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Former Fed Quantitative Easer Confesses, Apologizes: "I Can Only Say: I'm Sorry, America"
By Andrew Huszar, also posted at the WSJ. Mr. Huszar, a senior fellow at Rutgers Business School, is a former Morgan Stanley managing director. In 2009-10, he managed the Federal Reserve's $1.25 trillion agency mortgage-backed security purchase program.
Confessions of a Quantitative Easer
We went on a bond-buying spree that was supposed to help Main Street. Instead, it was a feast for Wall Street.
I can only say: I'm sorry, America. As a former Federal Reserve official, I was responsible for executing the centerpiece program of the Fed's first plunge into the bond-buying experiment known as quantitative easing. The central bank continues to spin QE as a tool for helping Main Street. But I've come to recognize the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.
Five years ago this month, on Black Friday, the Fed launched an unprecedented shopping spree. By that point in the financial crisis, Congress had already passed legislation, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, to halt the U.S. banking system's free fall. Beyond Wall Street, though, the economic pain was still soaring. In the last three months of 2008 alone, almost two million Americans would lose their jobs.
The Fed said it wanted to help—through a new program of massive bond purchases. There were secondary goals, but Chairman Ben Bernanke made clear that the Fed's central motivation was to "affect credit conditions for households and businesses": to drive down the cost of credit so that more Americans hurting from the tanking economy could use it to weather the downturn. For this reason, he originally called the initiative "credit easing."
My part of the story began a few months later. Having been at the Fed for seven years, until early 2008, I was working on Wall Street in spring 2009 when I got an unexpected phone call. Would I come back to work on the Fed's trading floor? The job: managing what was at the heart of QE's bond-buying spree—a wild attempt to buy $1.25 trillion in mortgage bonds in 12 months. Incredibly, the Fed was calling to ask if I wanted to quarterback the largest economic stimulus in U.S. history.
This was a dream job, but I hesitated. And it wasn't just nervousness about taking on such responsibility. I had left the Fed out of frustration, having witnessed the institution deferring more and more to Wall Street. Independence is at the heart of any central bank's credibility, and I had come to believe that the Fed's independence was eroding. Senior Fed officials, though, were publicly acknowledging mistakes and several of those officials emphasized to me how committed they were to a major Wall Street revamp. I could also see that they desperately needed reinforcements. I took a leap of faith.
In its almost 100-year history, the Fed had never bought one mortgage bond. Now my program was buying so many each day through active, unscripted trading that we constantly risked driving bond prices too high and crashing global confidence in key financial markets. We were working feverishly to preserve the impression that the Fed knew what it was doing.
It wasn't long before my old doubts resurfaced. Despite the Fed's rhetoric, my program wasn't helping to make credit any more accessible for the average American. The banks were only issuing fewer and fewer loans. More insidiously, whatever credit they were extending wasn't getting much cheaper. QE may have been driving down the wholesale cost for banks to make loans, but Wall Street was pocketing most of the extra cash.
From the trenches, several other Fed managers also began voicing the concern that QE wasn't working as planned. Our warnings fell on deaf ears. In the past, Fed leaders—even if they ultimately erred—would have worried obsessively about the costs versus the benefits of any major initiative. Now the only obsession seemed to be with the newest survey of financial-market expectations or the latest in-person feedback from Wall Street's leading bankers and hedge-fund managers. Sorry, U.S. taxpayer.
Trading for the first round of QE ended on March 31, 2010. The final results confirmed that, while there had been only trivial relief for Main Street, the U.S. central bank's bond purchases had been an absolute coup for Wall Street. The banks hadn't just benefited from the lower cost of making loans. They'd also enjoyed huge capital gains on the rising values of their securities holdings and fat commissions from brokering most of the Fed's QE transactions. Wall Street had experienced its most profitable year ever in 2009, and 2010 was starting off in much the same way.
You'd think the Fed would have finally stopped to question the wisdom of QE. Think again. Only a few months later—after a 14% drop in the U.S. stock market and renewed weakening in the banking sector—the Fed announced a new round of bond buying: QE2. Germany's finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, immediately called the decision "clueless."
That was when I realized the Fed had lost any remaining ability to think independently from Wall Street. Demoralized, I returned to the private sector.
