans to do it, and when and at what rate it plans to begin doing it. In short, the Fed is losing control of the monetary tools by which it has been stabilizing the banking and financial system the past five years.

Thirdly, it all means it will be even more difficult for the Fed to ‘taper tomorrow’, which is apparently its latest message being delivered by select Fed governors. Emerging markets may react even more volatilely to the next taper iteration by the Fed, producing even more currency volatility, capital flight, and economic slowdown. More hot money will flow into China’s increasingly fragile local property markets via its growing ‘shadow’ bank network there. Financial asset bubbles, having returned in the interim, will pose an even greater risk of too rapid asset price contraction at some later date.

Apart from problems of feeding financial speculation, asset prices, and continuing financial bubbles, the US and global real economy will now become even more ‘super-sensitive’ to QE withdrawal and resulting interest rate hikes.

Dr. Jack Rasmus
September 20, 2013

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The Federal Reserve, QE, & Jobs

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 15, 2013| 2 Comments »

Over the past five years the US central bank, the Federal Reserve (Fed), has printed nearly $4 trillion in liquidity (money) which it has provided to banks and professional investors. This is called ‘Quantitative Easing’ (QE). QE means the Fed essentially prints money and buys bonds—mostly toxic subprime mortgages to date—from institutional investors (i.e. banks, shadow banks, foreign banks, other investors). In addition to printing nearly $4 trillion with which to buy bonds from banks and investors, since 2008 the Fed has also conducted various ‘special auctions’, by which it has loaned additional trillions of dollars at little or no interest to banks. Still more trillions were loaned were loaned by the Fed by means of policies that resulted in near zero interest rates (between 0.1%-0.25%) at which banks could borrow money.

The Fed’s QE purchases represent a massive direct subsidization of banks and investors, since the Fed’s bond purchases were almost certainly bought in most cases at prices well above the collapsed value of the bonds—most of which were mortgage bonds including toxic subprime mortgages. But we’ll never know the exact price the Fed paid bankers and investors for the bonds, since the Fed doesn’t provide specific reports on individual deals and purchases; not even to Congress. Only the aggregate data is reported.

The total of QE, special auctions, and near zero interest rates made available to bankers and investors since 2008 comes to at least $10 to $15 trillion. Some estimates range as high as $20 trillion. The number rises still higher when similar QE and free money measures by foreign central banks is taken into account; specifically, by other major central banks like the Bank of England, Bank of Japan, and the European Central Bank (ECB).

Justifying QE1: Economic Recovery

The Fed originally argued in 2009 that this massive, free money injection and bank subsidization was necessary to stimulate the US economy and generate a sustained full recovery as quickly as possible. But even if the Fed and its policies were responsible for all the economic growth since 2009, an impossible assumption that ignores all other contributions to growth, that contribution would still amount to only 8.2% GDP growth over the past five years—which is about only half the GDP growth after five years that occurred in prior recession recoveries since the 1970s.

The Fed’s QE policies these past five years have come in four doses. There was the initial QE1 in 2009, amounting to $1.75 trillion in bond purchases. The US economy then stalled out in the summer of 2010. Then came the $600 billion QE2 in the fall of 2010. The economy stalled a second time in 2011, leading to what was called ‘Operation Twist’ (QE 2.5?) that provided another $400 billion in mortgage bond purchases. When that petered out, it was followed by QE3 last September 2012. Unlike its predecessors, QE3 has had no limit. It calls for Fed purchases of $85 billion a month for ‘as long as necessary’. So QE3 has now amounted to about another $1 trillion, and continues to rise by $85 billion every month.

While there is talk that the Fed may start to ‘taper’ (reduce) its $85 billion a month, don’t expect much of a change. Maybe $10 billion a month or so reduction. QE will therefore continue for some time. That’s because, as this writer has argued elsewhere, bankers and big investors are now ‘addicted to the free money’ regime that characterizes 21st century finance capital globally today.

Just the mention of a possible ending of QE by the Fed this past June sent bankers-investors globally into financial fits and paroxysms last June. Stocks, bonds and other financial assets fell into a major tailspin in a matter of weeks. The Fed quickly denied it had any such intention of ending QE. The markets quickly recovered and went on their merry financial bubble way once again. That event of possibly reducing QE, and financial markets’ extreme reaction, this past summer has been called the ‘taper tantrum’. What’s coming in the next few weeks, however, is at most a ‘taper tweak’.

Justifying QE2: Restoring Price Stability

The Fed initially launched QE1 in early 2009, claiming it would stimulate the economy and generate a recovery. But no such thing happened. In the summer of 2010 the economy weakened again. The Fed thereafter switched its excuse. It next argued in 2010 a second QE was necessary, this time to head off the growing trend in the economy toward deflation (price declines) at the time.

Deflation is a very dangerous thing. As long as prices continue to fall, businesses will hold off investing and consumer households from buying. For businesses, deflation creates uncertainty whether they can sell their goods at a price high enough in the future to cover their production costs in the present. For households, deflation results in consumers ‘waiting for prices to bottom out’ before actually purchasing again. The recent housing market in the US is a good example. Home prices continued to fall for four years, about 40% on average. During the period of home price declines the housing market did not recover, despite the 30%-40% price drops. It wasn’t until late 2012, as home prices began to rise, that home buying recovered a little and home prices began rising a little, by about 12-15%. Thus deflation means both business investment and household consumption ‘freeze up’. That means no recovery. The Fed therefore argued another round of QE was needed to halt deflation and get prices rising again, so that investment, consumption, and recovery could follow.

