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Jim Grant Says All The Things That Ben Bernanke Avoided During His Press Conference, And Much More
Considering the only soundbite that was relevant from Ben Bernanke's 45 minute 2:15pm oratory was that "we don't have a precise read on why this slower pace of growth is persisting" America, and the entire civilized world, could have done just as well without it. Instead, we should have listened to Jim Grant, who once again correctly identifies all the things that the Fed chairman should have said (Bernanke certainly focused on the other side): "What we are not going to get is a concession that QE2 has achieved its unintended consequences, namely a lower dollar exchange rate, a higher gold price meaning weaker confidence in the dollar, slower economic growth and a higher measured rate of inflation. Those are some of the things that have come out of this experiment and let us call it by its name money printing...How do we know that this 30% gain in the Russell and 20% gain in Dow since the Chairman spoke in August, how are we to know these are real values. The prices are up, but are people who are buying these stocks on the back of the Fed, are they doing something wise from an investment point of view, and if the market is too high because the Fed has put it there, what does the Fed do when the market comes down, which opens the fate for QE3." And on a far more important topic which we will soon hear much more of, namely extensive US money market exposure in Europe, which will be completely locked up if, pardon, when there is a major liquidity run in Europe snagging American money market liquidity: "The money market mutual funds have nothing to do in this country cause rates are zero, go to Europe. So money market mutual funds investors are taking quite ponderable risks for about a 0% return, these funds are yielding a few basis points only. But to get those few basis point, these funds are crossing the Atlantic right smack dab in the middle of the European banking crisis. This is a prime example of the unintended consequences of this massive intervention by our central bank." Indeed, this is just one simple example of the massive clusterfuck, which certainly does not need Greece's $5 billion notional in CDS, to make the Lehman liquidity freeze seems like a little melting ice cube. And since everyone now agrees that Greece will default, and it is only a matter of time, all the trillions in dollars in the shadow and open banking systems that we have been exposing for years now, will suddenly be locked up in the forms of 1 and 0 in computers belonging to institutions that are no longer operational. And most unfortunately, the man in charge of it all, has a quivering lip problem.
Much more in the entire must watch interview with Bloomberg's Margaret Brennan:
As to what a lock up of money markets would mean, here is an oldie from 2009 in which Paul Kanjorski explains how close we came when money market funds broke the buck:
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someone posted this the other day so all credit to another Fight Club Member! for posting this Jewel!
James Grant on Bloomberg (not the same one as above, from the day before and more in depth {without all the editing that prime time idiots managed} than above!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfeUUDnqgtw
I remember Bernanke today saying that MMF or money market funds weren't in nations like Greece with financial trouble. That was a half truth and he knew it, they are in the banks and countries that lent the troubled PIIGS the hundreds of billions of dollars. So when they default on the banks, they are insolvent and if they are insolvent they can't pay the money onthe MMF and not only break the buck but are maybe worth a penny. How in gods name can we get a vote to bailout Europe for a Trillion dollars or more, when the original bailouts actually went to buy back much of the junk the banks here sold. Our people won't be able to stand it.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/gavon/anthony-weiner-crossdressing-oiled-up/from...
Weiner the cross dresser.
ha ha ha ha ha ha .............
Is that guy jewish?
Ben only hits us under the gum, see here http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ldgaucO7151qb1oulo1_500.jpg
But he talks only caps and crowns.
Interesting point made in this article that QE2 was deliberately intended to weaken the US dollar against the Euro. While I'm not sure that this was one of the intended aims pre-QE2 (it was more to sure up eurodollar reserves quickly following the disaster of early 2010), it was definitely one of the outcomes produced.
Sorry message was repeated by error.
So how do you make yourself rich in an easy manner. By making others poor.
And when you can use public funds to acquire assets which have collapsed you make yourself richer.
To me, this whole exercise of inflating upto a collapse means it is part of a greater plan.
Have you noticed that not a single culprit has been brought to book for the fraud/economic crimes? If the system was to have been brought to stability, the measures would have been different. Instead, accounting changes amounting to perpetuating the frauds is the order of the day. Of course the same has been done for falsifying all economic data too.
QE1 and QE2 have done the job they were intended to do, which most certainly was not to rescue the system. I dont think QE3 will come as it will run contra to their plans.