Where are we today? The Fed keeps buying roughly $85 billion in bonds a month, chronically delaying so much as a minor QE taper. Over five years, its bond purchases have come to more than $4 trillion. Amazingly, in a supposedly free-market nation, QE has become the largest financial-markets intervention by any government in world history.
And the impact? Even by the Fed's sunniest calculations, aggressive QE over five years has generated only a few percentage points of U.S. growth. By contrast, experts outside the Fed, such as Mohammed El Erian at the Pimco investment firm, suggest that the Fed may have created and spent over $4 trillion for a total return of as little as 0.25% of GDP (i.e., a mere $40 billion bump in U.S. economic output). Both of those estimates indicate that QE isn't really working.
Unless you're Wall Street. Having racked up hundreds of billions of dollars in opaque Fed subsidies, U.S. banks have seen their collective stock price triple since March 2009. The biggest ones have only become more of a cartel: 0.2% of them now control more than 70% of the U.S. bank assets.
As for the rest of America, good luck. Because QE was relentlessly pumping money into the financial markets during the past five years, it killed the urgency for Washington to confront a real crisis: that of a structurally unsound U.S. economy. Yes, those financial markets have rallied spectacularly, breathing much-needed life back into 401(k)s, but for how long? Experts like Larry Fink at the BlackRock investment firm are suggesting that conditions are again "bubble-like." Meanwhile, the country remains overly dependent on Wall Street to drive economic growth.
Even when acknowledging QE's shortcomings, Chairman Bernanke argues that some action by the Fed is better than none (a position that his likely successor, Fed Vice Chairwoman Janet Yellen, also embraces). The implication is that the Fed is dutifully compensating for the rest of Washington's dysfunction. But the Fed is at the center of that dysfunction. Case in point: It has allowed QE to become Wall Street's new "too big to fail" policy.
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Dear Will B.,
Love your work and love your site. Just one little thing:
In French there is no "Le Imbecile" - it's "L'imbecile"(accent aigu on the first e)
"Le propre de l'imbecile est de croire qu'il ne l'est pas" (Huysmans) and frankly that sums up Geithner quite succinctly.
- Ajax en Suisse
This guy is going to be heart attackeded or disappeareded.
Blah...whatever! That sounds like a dishonest apology anyway.
Yeah, it seems like he's just hoping he'll be remembered kindly when the hangings begin. Kind of like those Secret Millionaire shows, which are also propaganda.
He was....just following orders.
I agree. Where are the names and addresses of the Tribal perpetrators that are distributing these ill-gotten gains. Who are the Demons of Wall Street and D.C. that have received and hoarded these stolen trillions.
....And by what misinterpretation of law can the unborn children and grandchildren of plundered and pillaged taxpayers be held responsible for the misfeasance of these Tribal destroyers and be compelled to "repay" the fiat created by this Tribal fraud for generations to come.....and just who the hell is it that would have to be "repaid"? The same Tribal demon families that perpetrated the misfeasance in the first place?
This so-called "debt" is not a "debt" that should burden those not even born at the time the grand theft was perpetrated.
"Repudiation" of this so-called "debt" is the only just response to these Tribal criminals of both Wall Street and D.C. It is time to re-learn the skill of tying an effective hangman's noose and roll out the gullotines. Fuck the courts, they are a large part of the problem.
These destroyers must be culled from our midst, or we will be enslaved until/unless we are rescued by the Creator of the Universe. The continued enslavement of ourselves, our children and our grandchildren will manifest our ignorance, weakness, selfishness, and cowardice as a people.
To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson: The tree of liberty must be periodically nourished by the blood of courageous people, or it will die.
up arrow with conviction!
i am ready willing able and unemployeed with self taught survival skills. can shoot straight, move stealthfully and can track for miles with the faintest of sign. can even morph into urban life w/o anyone know my knowledge. where shall we congregate anon.
like aa..
Does this apply to ALL debt?
Just wondering whether this would give me the green light to someone I might have loaned money to which has yet to be paid back. Just wanting to better understand the ground rules...
"Inflation is nowhere to be found," Joe Weisenthal, Business Insider
@tradewithdave
Joe
"Should have gone to specsavers"
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrIO2ysCa6RlmDYWPGYtXbO_1XuEXn4_Y
http://www.youtube.com/user/SpecsaversOfficial
Hello Mr. Priceline, how much is that kitty in the window?