But the Fed’s claim that QE 2 was needed to prevent deflation and raise prices (to a Fed target of 2.5%), as a way to encourage investment and consumer spending, didn’t materialize either. Between 2010-2011, the period during which QE2 was in effect, consumer and wholesale prices for goods and services continued to slowly drift lower, flirting dangerously with deflation. While QE policies may—and often do—result in price bubbles for financial assets (stocks, bonds, etc.), they have little effect in terms of inflating prices for normal goods and services.

So the Fed’s QE1 did not generate a sustained recovery for the US economy (which has been bouncing along the bottom now for four years since the ‘end’ of the recession in June 2009). And its QE2 did not result in getting prices to rise to the Fed’s minimal target of 2.5%. The primary goals of QE in its first and second iteration therefore failed.

Justifying QE3: Reducing Unemployment & Creating Jobs

Enter QE3, and the Fed’s third justification for introducing yet another third round of QE3 in the fall of 2012. The new excuse was that another QE was necessary in order to reduce unemployment rates and get a job recovery underway. In September 2012 the Fed announced it would launch another QE, printing and injecting $85 billion a month into the economy, until such time as the ‘U-3’ unemployment rate fell—from the 8.1% level in September 2012 to a 6.5% target level. The U-3 rate has come down over the past year to 7.3%. Meanwhile, the more accurate U-6 unemployment rate still remains around 14% and more than 20 million continue unemployed.

But the Fed’s QE3 has not really been responsible for reducing even the unemployment rate from 8.1% to 7.3%. That reduction has been the result of millions of unemployed leaving the labor force altogether over the past year, and from jobs ‘churning’ from declined in full time jobs to increases in part time and temporary jobs.

Over the past year, 2012-2013, it is true that the US economy has created 2.3 million jobs. But this has been largely part time and temp jobs, with low pay and essentially no benefits.

‘Jobs Churn’: The US Jobs Market Today

The main characteristic of the US job market today is perhaps best described as a ‘job churn’. While the US is not losing jobs, it is not creating them very well—at least not decent paying jobs.

The US is ‘churning out’ full time jobs and replacing them with ‘contingent jobs’. Since January 2013 through July 2013, just under a million jobs were created; but no fewer than 650,000 of these were part time and temp jobs. Meanwhile, 250,000 full time jobs disappeared over the same period. This ‘job churn’ has other dimensions as well.

In addition to replace full time with part time-temp jobs, it is providing jobs for millions of new entrants (at mostly part time-temp status) as millions more leave the labor force altogether.

It is substituting high paid jobs for low paid. As a recent study showed, 60% of the jobs lost since 2008 have been ‘high paid’ (more than $18/hr. on average), while 58% of the jobs created since 2008 have been ‘low paid’ (less than $12 an hour).

Not only substituting new entrants to the labor force for those leaving the labor force; not only full time for part-time/temp jobs; not only high paid for low paid. The economy is churning out union jobs and replacing them with non-union jobs as well.

It is a sad but remarkable fact that while the economy added a couple million jobs since 2012, US unions experienced an unprecedented decline of 500,000 jobs in 2012 alone. That loss amidst job creation has never before occurred for organized labor. At that rate, its meager 6% or so unionization rate in the private sector today will fall to 3% or less by the end of the current decade—i.e. the lowest ever, signifying the virtual disappearance of organized labor in the private sector in America for all practical purposes.

QE as 21st Century ‘Trickle Down’

Notwithstanding the foregoing facts, if one still insists on maintaining that the Fed’s QE3 has reduced unemployment, it is clear that QE to date is an incredibly inefficient, costly, and wasteful way to create jobs.

For example, let’s assume QE3 and Fed monetary policy is responsible for half of all the 2.3 million jobs created over the past year—a generous assumption. But let’s assume it nonetheless. That’s 1,150,000 of the roughly 2.3 million jobs created over the past 12 months. Let’s further assume that about 400,000 of that 1,150,000 represents part time-temp jobs. Next, if two part time jobs roughly equals one full time job, that’s 200,000 full time equivalent jobs created by QE and the Fed the past 12 months. Add that 200,000 to the remaining 715,000 full time jobs assumed created by QE3 over the past year, adds up to a total of 915,000 full time jobs created by QE/Fed over the past year. Let’s round it all up, to an even 1 million jobs created by QE3.

Now let’s take the $1 trillion cost of QE3 over the past year. Divide the $1 trillion by 1 million jobs and the result is a cost of $1 million per job created. That’s an absurdly inefficient and wasteful job creation program!

So who has really benefited from the Fed’s $1 trillion QE job creation program?

Taking the calculations one further step, the average wage of the 1 million jobs is reasonably no more than $15/hr—given the composition of 400,000 part time-temp, low paid jobs in the total. That $15/hr. is about $30,000 a year. The ‘benefits cost’ load is no more than 10% of the base pay, since many of the jobs are part time-temp with essentially no benefits. That’s another $3,000. That’s $33,000. That leaves $967,000 of QE3’s Fed printed money going into the pockets of someone else other than the worker who got the QE created job!

