Ben Bernanke and the rest of the folks over at the Federal Reserve did not just wake up one day and decide that they wanted to start printing hundreds of billions of dollars out of thin air. The truth is that the economic forces that have brought us to this point have taken decades to develop. In the post-World War 2 era, when the U.S. economy has fallen into a recession, either the Federal Reserve would lower interest rates or the U.S. government would indulge in even more deficit spending to stimulate the economy. But now, as you will see below, both of those alternatives have been exhausted. In addition, we are now rapidly reaching the point where there are simply not enough lenders out there to feed the U.S. government's voracious appetite for debt. So now the Federal Reserve is openly printing hundreds of billions of dollars that will enable them to finance U.S. government borrowing, and (they hope) stimulate the U.S. economy at the same time. Unfortunately, the rest of the world is not amused. Nations such as China, Japan and many of the oil-exporting nations of the Middle East have accumulated a lot of U.S. dollars and a lot of U.S. Treasuries and they are not pleased that those investments are now being significantly devalued.
So how did we get to this point? Why is the Federal Reserve printing money out of thin air in a desperate attempt to stimulate the economy?
Well, the Federal Reserve has more or less exhausted all of the other tools that it has traditionally used to help the economy during an economic downturn. As you can see from the chart below, the Federal Reserve has lowered interest rates during past recessions. The goal of lowering interest rates is to make it less expensive to borrow money and thus spark more economic activity. Well, as you can see, the Federal Reserve has no place else to go with interest rates. Over the past 30 years, rates have consistently been pushed down, down, down and now they are kissing the floor....
Another way that the U.S. economy has been "stimulated" over the past 30 years is through increased government spending. The theory is that if the government spends more money, that will get more cash into the hands of the people and spark more economic activity. That was the whole idea behind the "economic stimulus packages" that were pushed through Congress. However, increased government spending always comes at a very high cost under our current system. Government debt is now totally out of control. As you can see below, the U.S. national debt has exploded from about one trillion dollars in 1980 to over 13 trillion dollars today. Currently, there is very little appetite in Congress for more government spending to stimulate the economy, especially after the results of the November election.
Most Americans don't realize it, but much of our incredible "prosperity" over the last 30 years has been fueled by the mountains of debt that we have accumulated. Now U.S. government debt is exploding at an exponential rate....
Sadly, the U.S. government has absolutely no self-control when it comes to spending money. Our politicians are absolutely addicted to debt.
The truth is that the U.S. government just can't seem to stop wasting money. One of the most comical news stories of the past few days involved the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, which is a sub-committee of the larger Recovery Accountability and Transparency board. This panel will be holding a meeting on November 22nd to discuss how to prevent "fraud, waste, and abuse" of economic stimulus funds.
So where will this meeting be held?
It is going to be held at the ultra-luxurious Ritz Carlton Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona.
Yes, seriously.
You just can't make this stuff up.
So if the Federal Reserve cannot stimulate the economy through lower interest rates and the U.S. government cannot stimulate the economy by spending even more money, what does that leave us with?
Unfortunately, that leaves us with either doing nothing or with having the Federal Reserve print money out of thin air and shovel it into the economy.
Sadly, even after months of news headlines about quantitative easing, most Americans still do not understand what it is. The following is a short video that is very humorous but that also does a good job of simply explaining what quantitative easing is and why it is bad for the U.S. economy....
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