Dear Mr Huszar - Go fuck yourself
Yup. If you had misgivings about the whole thing and were reluctant about getting involved, then ....why did you get involved?
Ahh...big fat paycheck! Thought so!
So your apology is worthless. You went against your own best judgement for money, dude. Too late for an attack of conscience now.
"The spiraling debt of the Federal Government to "Federal" Reserve, is due to repeated quantitative easing policies, i.e. primarily "printing" new money, supposedly made to stimulate the economy. Instead, however, the money went solely to bailout biggest banks, some of which participate in the "Federal" Reserve! Which means that, money returned to the banks through a circle, while uploaded US government with more debt, which will be passed on to future generations! Unanswered questions remain also, about the case on the basis of which, the "Federal" Reserve secretly supplied through the "back door" with more than $ 9 trillion, various financial institutions with questionable balance sheets during the financial crisis in the US. Nobody seems to deal with this issue today."
http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2013/10/new-deal-vs-obamacare-one-rea...
The "spiraling debt of the Federal Government" is due to spending more than they can raise in taxes. They have done this forever. The effect has been 4% inflation for the last 100 years under the Fed. But now inflation can't even save the government from its own irresponsible trading (they DEFAULT on all their trading promises and have been allowed to just roll the default over).
We're at the end of that game. Unfortunately, we'll just get a new game of the same kind. Weimar Germany is our model.
Ah ... if we could just take this opportunity to institute a properly managed Medium of Exchange that recognizes money for what it really is (a promise to complete a trade); that keeps money in free supply all the time everywhere (freely backs new trading promises); that guarantees INFLATION is zero at all times everywhere (by monitoring DEFAULTS and collecting an equal amount of INTEREST according to the relation INFLATION = DEFAULT - INTEREST.)
If the gold bugs have their way we'll be strangled by deflation. We've been there before too. There's only one oz of the stuff per person on Earth (about $1,300 now) and it takes a little less than an ounce to produce a new ounce.
"If the gold bugs have their way we'll be strangled by deflation."
That would be the PHYSICAL world imposing limits. "Trade" is a function, it's NOT going to replace REAL shit.
Take a look at history and you'd see that it's limitation on resources that results in wars. Of course, these are usually started by those trying to expand beyond their own borders and environmental carrying capacities. No amount of "rules" or "guidelines," regardless of how well written or tracked is going to stop desperate and hungry people from violating them.
Nature is going to perform the "deflationary" strangling. And there's not a damn thing that you or anyone else is going to be able to do about this (in any effort to keep it from happening). Sorry.
I would love to be the fly on the wall at these meetings..there has to be some discussion on these thoughts....its scratched from the record as we know..but these guys know what is going on ....there has to be another side to the argument....I would hope so...i can come up with two or three points right now.....stopping QE is their big problem now...I don´t think they can without sending the USA into recession and possibly default...and trillions more in debt...
If you did listen you'd vomit your little fly guts empty.
Go into recession?
You mean it would kill all these green shoots?
We have got to stop talking like them. As someone mentioned earlier, we have been in a depression. When QE stops, I don't know where that puts us. Back at the beginning, I suppose. It will be a world of shit for sure.
What they DON'T want let out is that they the know how precarious the entire global grow-or-die system is, that it's on the verge of not being able to deliver again, period. Maybe it's up to us? And, really, should it be each of us who identifies the "problem" and then applies his/her own "solutions?" I'd think this is better than having someone else do it. There's ZERO chance that these folks could come out and come clean about what they know as nobody would believe them now: and I'm sure that there are forces that would look to try and snuff any efforts, likely stooping so far as to link it up to actions by/from "regular people" (which can then be turned around into pleas for more control over "terrorists").
wow over welming compassion for our leaders - love the smell of vengence, so fucking early too.
rock on and may there be an uprising equel or greater than these fuckers resistance!!!!!!!
@new game
And I thought "F#ck You" was a term of endearment like "Love you"
right out of the spy thriller; luv you til your dead...
@new game
ROTFLMAO
"Because. Because I'm sorry."
so an honest error in judgement was acknowledged, a d a public confession made. this is great a d took courage. this man deserves credit for saying all this and facing whatever comes his way.
If it is something else , it is no worse than before
Fuck this puke. It's going to take more than sniveling printed words on the WSJ. Talk is cheap.