The ‘someone else’ in this case include the bankers and investors to whom the $1 trillion was provided in the first place. The bankers and investors then mostly loaned out the QE mostly to other speculators, who in turn likely invested it in the stock, bond and derivatives markets—thereby driving up the financial asset prices for these securities which, when sold, realize super-capital income gains. Given the absurdly low capital gains tax rates that exist, the bankers-investors get to keep 85% or more of their profits (realized income). Alternatively, they might not loan out the $967,000 billion from the Fed QE windfall to other financial market speculators, but loan it to offshore emerging markets, like China. In either case, the $967,000O doesn’t create any jobs in the US since it doesn’t result in investment in the US. Or, thirdly, they might just hoard the cash; or send it to their offshore tax havens in order even to avoid paying the nominal capital gains tax; or, if they’re a public corporation, as most banks are, use it to buy back their bank stock, payout more dividends to shareholders, or use it to purchase their competitors (mergers & acquisitions). None of that creates jobs either.

The net outcome of QE is the escalating incomes of bankers, investors, wealthy shareholders and high net worth individual households. That means even more income inequality in the US.

It is not coincidental that during the period of QE1-QE3 in the US, income inequality has accelerated at an even faster pace than in the past. As the most recent data on income inequality trends, released by Professor Emmanual Saez of the University of California earlier this month as part of his on-going study of income inequality trends, shows: the wealthiest 1% households accrued 95% of all the income gains in the US economy between 2009-2012.
QEs mean bankers and investors get $967,000 and the worker gets $33,000. That’s the essence of the Fed’s current QE3 job creation/unemployment rate reduction claims!

If one were to assume this ratio represents ‘trickle down’ economics in practice today, it would mean that for every one dollar in income for the worker, the capitalist-investor-banker is now getting 29.3. Of course, that 29.3 invested in financial securities generates even more income over time. The ‘trickle down’ ratio rises further and is virtually unlimited to the upside for the wealthy investors who benefit enormously from the free money QE policies of the Fed—while workers struggle to make ends meet working increasingly part time and temp jobs with low pay and no benefits.

A ‘QE for Jobs’ Program Alternative

It doesn’t take much imagination to envision a better, more efficient, less wasteful way to create jobs. If the Obama administration had a 21st century Works Progress Administration direct job creation program, it could have the Fed print the $1 trillion QE3 and create 20 million jobs at a fully loaded full time $50,000 a year. That would instantly wipe out every U-6 jobless person in the US. That’s 20 million jobs at $50k vs. the Fed’s current ‘unemployment reduction program’ of 1 million jobs at $33k.

Why should the Fed print money and subsidize the incomes of super-wealthy investors and their banks? Why shouldn’t the Fed use its printing press to instantly finance the creation of 20 million jobs directly by the US government? That’s a jobs program that would add nothing to the US deficit and debt, just as the Fed’s QE programs have added nothing to the US deficit and debt.

Those who argue to do so would result in a major inflation are simply ignoring the facts. Nearly $4 trillion in QEs to date have had no effect on inflation in goods and services. They have only inflated financial securities prices. Inflation in real goods and services continues to drift lower, flirting with bona fide deflation. If the Fed wants the get goods and services inflation to rise to 2.5%, a QE for Jobs program noted above would likely do it.

Others might argue that a $1 trillion ‘QE for Jobs’ program would mean the Fed would have to print $1 trillion every year to keep paying for the jobs in subsequent years. But that’s nonsense. It doesn’t take much imagination to understand that $1 trillion in jobs-related income in the hands of 20 million workers would result in a major boost to consumption. That in turn would result in businesses finally investing in the US and creating jobs to match the consumption demand. As real investment rose, the Fed ‘QE for Jobs’ might actually be scaled back in magnitude.

A ‘QE for Jobs’ program would also represent the greatest reduction in income inequality overnight in US history. It would also mean an annual first year boost to consumption of at least $500 billion. Considering possible ‘multiplier effects’, that would mean a boost to US GDP of more than $1 trillion. That would in turn easily push the US economic recovery to an annual GDP growth rate of more than 7% to 8%–and result in the fastest (not currently slowest) economic recovery on record for the US.

Jack Rasmus
September 15, 2013

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Larry Summers–Next Fed Chairman?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 6, 2013| Leave a Comment »

When mainstream press outlets, like the New York Times, Wall St. Journal, CNN money and others, issue front page articles on a topic related to the government more or less simultaneously, it usually means they have received confidential, not-yet-for-publication notice from the government of decisions made but temporarily embargoed. So it was on September 5, 2013, that all the above noted media sources printed lead stories on Larry Summers’ candidacy for the chair of the Federal Reserve Bank. The stories have continued to appear, with the New York Times editorial page on September 6, 2013 going so far as to say “Mr. Obama is expected to announce his nominee soon…”

Is an announcement of Summers’ appointment to replace current Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, therefore imminent?

This writer has been predicting for weeks that Summers was the heavy ‘odds on favorite’ for appointment by President Obama to replace Bernanke for several reasons.

Is A Summers’ Appointment Imminent?

Summers’ appointment may come more quickly than some think. Again, the surge of front page press articles and talking heads electronic commentary in recent days suggests it may be imminent. While current Fed Chairman, Bernanke, doesn’t officially leave until next January 2014, Obama needs to ensure there is time for the new Fed Chair’s Senate confirmation.

Then there’s the need for Obama to get his full economic team on board before the coming fight over the debt ceiling with House Republicans begins in earnest again in October 2013. Emerging Markets economies are pressing hard for a quick decision on the Fed chair to reduce the uncertainty concerning the Fed’s reported plans to ‘taper’ its $85 billion a month free money injections into the global banking system. That pending decision, and the delay, has been causing severe economic stress among many economies, like India, Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil and others. International developments perhaps slowing the decision process include Syria. But there’s little reason to assume even that will significantly delay, and may even accelerate, Obama’s decision on a Fed Chair nominee—including Summers.