Other then readers here at ZH, most people around the globe are still oblivious to what is really happening.
And when they do understand what has HAPPENED, hopefully ZH will still be up and running on that day. We will need it.
Zero Hedge needs to implement and announce a contingency arrangement in case the lights happen to just go out one day/night, so that we who expose the Matrix/Ponzi/Pyramid/Fiatski Scam for what it really is, know where and how to regroup.
The Central Bankster and NWO cabal will send Jackals.
"the monetary system as it has evolved is the principal agent of much of our troubles"
well said Mr. Grant
Not sure why ZH would reference this video clip with Paul Kanjorski explaining what happened when he clearly does not even suspect he was played like a two dollar tranny hooker by Pauson and the Bernank. One of his last statemets is just the stupidest I have heard in a long time when at 5:56 this tool states "...someone threw us in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with out a life raft and we're trying to determine which is the closest shore, and whether there is any chance in the world that we can swim that far..." Really? Who throws the world's largest economy run by the best and brighest our educational system has to offer in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and we are helpless and do not know what to do? Seriously, who thought this guy has the brain power to understand reality?
"..somebody threw us in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean without a liferaft."
No, actually you spent decades swimming into a debt-ocean on your own volition against the advice of people who actually did know what they were talking about.
Absolutely.
But it only takes a small majority of voters to ruin a country with sovereign debt and private debt.
The majority of americans were responsible in their personal finances, but believed politicians when they said they could get something for nothing.
Post withdrawn.
"Who Smelt it, dealt it."
The news of Kanjorski’s revelations on C-SPAN that “On Thursday (September 18, 2008) at about eleven o’clock in the morning, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars was being drawn out in the matter of an hour or two,” was certainly kept low key and buried in the media at the time.
A New York Post article, "Almost Armageddon," dated Sunday, 9/21/08, read:
"According to traders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, money market funds were inundated with $500 billion in sell orders prior to the opening. The total money-market capitalization was roughly $4 trillion that morning."
Said Arlen Williams in RenewAmerica.com on February 15, 2009 regardng the Post article: “It is clear that details of this enormous threat to the United States' economy were being kept quiet… One is compelled to ask, how quiet? For example, it being kept as quiet as it was, had traders been trained by the federal government to hush news of any market panic potentially caused by economic terrorism? And if so, how long might they have been able to keep such a thing quiet?”
As for Kanjorski, he just keeps repeating what the bankers told Congress and, in that these people are 24 carat crooks, perhaps the lady who called to make a point would be a better representative of the people.
Her understanding of her own economic plight seems right on. As she told Kanjorski: “Nobody (in Washington) is accounting for what they are spending. You got people and families out here in the United States that are struggling. I just paid $600 worth of utility bills in one week. I haven’t got enough money to feed my family. I make too much to get food stamps. I only make $10 an hour. Now, if you took that money and subdivided it between us, the taxpayers of this country, WE would stimulate the economy. You know why? Because we go out and pay off bills, pay off tax debts, create jobs and buy stuff that we need. That’s how you stimulate the economy.”
In essence, Kanjorski said that the Congress doesn’t know about these things and the people just don’t understand, but thank goodness, the Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson, who does understand, was there to take care of his friends and thus restore the TBTFS because if you don’t have a banking system – even a fraudulent one - you don’t have an economy.
Frankly, I don’t recall Thomas Jefferson ever having said that. Kanjorski, IMHO, appears worse than worthless.
Hear-Hear JR!!!!!!
people will be known by their deeds...
If Govenment officials weren't shield, each may have already been called to trial for treason for the passage of TARP....and most would have the excuse that they believed in the "expert" words of Hank Paulson...if he is a righteous person, he needs to admit he made a mistake, and that we would all be better off if he had taken one day, (instead of three weeks to lobby for TARP) to ask for authority to unwind GS, MS, MER, C, and maybe a few others, and create a treasury facility to keep lending and business flowing while these defunk businesses were sold...instead, we have the beginning of the greatest scam of all time watching money given to bankrupt entities, so they can stay whole for scamming their customers....and that was only the beginning of the raping of America thanks to QE1,2...? and various and sundry gutting techniques. God help us.
This is the trouble with bailouts.