If he wants history to view him kindly for his sins, he can always redeem his honor by jamming a 9 inch blade in his own gut and carving a quick 'zoro'.
The old ways are the best ways, and the Japanese sure had this part dead on.
He does this, then I will say he was redeemed and honorable.
i call bullshit on an apology...
What about the facts that 29% of the Federal budget is provided by printing money and the housing market is being propped up by QE almost as much as Wall Street is?
The problems are that the govt forces us to use its fiat money so it can redistribute wealth from its rightful owners to pols and the interest groups they favor.
And all this guy has to groan about is that the business entities responsible for producing much or most of the confiscated wealth are getting some of it too.
The real problem is the idea that any of this wealth redistribution (stealing) should be going on.
well, Rothschild etl. is milking the American people. Daylight robbery with the Senate doing nothing. Looks like the exact plot from Star Wars. Its horrifying. I mean the Nazi activities they are trying on nowadays, re-writing the consitution, removing the rule of law that serve the people, blanket monitoring of everyone, mark to fantasy for wall street and a central bank that is a PRIVATE ENTERPRISE that do not align with the peoples interest. How screwed are we?
How screwed are we Vyeung? I try and think simply about such things. What does a deranged rapist oft do to its victim to ensure he gets away with the crime? Does black glove over the mouth come to mind? If you agree, keep hedging accordingly.
As for Mr. Huszar, the apology might have seemed sincere if he had used some of those ill gotten funds in a counter-intuitive fashion such as setting up a new foundation such as "Economic and Political Reform Council" to advance the truth and continue syndicating details. I believe his apology was about his personal, tarnished legacy.
War is coming and I doubt the final outcome will be as the controllers desire but I wager it sure will get bloody. Afterward, banking will become a public utility.
I do not see a happy ending to this epic fuckedupness that our dear fucktard leaders have done.
They are very patient. They will wait generations if that is what it takes to destroy the self righteous americans. So full of themselves and snobbish. Think they are better than the rest of the world. This is the thinking of those who wish to destroy us. They will wait as long as it takes to get to where they need to be to inflict maximum damage. Well, this is how long it took.
Wait 'til the people Rise Up and come after your Sorry Asses! If I was you, I would repent now.
Another latter day whistleblower?
Nothing we didn't know but at least it onfirms from one additional source the downright idiotic arrogance of the FED.
Too little too late Andrew. The damage is done, the path has been chosed, it will be flat to the mat from here, especially when Yellen steps up to the throne.
You are sorry? Well, I have a proposal:
"Jump, you fucker!"
Where did I put that again?
Oh yeah....here it is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yge311sFhC8
Everyone hates the Fed: leftists because they think it isn't destroying capitalism and capitalists because it is.
What can you do when the radicals from both sides are on the same team?
Crap.....I hope no one heard me say that.
If word about this got out on HuffPo that Obama and McCain were scheming together....they would be super pissed! I don't think they'd even care both sides were about to be evenly screwed.
Capitalism is destroying itself ... just like communism will always eventually destroy itself.
Flush your headgear.
Where is this Capitalism you speak of?
Try making any substantial trading promise without finding someone with capital to back it for you. That's where the capitalism I speak of is. This "is" what capitalism is.
withglee: "This "is" what capitalism is."
Socialism = taking other people's stuff (officially sanctioned).
Capitalism = not taking other people's stuff due to strong private property rights.
Socialism "is" what we have worldwide in 2013. Any questions?
A nations leaders robbing its own people and strangling them afterward to shut them up is capitalism? I dont care about "isms". I want to see a closer semblance to a Republic, the law applied equally so all have a chance to perform at the best of each individual's abilities.
A republic is a form of organization where groups select people to represent them among the whole. With our system the size of a group is over 500,000 people. Very very few know who their representative even is.
A better system would be having the individual citizen at the top. Then for things the individuals cannot do themselves, let them form small groups (say 50 people) from which they select a representative to represent them to the next lower level of the organization ... say the county.
Where that level cannot deal with an issue themselves, let them form another group of say 50 people by selecting a representative for that next lower group ... say the state.
Four such levels of organization can represent over 6million people.
These aren't "leaders". They are "representatives" chosen for their ability to study issues and make decisions in a responsible way. This is possible because the people who select them know them personally and can trust them.