The likelihood that that nominee will be Summers is further supported by the widespread and deep endorsement for Summers by Obama’s ‘old boy’ network. It has been reported, for example, that current Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, former advisor, Obama former chief of staff, David Axelrod, Rahm Emmanuel, and McDonough, Obama’s current chief of staff, all have expressed to Obama that Summers is their preferred choice for Fed Chair.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it should be remembered that no one gets appointed to Fed chair, or the key New York Fed district governor, without a green light pre-approval from bankers, finance, and institutional investors. And Larry has been their ‘boy’ for decades. He has consistently proposed programs, taken positions, made recommendations, and always acted in their interests, even when doing so has meant an about face in policies and recommendations he’s made. For that, he’s been nicely rewarded over the years in terms of career advancement and income.

Summers’ Public ‘Service’ Record

An academic economist in name only, Summers started out his government career early in the Reagan administration, his early academic work arguing strongly in favor of corporate tax cuts and opposition to improving unemployment insurance benefits endearing him to the pro-business, free market Reaganites. After his Reagan years, he assumed the top role in the World Bank—a very nice preparatory appointment preparing him for even bigger things to come. He then joined the Clinton administration in the early 1990s as assistant secretary of the Treasury, serving as hatchet man for then secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, a top dog at Citibank loaned to government in the early Clinton years to ensure that Clinton cut welfare and government spending and to ensure long term bond rates were reduced. The lowering of bond rates contributed much to the subsequent speculation in Asian financial markets later in the Clinton administration that resulted in the ‘Asian Meltdown’ financial crisis of the late 1990s. Larry rode shotgun for the banks in that event, making sure the US government and Federal Reserve bailed the US banks—Citibank and friends—who speculated heavily in Asian currencies and loans and then were covered for their losses by the US Treasury and Fed when the bust came.

Promoted to Treasury Secretary at the close of the Clinton years, Larry then played a central role, on behalf of the bankers again, to ensure the repeal of what was left of the Glass-Stegall Act in the late 1990s. He was also centrally instrumental in the passage of the Gramm-Bliley and Commodity Futures Trading Acts, two pieces of legislation that deregulated derivatives and other financial instruments, set the stage for the subprime mortgage bust in 2006-07, while also setting in motion repeated spikes in commodity prices (including oil) for the next decade that decimated household incomes.

Leaving the Clinton team with the advent of the Bush II administration in 2001, Larry then went out to make a lot of money, to cash in on his ‘good service’ to the banksters. He joined the big Hedge Fund (shadow banking) firm, D.E. Shaw, and also served as director on, and consultant to, other funds and financial institutions. He made speeches to business groups and conferences, for which he was compensated nicely. That’s how politicians are amply rewarded in corporate dominated government America.

He continued these lucrative appointments while serving unremarkably as president of Harvard University; that is until the liberal professors ganged up on him—not for anything he had done before for the banksters or for holding positions on boards of companies as he served as University president—but for being insensitive to womens’ issues. But that was no big deal. Harvard was just a ‘holding pen’ for him in between government jobs anyway.

With Obama’s election in 2008, Summers was immediately brought on board again. Speculation arose that he expected either the Treasury Secretary or Federal Reserve Chair position appointments. But in the midst of the worst period of the financial meltdown of 2008-09, he was asked by Obama, and accepted, the role of Obama’s number one economic advisor—taking precedence over the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, whose position typically has played that role.

In this role as chief adviser to Obama, Summers was reportedly the key architect of Obama’s first Economic Recovery Program, a package of $787 billion fiscal measures, tax cuts and government spending. This fiscal stimulus was heavily overweighted on business tax cuts and subsidy payments to the states for one year—with no programs of any note to save the millions of homeowners being foreclosed at the time or to ensure jobs were created in exchange for the tax cuts and subsidies (which weren’t). The emphasis on business tax cuts showed Summers’ views on that topic had not changed much since his Reagan years.

In a New Yorker magazine article last year, it was reported how in early 2009 Summers argued in the Obama administration strongly for a minimalist stimulus program—no more than $800 billion—again composed mostly of business and investor tax cuts—as well as for a bail out of the banks that involved the Federal Reserve essentially writing a ‘blank check’ for the banks. He argued banks had to be bailed out first, at whatever the cost. But the rest of the economy could not spend more than $800 billion in fiscal stimulus, he further recommended to Obama. While others in the Obama administration—like CEA chair Romer—advocated inside the administration for more than a $1 trillion in fiscal stimulus, Summers insisted on the lowest ball stimulus. Even Congress initially proposed more than $900 billion. But the consumer tax cuts were largely stripped out from the Congress proposal in the final $787 billion package that Summers recommended, and President Obama chose to approve. (For a more detailed analysis of these details, see this writer’s 2012 book, ‘Obama’s Economy: Recovery for the Few’, Pluto press).

The barely 5% of GDP stimulus of $787 billion soon dissipated after a year, the economy relapsed in the summer of 2010, housing foreclosures spiked, job losses reappeared, the states ran out of their subsidies, and the US economy ‘bounced along the bottom’—and has continued to do so for the past four years.

Meanwhile, bankers and investors feasted on the more than $10 trillion in free money generously doled out by the Federal Reserve—in the form of five years of nearly zero interest rates and three editions of ‘quantitative easing’ (QE) Fed direct purchases of bad subprime mortgage and other bonds from investors, most likely bought at above prevailing market values for those securities. But the public will never know the exact price the Fed paid for the junk via QE, since the Fed refuses to reveal details even to Congress.