They prime everyone including ten dollar per hour lady to want one. to want a bailout and look to government as a solution, rather than do it the hard way and find a method to be more productive. The former is just fighting over slices of the pie. Only the latter creates a bigger pie, albeit in the long run.
It's not just bernenke, it is all the central bankers, look what is going on in england. more Qe and inflation is high. People need to strt to demonstrate, the news papaers have to start working to get rid of these people
MSM is owned by the oligarchs. The plutocrats won't allow objective reporting over their hourly propagandizing.
You'll have to look elsewhere, the web, for any hope to get rid of these people. That's if you can get the viewers away from superfluous entertainment long enough to understand what is being done to them.
Damn we need more Jim Grants. : (
Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees... I never questioned that supposed drawdown of $500 billion of MMF on Sept 16 - 18. I just heard Kanjorski accounting for the crisis that way. Now I certainly did not withdraw my money market funds that day, nor did anyone I know have that idea. Must have been set up that way by Wall St. An engineered crisis so that Paulson could force the passage of Tarp. Who were these people who withdrew the $500 billion? Not you or me, I presume. We didn't even sell our stocks, but took losses instead.
It seems to me that a true understanding of what is going on is just to look at the various pockets where there are still some assets not held by the top .1%. Right now the government must pay the retiring middleclass social security. Let's see how the .1% can grab that money--just re-route it, in effect deflect it into their own coffers! Oh I know! Convince taxpayers that the government cannot pay and that austerity in the form of decreased benefits and increased taxes will be necessary. Convince the under 45s that they will never see a penny of their SS. That way, they will be sure to want to end the promised payouts to middleclass retirees. This seems to be Bruce Krasting's approach. Just like it has been a very profitable strategy to emphasize the "differences" between democrats and republicans, with social security and medicare it will be a profitable strategy to set up this bogus conflict between the old and the young. Never any mention about cutting back the military, clawing back the money stolen by the .1%, etc. No, we must put blinders on and regard these funds, SS and Medicare, as stand alone programs that must pay their own way, in spite of the fact that Congress has basically gutted the so-called lockbox!
Well ok, so SS and Medicare don't really represent assets as such, but rather promises to pay. Nevertheless, given the current train of events, some way will be found to keep those promises in terms of the dollars paid out, but deflect the stream, however obscurely, into those hands that are more deserving.
What other assets exist that the .1% would like to have that currently belong to the middleclass? Well, private retirement funds such as 401K's, etc. The .1% already completed leg one of their strategy by suckering 401K investers into the stock market and then tanking the market for another go round to really fleece those sheep. What better way to do that then to goose the market up again, giving the illusion that it is safe to invest once again.
There must be a few assets of the middleclass that remain for stripping, but perhaps that process is coming to an end. However, one remaining "asset" is to force the middleclass into debt slavery, and that presumably has a very high present value as well. That seems to be going on right now.
This men Bernanke make me laugh each time I see him on TV!!! I always imagine what will he say when everything collapses!!!! Yesterday the markets reacted like they were looking for something like a QE3!!!! I wasn't the case, Big Ben needs to see more down moves by the S&P before coming up with that:
Just take a look on the chart, A bear market may be ON THE WAY
http://stockmarketgps.com/Global-Market/critical-level-for-the-sp-500-ri...
I have to get over my bias against believing in anything a guy with a bright red bow tie says, thinks or writes.
I like the very end where she points to the clock and says "at 12:15 we'll get more insight"...and he shoots back "no, we'll get more words". LOL priceless.
I like the very end where she points to the clock and says "at 12:15 we'll get more insight"...and he shoots back "no, we'll get more words". LOL priceless.
Jim Grant as eloquent and charming as ever-- even in the face of scrutinized reporting (if you can call it that) sometimes I think all this MSM babbling has atrophied reporters ability to ask questions that delve into the deep recesses of truth and not some steaming pile of centrally planned revised script (read shit).
Yes! it is telling. One of the more rude interuptions she made was toward the end when he was talking about the 3rd Fed mandate: "to raise up Asset Prices" as he started to talke about the Fed supporting the stock market she interupted the conversation and asked again about his first point of inflation. Credit to him as he managed to get back to his train of thought and made his point that declining stock market would be the reason they would use to justify QE3.