YOU"RE SORRY?????? Isn't that also insider trading.......what about the thousands people lost because of you assholes????? Everybody else is getting government printed money, I want mine back that you FED JERKS took because you wouldn't let technicals work and pushed the buy button on low volumn......... this is crap!!!!!!!
Ya know ... I kind of get it. I can see why the Fed felt it needed to buy the bonds ... but the treason was in not throwing bankers in jail for FRAUD. Simply fining the banks the money that they had just given them makes no sense... and it is "air-fiat". To the banks, fines mean nothing. They just print more fiat.
I can also understand why the Fed gave money to foreign banks:
1. they bought the toxic Wall Street banker fraud-bonds too
2. for there to be a reserve currency through which all of the world makes their transactions, there has to be a succicient amount of the currency around for everyone to use. The US Fed has not gone the way the ECB, using the currency as a club to subjugate the lesser countries (Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, France) and make them submit and do as they are told or never receive another Euro of debtmoney.
As I said, recognizing the fraud, they tried to fix it, but by not imprisoning those who perpetrated the fraud they encouraged more bad behavior ... and here we are again... and this is assuming that the Fed is not just a complicit part of the Wall Street fraud machine which is equally possible. The international banks do OWN the Fed (literally), after all.
"for there to be a reserve currency through which all of the world makes their transactions, there has to be a succicient amount of the currency around for everyone to use."
With a properly managed Medium of Exchange (MOE), the money is "a promise to complete a trade". It is created by traders making trading promises. It is extinguished when they deliver on those promises. Supply is always precisely equal to demand. In the interem period, the money is used in simple barter because it is guaranteed to hold its value at all times everywhere. This is because proper management guarantees zero inflation of the MOE.
If there is a DEFAULT, this money is recovered by INTEREST collections of equal amount. This guarantees zero inflation by the relation INFLATION = DEFAULT - INTEREST.
Hey you "SoRrY" fucks, sorry is not enough; you're adults and should have known better - your head in a basket would be a delightful place to start your retribution as we will then play soccer with it....
If a bank robber gets caught, does anyone accept sorry?
"Sorry"... it's the new black, fashionably speaking.
Although there's plenty of moral hazard to go around, buying privately issued assets, like mortgage bonds, is tres hazardous; not just a free lunch but rather a banking cartel banquet. As far as the UST purchases go, I say buy more. The end game should be cancellation of that debt, closure of the central bank, issuance of currency directly by the Treasury and implementation of Freegold. It's our only hope.
http://fofoa.blogspot.com/2013/05/what-is-freegold.html
I went to your link. It's a very professional video. But I only made it through 5 minutes of the 22+ minutes. In that time, very little information was transferred. If you have the script in text I'll be happly to take a look at it. I don't need all the drama.
There is only one oz of gold per person on Earth. In relation to current dollar value, that's less than $1,300. Just petty cash, even for the very poor. And you can't simply say it's worth more because you're using it to back money ... you're using it to back trading promises. You can't paint a board yellow and say that will back a $200,000 savings account ... and that's what you would be doing by trying to change the intrinsic value of gold.
It takes a little less than one ounce of gold to produce a new ounce of gold. That is the basis for its value.
Todd Marshall
Plantersville, TX
it needs to be part of the formula-the monetary unit floats with valuation against other curriencies. will not work until an amendment to the constitution that will not allow congress to spend more than taxed. and that taxation level would be approved by majority...
"It takes a little less than one ounce of gold to produce a new ounce of gold. That is the basis for its value."
That sounds about right until you realise that it costs about 6 cents to produce a $100 note. So how do you explain that?
It also costs about 6 cents to produce a $100,000,000,000,000 note....
You can call it quantitative easing, manna from heaven, or anything else but in the end it is monetization of debt which we all know is printing up money out of thin air. And they are doing it on a gigantic scale.
Some of you Jacobin assholes need to just stop with the violent references. Go hang yourself from a lampost and spare us the self-righteous bullshit.
As for the buy sider's apology. I find it hard to believe that working for the Fed in a bond purchasing program was somehow a dream job. They could have picked a housewife to do this job. How would you have known you were doing a bad job? You paid too much? You paid too little? Why would anyone want this job? Just to say you managed a $XX trillion portfolio?