During his two years, 2009-10, in the Obama administration, Summers also played a key role in the housing non-recovery. The pittance that the Obama administration earmarked for homeowners’ bailout, less than $50 billion, in the form of his busted HAMP program, mostly went to banks as subsidy payments to bribe banks to lower mortgage interest rates. Of course the banks took the bribes, but preferred to offer the lower rates to new home buyers, instead of refinancing for existing homeowners. You can charge fees on the former and make still more money, while homeowners in foreclosure can be better ‘milked’ by letting them foreclose and collecting credit default swap bets previously place on them. More than 15 million foreclosures were the result.

Summers: Chameleon Economist of Corporate America

Summers was somewhere involved in all these policy fiascos—-from the original $787 billion, business tax cut heavy stimulus, to the generous bankster bailouts, to failing to prevent the homeowner foreclosures (while subsidizing mortgage lenders).

The point of this Summers’ policy history review is to show that Larry Summers has always done what the banksters have wanted—and he’ll do that again when appointed as Federal Reserve chair.

Therefore, contrary to what some pundits have been saying, there will be no ‘Summers Effect’ if he is appointed. Summers’ appointment will not spook the markets. Most assume it will happen. There will be no major departure under Summers from existing Fed policy under Bernanke.

There is no contradiction between what Summers as Treasury Secretary did for the banksters in the late 1990s in pushing financial deregulation and what Summers (or any future Fed chair) will do with QE and zero bound interest rates. Both result in rentier (i.e. super) profits for financial capitalists. In the former case, deregulation released banksters to achieve super profits by means of extraordinary asset price inflation; in the QE case, to achieve super profits by reducing interest costs to virtually zero, and by the Fed printing money, QE, to buy back bad subprimes at more than their busted market value (taking the ‘bad debt’ from private speculators onto its own Fed balance sheet.

Larry did their bidding back then, and if (when?) appointed, he’ll do it again. He’s always done it. And for that he’s been nicely rewarded over the years. In his latest personal financial records he admits a net worth of as much as $24 million. He didn’t accrue all that from his salary for service in government over the years, but from his connections to hedge funds and other corporate buddies.

Dr. Jack Rasmus, copyright
September 2013

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Federal Reserve Policy: Past Failures & Future ‘Tail Risks’

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 6, 2013| Leave a Comment »

The following is an excerpt from a longer feature article–“Larry Summers–Next Fed Chair?”, which can be accessed this weekend on my website, http://www.kyklosproductions/articles.html.

“The Fed soon plans to ‘taper’ its existing policy of QE after its next September 18 meeting. A Summers at the Fed helm will represent no major change from this. The Fed without doubt will taper later this year, but very very slowly. Instead of $85 billion a month in ‘free money’ for banksters, speculators, stock and bond traders, and the very high net worth individuals—i.e. those folks that drive the financial markets globally—the Fed may reduce that to $75 or $65 billion. Big deal. Or the Fed may try to indirectly cut back on the free money spigot by a policy of ‘reverse repos’ (don’t worry, no need to understand that financial legerdemain). But none of that will stop the banksters and company from using the remaining mountain of virtually free cash to speculate in stocks, junk bonds, foreign exchange, and derivatives to keep the ‘global money parade’ going.

The ‘wildcard’ in this monetary policy poker deck, of course, is what’s happening with the emerging markets right now. Just the talk of the Fed tapering has driven bond rates up by nearly 100% in the last few months. The 10 year T-Bond was 1.6% this past spring; it’s now 2.9% and will almost certainly go higher.

That rapid rate shift is now resulting in the trillions of dollars of Fed money injection of the past five years flowing into emerging markets, especially Indonesia, India, Brazil, Turkey and So Africa (now referred to as the ‘BITTS’). Now that mountain of liquidity (money) is flooding back to the US and Europe. That reversed flow—precipitated by the Fed’s upcoming QE policy shift—is resulting in currency collapse in these emerging markets, massive capital flight back to the west, worsening trade deficits, commodities price deflation, coming oil price inflation, and in turn what will prove a significant slowing of these countries’ real economies that will in turn further exacerbate all the above.

In other words, the locus of the global economic crisis is now quickly shifting—from Europe in particular to Asia, emerging markets, especially the BIITS (Brazil,India, Indonesia, Turkey, So. Africa).

This growing instability may result in the Fed moving toward a ‘tapering’ of QE even more carefully and slowly. But it doesn’t matter who’s leading the Fed. Whether Bernanke or Summers, or even someone else, the Fed policy will not change significantly. Again, forget any ‘Summers Effect’. Summers will do as he always has done for the banksters: ensured their interests are protected—whether offshore or in the US.

In conclusion, whomever assumes the role of Fed Chair—Summers, current Fed Vice-Chair, Janet Yellen, or some compromise candidate like Fed governor, Kohl—will have to address a new ‘tail risk’ domestically, as well as globally (e.g. emerging markets crisis).

The domestic tail risk may prove to be a US economy and economic recovery that is highly sensitive to interest rate hikes, already having risen more than 1% since June for mortgages and other loans. US monetary policy makers have experienced nearly five years during which lowering interest rates to record levels has produced very little recovery in the real economy—i.e. housing, jobs, or real investment in the US—even as those record low rates produced a boom and bubble in financial securities investments, in stocks, bonds, derivatives, etc.

