Fed's Bernanke `Doesn't Understand' Economics, Jim Rogers Says - Bloomberg

Fed's Bernanke `Doesn't Understand' Economics, Jim Rogers Says - Bloomberg

Oh, man—this guy is saying exactly what I’ve been thinking ever since CoalSpeaker first pointed out the Fed’s latest action to “save” our economy (which they decided to do right while we were distracted with the election). Anyway, so here’s a cutting from an article at Bloomberg.com from today:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s decision to pump a further $600 billion into the economy shows his grasp of economics is weak, said investor Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings.

“Dr. Bernanke unfortunately does not understand economics, he does not understand currencies, he does not understand finance,” Rogers, 68, said in a lecture at Oxford University’s Balliol College yesterday. “All he understands is printing money.”

“His whole intellectual career has been based on the study of printing money,” said Rogers, who predicted the start of the global commodities rally in 1999. “Give the guy a printing press, he’s going to run it as fast as he can.”

I’m continually surprised that most people who are aware of how the Fed works and yet aren’t upset by the fact that there’s a bunch of unelected white guys in suits someplace who can just print up more money while the rest of us have to work for it.

What’s really scary here is that Bernanke’s plan to print up a fresh wad of bills, totaling $600 billion, will devalue our currency even more (they did this before, back in September of 2008 while all eyes were on Congress while they debated how to save the economy, and gosh it really saved us?).  $600 billion is a huge amount of money. 

I’m not sure how else to describe this aside from mass devaluation. 

I think the idea is to encourage foreign investment and make it super cheap for domestic businesses to borrow money.  Since that money won’t buy much, what are businesses supposed to do with it?  Hire new employees and pay ‘em!

That’s the hope, I suppose.  In the meantime, our money buys less.  The other irony is that the inflation rate will go up and make your savings accounts useless or even costly to you.  Think about it.  The inflation rate this year has fluctuated between 1 and 2.6(ish)%.  What’s your savings account interest rate? If it’s not more than that window, you’ve already taken a hit.

Don’t have a savings account?  Good boy!  Shove that cash under the mattress or buy stuff with it.  You’re probably better off.

That’s just my ¥2, of course.

Go read the Bloomberg article for all the details.  Sure, Rogers has a book to sell, but his logic is sound, sadly.

UPDATE: And I just read this in another article on Bloomberg about Japan’s economy:

No matter how much yen the Bank of Japan pumps into the economy, deflation deepens. It’s all about confidence, of which there is virtually none. Companies don’t trust that growth will return and so they avoid investing and hiring and trim salaries. Households fret about the future.

Was puzzling about that article is that it talks about deflation being the cause of a race to the bottom for prices.  He cites Hooters as an example because they sell cheap food and cheap alcohol.  But does that mean deflation?  How many wings is the Yen actually buying?  Hm, maybe it’s that we’re switching positions with Japan.  We’ll all be making more money (if this plan works) but the money won’t buy as much so we’ll have to spend more to get the same stuff.

But injecting money into the economy in Japan hasn’t worked and has inspired price-drops across every sector because the money injection didn’t work.  So, maybe we’re seeing into our own futures?

Geh… why does money have to be so confusing?

Hack the Economy

Ben Bernanke (right), on my Kindle 2, the real most powerful man on Earth (Photo Credit)

Finally a Solution to the Economic Mess I Can Get Behind...

Last month I came across an article on Arthurmag.com which presented a really great idea-- hack the economy. What does this mean? It means rebuilding it on our own--DIY it, retrofit it, reverse engineer the way we provide and receive goods and services. Let me quote the article by Douglas Rushkoff:

The cyberpunk ethos was actually based in the very same DIY (do-it-yourself) ethos I’m espousing now. Cyberpunk was about reclaiming technology, making modifications oneself or with one’s friends, generating value from the bottom up, exchanging goods and services in an alternative economy. I’m not saying we get rid of money—only that we learn to make it ourselves, as communities. I’m not saying we get rid of banks—only that we stop outsourcing our banking to Wall Street firms that mean only to extract value from our communities.

I have always admired hackers—computer hackers and social hackers. I’m just trying to expand the range of technologies and institutions we feel ready and willing to hack. We should hack money. We should hack banking. We should hack business. This doesn’t necessarily mean hacking the dollar, which is just one kind of closed source currency. We should hack money by coding new kinds. Bank hacking has been around for a long time—it’s just that credit unions and other local or community-based bank models were driven down by the anti-competitive practice of banking conglomerates. It’s time for those institutions to be renewed, as well.

As a bohemian artist type, I've kinda been doing this off and on for years. Favors for friends repaid with favors in return, is usually what this looks like in the immediate here and now. Granted, I still need a job and I still need money, but it's important to understand that there are and have always been alternatives to the almighty USD.

Speaking of the US Dollar, you should know it's a product we are all forced to use and it represents the single most powerful monopoly that exists today. The Federal Reserve literally creates money and loans it to banks at interest. The chairman of the Fed recently said in a 60 Minutes interview (my emphasis added):

The banks have accounts with the Fed, much the same way that you have an account in a commercial bank. So, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It's much more akin to printing money than it is to borrowing.

So, why is it only the Fed that can print money? Because they are part of the government? No--because they're not part of the government. How do I know? Simple--ask yourself which member of the Fed board do we elect?

None of them.

We get to vote for the guy who names the chairman every four years in November (the POTUS) and the senators and congressmen which supposedly have oversight over the Fed, but have only once heard of Congress actually performing said oversight on the Federal Reserve. The reality is that most presidents don't get to name a chairman of the Fed because the chairmen of the Fed have terms of 14 years (yes, on paper the term is officially 4 years, but they're almost always reappointed).

So, how do we hack the economy?

That's a good question. I think the idea is to trade goods and services when ever you can. Stop going through the Dollar system for absolutely everything. Getting rid of a bookcase or couch? Don't sell it--trade it with someone. Or give it away. There are loads of sites online that help with this process. Whether it's Craigslist.org or, a site I use here in the Big Apple, NYCDailyDeals.com, there are alternatives to buying or selling everything. Another popular site is freecycle.org.

There are even people trying to get their own currency off the ground since owning gold and silver coins is still legal. LibertyDollar.org is a site that will tell you all about this new form of currency. It's legal, but no one really takes it as cash, just yet. Now, I don't approve of the Liberty Dollar because of a message engraved on each coin:

"Trust in God"

Yeah, so let's replace one BS currency with another? I think the Liberty Dollar folks are missing the point. It's not "liberty" until you're really free (to not believe if you choose).

But I digress.

The point here is ultimately this: Humanity has existed in it's current evolutionary state for something like 200,000 years. It's done most of that existing without Chase Manhattan or Citigroup or the Federal Reserve System.

We humans came up with the concept of money--why can't we come up with alternatives?

So, let's start thinking about ways around relying on money for everything. I know it's an uphill battle, but we've got to start somewhere.