Independence at the heart of their credibility? HAHA. It's POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE FROM WASHINGTON (so to gain confidence from bond purchasing suckers that they won't use a printing press to fund the government). Otherwise, the Fed is a banking cartel. It is and has never been independent of the banking system. It is the banks. It's not a regulator. Or a watchdog. Or a government agency. It's a meta-balance sheet. You had to have known this. It's incredible to believe that an MD at Morgan Stanely didn't grasp this concept.
You sir are the self righteous asshole.
I who have scoured the history of American illustrative satire spanning over 100 years know for a fact that this is not an uncommon metaphor in the history of our political/satirical culture. Neither is the noose or the hanging judge.
Go fuck yourself on Huffington Post.
Jacobin indeed
Tell'em Banzai. I'll knock that jelly spine asswipe right the fuck out if he dare to come over the the real ZH Fight Club.
Another member of the ZH Pillow Fighters, the pillow biters.
Over.
So what that it's not uncommon? Or others who created this weren't also their times' self-righteous assholes? Does it add some authority to the imaginary that it's an old concept?
It's actually 5000 years old. It's called the Evil Eye. It's been used by the contemptuous for centuries. Inherent to it is the fear it's meant to portray. You're one in a long line of trinket salesmen kowtowing to the envious and greedy. Congratulations. You've furthered a culture of fear and envy. Your mom must be proud.
spare us the self-righteous bullshit
You got it princess!
While I'm up....is there anything else I can do?
You were better off writing about Lesbia's sparrow.
You fucking enabling cunt wipe piece of shit. You hang with them.
"They could have picked a housewife to do this job. How would you have known you were doing a bad job? You paid too much? You paid too little? Why would anyone want this job?"
The fact that they HAD to have the job in the first place is the point!
You fuck.
Oh, did somebody get a wittle offended by talk of viowence?
Here, let me help...
Hanging them is too soft a punishment. They need to suffer indescribable pain and pray for the release of sweet death. I say a fitting punishment would be to lock each of them into the guillotine, hand each of them the blade-release cable, pull out a .40 cal with hollow points, and begin shooting from the ankles up. Each will have a different level of pain tolerance and will pull the cable to end the misery at different points. Some may even endure it all the way to the kill shot. Either way, it's must see tv.
How was that?
So, "go hang yourself" is not violent? Riddle me that, Pussy-ullus.
Riddle it yourself, you illiterate fuckbag.
He's right douchebag. You are the self contradictory nit wit and deserve to be called on it. Don't do as one says right?
All these recent sorries just are not Going to cut it !!!!
Although even if u wanted to cut this guy's head off , I wouldn't know him if he was sitting next to me.
Maybe this "confession / apology" is not the entire story (please tell us the ENTIRE story, Mr. Huszar).
I often wondered why the Fed would be purchasing MBS, in addition to US Treasuries. After all, they know they are full of fraud, and will be difficult to sell (dump) later, right?
It took me some time doing online digging, and someone that has looked at this is Catherine Austin Fitts:
"What are they really doing?
The Fed has decided that it is going to once-and-for-all extinguish all mortgage fraud – buy it all up in the market – and in the process extinguish all criminal liabilities and also protect sovereign governments and institutional investors from around the world from losing money on the mortgage fraud, let alone bringing actions ... whether it's nuclear attacks or actions in the courts complaining about the fact that they were sold AAA mortgage paper. Instead, what they got was something that was fraudulently issued. And fraudulently issued with the blessings of the U.S. government and the central banks.
So, this is a "clean-up" action and I think what the Fed is really saying is 'We're going to keep buying this toxic paper and pulling it off of the balance sheets of the banks, pulling it off the balance sheets of Fannie and Freddie, and pulling it off the balance sheets of wherever it is until it's extinguished.'