It may soon be revealed that the US economy is extremely sensitive to increases in interest rates, just as it has been largely insensitive to reductions in interest rates the past five years. The markets having become addicted to free money and super-low rates for five years may act like junkies without their fix if the Fed goes ‘cold turkey’ on them. If so, and interest rates in the US rise even moderately, then the US economy’s latest tepid rebound will quickly result in yet another ‘relapse’.

Jack Rasmus, copyright, September 2013

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On Fed Chairman Bernanke’s Testimony to Congress

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 19, 2013| 4 Comments »

 

On Fed Chairman Bernanke’s Testimony to Congress

July 19, 2013 by jackrasmus

Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, testified to both houses of Congress this week. The focus was his plan concerning continuing current Quantitative Easing (QE 3) policies, or to begin ‘tapering’ (reducing) the $85 billion a month of printed money injection into the financial system and prospects for continued low interest rates.

Dr. Rasmus was interviewed by the Voice of Russia radio on friday, July 19, to provide his analysis of what Bernanke said.

Dr. Rasmus noted his analysis of Bernanke’s testimony confirms his predictions of March 2012 (see his blog, March 2012, entry at jackrasmus.com, ‘Are Capitalists Addicted to Central Bank Free Money’), which maintain that financial investors (banks, shadow banks, investors) have become increasingly addicted to free money from the Fed.

In the interview with Russia Radio, Dr. Rasmus notes that just a month ago, in June, Bernanke suggested that QE 3 purchases by the FED may have to be slowed at some point in the future. The response of investors to just the prospect of ending the free money (QE3) was to set off a near panic in stocks, bonds, and other financial asset prices. Financial asset prices fell across the board rapidly, and interest rates in turn rose across nearly all asset classes by a percent or more in just a matter of weeks.

In response to the possibility of a more sustained financial asset price collapse, Federal Reserve governors, colleagues of Bernanke at the Fed, quickly reassured financial markets within days that the Fed was not going to reduce the $85 billion, as Bernanke implied in June.

Markets quickly again turned around, surging to new highs in July. As Dr. Rasmus pointed out in the interview, Bernanke confirmed his Board of Governors’ statements in recent weeks, in his own testimony to Congress this past week.

In response, financial bubbles continue to move ahead once again as a result of Fed and other central banks’ continuation of free money policies for bankers and investors. The same policies in turn are becoming increasingly ineffective in stimulating the real economy, while provoking bubbles on the financial side. It is a situation that cannot be sustained, argues Rasmus in the interview. As he notes: at some point the Fed will once again have to confront the prospect of reducing QE and raising interest rates. That will likely provoke another asset price contraction of major proportions, as occurred in June, at some future date and result in turn in an additional negative impact on the real economy in the US and globally, with Europe already stagnating in recession and depression in the periphery, China growth rates slowing significantly, and the US GDP growth slowing to less than 1% in the most recent April-June 2013 period(as forthcoming GDP figures will soon reveal).

The central policy tool–monetary policies of QE and near zero interest rates–of US and global capitalist policy makers is running out of steam and becoming more counter-productive by the month. Meanwhile, degrees of austerity fiscal policies in the US and EU continue. The prospect for future US and global economic recovery is growing increasingly questionable.

FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH RUSSIA RADIO, click on the following url:

http://voicerussia.com/radio_broadcast/61124198/118222702.html

 

Dr. Jack Rasmus,

‘Shadow’ Chairman for the FED, Green Shadow Cabinet

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The Failure of Fiscal-Monetary Policy, 2008-2013

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 23, 2013| 1 Comment »

AS THE ‘SHADOW’ US FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN OF THE NEWLY FORMED US ‘GREEN SHADOW CABINET’, THE FOLLOWING IS MY INITIAL OPED STATEMENT ON FISCAL-MONETARY POLICY IN THE US, ITS FAILURE, AND WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE CONCERNING THE US FEDERAL RESERVE AND MONETARY POLICY. (Dr. Jack Rasmus)

“OpEd Contribution
‘The Failure of Fiscal-Monetary Policy, 2008-2013’
By Dr. Jack Rasmus
‘Shadow’ U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman’
GREEN SHADOW CABINET

“Fiscal and Monetary policies since the financial crisis and the protracted recession that began in 2008 have failed to generate a sustained recovery of the US economy—except for big banks, big corporations, investors and speculators, and the wealthiest 10% households. All have benefited significantly from record profits growth and record returns on stock, corporate bonds, derivatives and other financial securities’ investments since 2009, while median family earnings have continued to decline every year and Main St. America has been left behind.

Fiscal Policy Failures

Obama’s fiscal stimulus spending programs of 2009-2012 have been grossly insufficient—not just in terms of levels of spending, but in the composition and timing of that spending as well. On the tax side, Obama programs have been grossly over-weighted toward business tax cuts and personal income and inheritance tax reductions for wealthy investors and households.
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Instead of leading to investment and jobs in the US, the business tax cut bias has resulted in record cash hoarding by big business and multinational corporations in excess of $3 trillion. Instead investment and jobs in the US, that corporate cash hoard has been, and continues to be, diverted to record stock buybacks and dividends payouts, to investment and job creation in offshore emerging markets, and to investment in speculative financial securities.