Link at >> http://solari.com/articles/quantitative_easing/
1) banks rip off investors selling fraudulent paper, in some cases to other sovereign nations and banks, They KNOW the MBSs are sh*t (Karl Deninger, among others, have looked at this. Also, remember the Senate hearing with Senator Levin vs. Goldman Sachs re: "crap pools" MBSs?),
2) financial system crashes (Is this an "Oh shit!," or by plan?), and the banks get bailed out with more $US, courtesy of US Taxpayers via TARP,
3) US Executive Branch and Attorney's office (and EVERYONE else) know what happened, and decide to do nothing. Remember the "no laws were broken" statement? (can't find it now, but I do remember that interview). If you are TBTF, you are "Too Big to Jail,"
4) They get the State governments and Legal systems to go along with this (remember the "settlement" with the State AGs?),
4) The plan to fix the MERS and MBS mess is to buy everyone off with QE? If so, then the entire world population (those nations that accept $US anyway) is paying for this "bailout" via depreciating currency / inflation. Other nations start printing to "keep up," and the Banksters get more loot in the process.
Summary: Banksters get $$$ from selling fraudulent paper, Banksters get $$$ from TARP and QE, Banksters get to "rip off" some homes via fraudulent foreclosures as the legal system looks the other way. Looks like they have made profit 4-5 different ways on the mortage meltdown debacle (scam?).
Main Street loses, BIG TIME, but it has certainly worked out well for the banks and rich!
Exactly so.
"Fix it, or we'll fix you." said some holders of lots of treasuries. No names mentioned.
The wee folk get sacrificed so nobody who is important gets hurt.
It's the right thing to do. Print it away to the cornfield.
Sorry doesn't make my gas and grocery bill come down.
And sorry won't bring back solvency, or unruin millions of peoples savings for retirement, etc...
Is this a headline from "The Onion"?
He's sorry? Placing his and his cohorts heads in a mulitiple slotted guillotine would be a good start. If there are any ethical issues about who's going to drop the blade, should they be blindfolded, should there be a series of people involved like an execution........let me save everyone the trouble and ill volunteer to do it myself. The only sleep i'll ever lose will be when I wake up in the middle of the night laughing hysterically. Fk 'em all.
He's fkn sorry..........fuck this piece of shit.
Love means never having to say you're sorry.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B5-8_1uCzR8
...and in other news, the WSJ is today reporting that:
Financial Holdings of Some SEC Staffers in New York ProbedWhat are the steps needed to unwind this mistake to avoid a systemic collapse?
QE to infinity, the only way (60 usdx)
If what is meant by 'systemic collapse' is the collapse of Wall St and D.C. then hurry it up please !
The problem is, the rest of them don't think it's a mistake!
Put gold behind the dollar.
There are several ways to unwind the mess and to then steer a sustainable course forward. The problem is not so much which course or which steps but rather how much pain and suffering need to be endured by which groups for how long.
Furthermore, the powers that be (and certainly Wall Street) prefer to delay any reckoning for as long as possible because they are huge beneficiaries of the status quo, for as long as the current system stays intact.
Thus from both a political point of view and the perspective of vested controlling interests, it may be preferable to try and keep the current system afloat for as long as possible, even at the expense of an ever growing and ultimately certain disaster down the road. In the meantime, Wall Street is making out like bandits and the politicians are holding onto their jobs while the middle class continues to bleed. When the ultimate reset begins, almost all will bleed and it will be much worse than anyone is experiencing now.
A crisis of conscience from a former employee is very quaint, but what's the bottom line? Since it's been obvious for a long time to anyone that reads ZH, the fed is doing the bidding of ineffective politicians and a blood sucking wall street. Sadly,for those reasons, QE is here to stay. Forget about stopping it, and they may never taper it for fear of a total wipe out in the equity market. If stocks had to trade based upon actual fundamentals, the S&P would likely be price at 900 now and all those 401k's of all those registered voters would be trashed and that is simply politically unacceptable.
"I can only say, I'm sorry America," as he pulls the the very heavy door of his armored limo closed.
fuck you and your sorry ass
I commend you for your confession. Now its off to the whipping post for you. 1000 lashes for knowingly dancing with the devil and accepting his booty.
Yellen is having a bad day. She is toast! And GOOD RIDDANCE.
And the Kenyan Thug Hussein Obama is sorry too for fucking up your health care.
Sorry? Really?
Must be codespeak for "Get outta Dodge now".
I'm hard pressed to believe these people have consciences.