The failure of Obama fiscal stimulus programs to create jobs has contributed significantly to the weakest job recovery from recession of the 11 prior recessions since 1945. In addition to hoarded business tax cuts, hundreds of billions of dollars distributed in subsidies to the States since 2009 were promised first ‘to create jobs’ and then at least ‘to save jobs’. Neither happened. State and Local governments instead laid off 700,000, engaging in massive job destruction instead of job creation which continues to date. $100 billion in stimulus spending targeted for infrastructure investment—promised for ‘shovel ready’ projects—were instead redirected to long term, capital intensive projects and little job creation.

In 2013 more than 21 million still officially remain jobless; in actual fact, more than 25 million. While the administration touts the creation of 5 million new jobs, it remains silent on the 5 million who have left the labor force unable to find any form of work. Full time permanent jobs have disappeared while more than 6 million involuntary part time jobs were created and millions more temporary jobs. Of the jobs lost since 2009, 60% were top tier jobs paying more than $18/hr. while 58% of the jobs created since 2009 were the lowest paying jobs at less than $12/hr. Not surprising, as a consequence of continuing massive unemployment and falling real wages, median wage earner families’ real income has fallen consistently since 2008.

Administration housing policies have been no less a disaster. Token spending programs promised to save US homeowners in 2009 were in fact mostly incentives to banks and mortgage companies to move owners out of their homes to resell to new buyers. Foreclosures escalated to more than 14 million to date, about 1 out of every 4 homeowners with a mortgage, while more than ten million homeowners still languish in negative equity. State attorney generals’ legal suits against banks and lenders in response to the ‘robo-signing scandal’ in 2010 were subsequently brokered by the Obama administration in 2011-12 in favor of the banks, allowing the latter protection from all future liability in exchange for a pittance settlement providing illegally foreclosed homeowners damages averaging a mere $1500. Further administration subsidies to banks and mortgage lenders in the form of the 2012 ‘HARP 2.0’ program have fattened bank profits while providing a minimal number of homeowners in negative equity any relief. The recent much-hyped housing recovery is largely the result of purchases of banks’ foreclosed housing stock by wealthy speculators (US and foreign), private equity and hedge funds, who area loaned money by the banks who in turn borrow the funds at zero interest from the Federal Reserve—or, alternatively, the building of apartments at a feverish pace to house the 13 million plus foreclosed former homeowners.

Monetary Policy Failures

Monetary policy, driven by the US Federal Reserve, the central bank of the US, has amounted to more than five years and $3 trillion of ‘Quantitative Easing (QE)’ printing of money by the Fed, which has been then directly used to buy collapsed mortgage bonds and other instruments owned by banks, shadow banks, and wealthy individual investors—most probably at prices above their true depressed market values. In addition, the Fed has provided tens of trillions of dollars more to banks and shadow banks in essentially free money, zero interest loans. The Fed has even allowed banks to redeposit the free money with it, for which it pays the banks interest. In short, the Fed policy has been to subsidize purchases of investors with QE while additionally paying banks to borrow money from it for free.

QE and Zero rate policies have had virtually no effect on the real economy and recovery, while creating bubbles in the stock market, corporate junk bond market, farmland real estate prices, derivatives trading and foreign currency exchange speculation. QE and free money flows directly from the Fed into financial speculation and investment in the various liquid, short term, price driven financial markets globally. While fattening the wallets of professional speculators, banks, and ‘portfolio’ operations of multinational companies, monetary policies have created numerous negative effects and have hindered, not stimulated, the recovery of the real non-financial economy.

Five years of near zero rates have mean zero returns and income growth for seniors and households dependent on fixed incomes; have accelerated the collapse of pension funds and even 401k matching contributions by employers; have resulted in real income decline for tens of millions of households; have diverted much needed potential lending to small businesses into stocks and other speculative markets; and has set off a global ‘currency war’ as economies worldwide in recession attempt to use QE to lower their currency values to gain export advantages vis-à-vis competitors. Monetary policy is thus slowing much needed investment, serving as a drag on consumption, and destabilizing once again the global financial system.

The Alternatives To Traditional Fiscal-Monetary Policy

Traditional Fiscal-Monetary policies implemented by the Obama administration result in lopsided recovery on behalf of the wealthy and corporations, and stagnation at best for the rest. The consequence is a ‘stop-go’ recovery, of short and shallow periods of growth followed by relapses and stalling in the rate of growth and even double (and triple) dip recessions. This scenario will continue so long as the policies of the past five years continue.

The failure of traditional policies is the consequence of their inability to adequately address the mountain of debt burdening the majority of households (bottom 80%), on the one hand, and the steady decline of real disposable income by those same households as well. Major structural reforms of the economy must replace reliance on failed Fiscal-Monetary policies above. These structural reforms must target the reduction of excess household debt while reversing the declining share of income by the 80% in favor of the top 10%, and especially top 1%, and their corporations, which serve as the conduit through which the wealthiest have been consistently accruing more and more share of national income.

Restructuring can only be achieved by means of a series of major overhauls of the US tax system, the banking system, the retirement and health care systems, by reversing the immense damage wrought on US jobs and incomes by Free Trade policies and offshoring, and by restoring a balance in union-management power destroyed over the past three decades by various legislative, court and technological measures and developments.

An initial ‘short list’ of overhaul-restructuring policies along the several ‘economic fronts’ noted above include: restoring the tax structure back to 1978 levels at minimum and introducing a Financial Transactions Tax of 1% on stock, bond, derivative and forex trades; introducing a public banking system for all forms of consumer credit to provide loans at ‘no profit’ cost of money for mortgages, autos, education, consumer installment, and small businesses. Nationalizing all 401k and private pension plans into a new expanded national social security system that provides a minimum of two-thirds of wage income; a medicare for all health system funded by a payroll tax of 15% on all forms of incomes, wages and capital; an immediate suspension and renegotiation of all Free Trade agreements; national legislation creating a ‘card check’ system for union recognition and bargaining; and selective expunging of bank financed student loans and predatory mortgage and credit card loans.

To Conclude:

Excess household debt and declining real disposable income has resulted in a collapse of spending and tax multipliers that have rendered traditional fiscal policy ineffective. Similarly, Federal Reserve monetary policies of QE and zero rates have result in a resurgence of speculative finance that is collapsing money multipliers for real asset investment by diverting credit from real investment and job creation. Only policies and measures that restructure the US economy fundamentally across critical sectors, and thereby reduce debt loads for the bottom 80% households while raising real disposable income for the same, will prove successful long term in overcoming the current general stagnation of the US and global economy and ensure a return to a trajectory of sustained economic growth.

Liberal mainstream economists’ claim that all that is needed is simply more spending will mean more of the same stagnation. Conservative mainstream economists’ claim that more business tax cuts, more deregulation, and more deficit spending cuts will mean a transition from current stagnation to another deeper economic contraction and perhaps financial crisis and even depression. Both are incorrect. Both seek simply to readjust the relative mix of the same policies. More of the same Fiscal-Monetary policies of the past decade will prove as ineffective in the future as they have been in the past. A fundamental restructuring of key sectors of the economy is necessary for long term recovery.

Dr. Jack Rasmus, April 18, 2013
Green Shadow Cabinet
Federal Reserve Chairman

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U.S. GREEN SHADOW CABINET FORMED

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »

AS A MEMBER OF THE JUST FORMED ‘U.S. GREEN SHADOW CABINET’, THE FOLLOWING IS A BRIEF INTRODUCTION BY THE ORGANIZATION, ON APRIL 22, 2013 AS A PRESS RELEASE. THE PURPOSE OF THE GREEN SHADOW CABINET IS TO PRODUCE, PUBLICIZE, AND PROMOTE ALTERNATIVE POLICIES TO THE FAILED REPUBLICAN-DEMOCRATIC SOLUTIONS OF RECENT YEARS. FOR MORE ON WHO COMPRISES THE GREEN SHADOW CABINET, AND STATEMENTS BY ITS MORE THAN 80 MEMBERS, ON THE SIDEBAR, SCROLL DOWN AND CLICK ON  ‘Jack Rasmus Website’ ACCESSING MY WEBPAGE.

AS THE ‘SHADOW’ CHAIRMAN OF THE U.S. FEDERAL RESERVE BANK, YOU CAN READ MY INTRODUCTORY OPED STATEMENT ON THIS BLOG (TO FOLLOW ABOVE) ALSO AVAILABLE ON MY WEBSITE, ENTITLED “THE FAILURE OF FISCAL & MONETARY POLICIES, 2008-2013”. MORE OF MY ANALYSES WILL FOLLOW AS TO WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE CONCERNING THE US CENTRAL BANK, THE FEDERAL RESERVE, AND MONETARY POLICY. Dr. Jack Rasmus

INITIAL PUBLIC PRESS RELEASE BY THE U.S. GREEN SHADOW CABINET:

“This Earth Week, another government is possible . . .
Meet the new Green Shadow Cabinet

Dr. Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala, the 2012 Green Party presidential and vice-presidential nominees, have marked the beginning of Earth Week by announcing a new Green Shadow Cabinet that will serve as an independent voice in U.S. politics, putting the needs of people and protection of the planet ahead of profits for big corporations. The Cabinet will operate in the tradition of shadow cabinets in other countries, such as the United Kingdom and Mexico, responding to actions of the government in office, and demonstrating that another government is possible.

The Green Shadow Cabinet, which is viewable at http://www.GreenShadowCabinet.US, includes nearly 100 prominent scientists, community and labor leaders, physicians, cultural workers, veterans, and more, and will provide an ongoing opposition and alternative voice to the dysfunctional government in Washington D.C..

The Cabinet is organized into six federal branches: Democracy, Economy, Ecology, Foreign Affairs, General Welfare, and Justice. Topics include the economy, environment and climate change, health and general welfare, democratization, rights of workers, wages and labor, community power, closing military bases, ending wars for resources and restoring the rule of law. Among the top priorities will be advocating for full employment through a Green New Deal and confronting climate change and the ecological crisis through a program of creating a carbon-free and nuclear free energy economy.

Public statements from Cabinet members . . .

In honor of the launch of the Green Shadow Cabinet, twenty members of the Cabinet have issued public statements for Earth Week. These are available for republication at http://greenshadowcabinet.us/statements

The Green Shadow Cabinet includes not only scientists and leaders of social change organizations, but also artists and writers. The talented comedian Lee Camp offers this video “statement” on the need for the Cabinet: http://youtu.be/m3zNyEIR-Ww

What you can do . . .

Tell everyone you know about the Green Shadow Cabinet, and get them to sign up for news at http://greenshadowcabinet.us/subscribe-our-newsletter

Make a donation toward getting this Cabinet moving – send a donation made out to Green Shadow Cabinet, Attention: Ben Manski, PO Box 260217, Madison, WI 53726-0217
Urge blogs, newspapers, and others in the media to contact the Green Shadow Cabinet to schedule interviews and to publish articles.

There will be more in the weeks and months to come. Thank you.”

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