QE has been good for many! The poor and the very prosperous. International trading, tremendous volatility, artificially produced in most cases, made it easy for some. Unfortunately QE leaves a residual mess of massive debt and currency outstanding. The proof of the mess is stagnant values and rising prices on base commodities like food. The Government reacts with "OFA" and other organization taking advantage of the increasing poor by organizing with handouts instead of jobs making them dependent on this Socialistic Government. The rich, unbound, creates accounts held in multiple currencies, onshore and offshore, to avoid primary risk. They establish residency in other countries and prepare to take advantage at the markets volatility that only they can really partake. The divisions grow fueled by the desires of the leadership to create dependency Identified just recently once again by the ObamaCare outreach which displays free insurance to 90% (Medicaid) of all insurance signers endangering Senior's Medicare that they pay into. Yet another proof of controlling socialism.
There is no real manufacturing in America which once supplied 75% of all jobs in the early sixties to 80% of the population. Government employees County, City, State And federal plus independent Corporate organizations with a vast majority of their income from government contracts or guarantees now make up the vast majority of middle class citizens. Obamacare is penalizing the minority Private Middle Class while exempting the former. A friend of mine now living in Singapore, Macau and Thailand told me that for five years beginning in 2008 the attempts to get residence or citizenship in Singapore and other places was huge. He talked about the offshore Bermuda Re-insurance programs, that take foreign made profits from American Corporations and re-invest making tax consequences 5% when returning the money to America, was astronomic and now probably in the trillions!!
So! QE and Socialism did good for some and bad for others!
kinda sucks many on ZH were right, they are liars thieves sociopaths and incompetent at guarding the public trust.
kinda sucks to be right about the manage a trois, total corrupt partnership, of DC and FED and wall street.
DOJ SEC and congress doing Paulson's bidding, makes those who understand the outrage of no responsibility to the law of ever being charged for any action of his, well I need say no more.
the pity so many see themselves like this tool, trying really trying to do good for the people, you know those little folks on main street, my god it looks like they have almost convinced themselves of it.
some people just need kill'in
Fekete has been talking about this problem for years and years. Bond speculators are given guaranteed profits for frontrunning the fed's bond purchases. It's a total scam that drives interest rates lower and destroys capital.
"... having witnessed the institution deferring more and more to Wall Street. Independence is at the heart of any central bank's credibility, and I had come to believe that the Fed's independence was eroding."
Funny, I've always heard saying that the FED was essentially a Wall-street bankers' creature .
Know then, people, that :
" Once upon a time the FED was independent from WS ." .....
I just wonder when that was .
No jail time? What a Just-us system.
Guess you'll have to stop the football and the "following the kardashians" series for the people to wake up.
QE or taxpayer funded bailouts for banks lead to lower standard of living for all the citizens of a country except for the beneficiaries of the bail outs. The poor people in any country live hand to mouth and do not contribute to tax revenues. The others who earn their living by small businesses or salaries pay taxes at a much higher rate than the rich individuals or big businesses. This is due to the loopholes in the taxation system which enable them to declare maximum profits in countries which have the least tax rates.
So effectively in the long run the governments route the money collected as taxes from the middle class of people to the banks so that the bankers can enjoy enormous bonuses. We are in times of privatizing the profits and socializing losses for those who are well connected to the governments and the law makers.
www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article40231.html
Zoom back. What is going on is: the US Dollar is being flushed down the toilet.
The later you realize it, the bigger a loser you are.
Everything will be paid for with worthless paper. Cheer up, this includes your mortgage!
The biggest losers are savers with all their dough in US Dollar obligations. Suckers!
To find the winners, start with whomever bought the BOE's gold in 1999.
It's what Bernake had his son borrow all of his school money. All $400,000 plus of it.
Ben Bernanke Says That His Son Will Graduate With $400,000 Of Student Loan Debt
http://www.ijreview.com/2012/03/2690-college-debt-drowning-students/
Bernanke, Dudley, Yellen, they all know what the goal is.
Hmmmph. Having trouble with posting on Zero hedge, not to mention the blank space adds obscuring portions of text
Speaking of Sorry,
One of my favorite songs on this subject from a great, and highly underated musician, Ray Thomas of the Moody Blues: Sorry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69J3gqHM-U
How come the Jews always get blamed for everything when it comes to finance and money and fucking it all up all of the time when they get their dirty hands on it? Leave those dumbfcukers alone for Christ's sake. You have to feel sorry for them for being so damned dumb about it too. Oh well.
Jesus was a Jew and he was crucified by a hateful, resentful, disdainful, blood thirsty mob of Jews who believed in an eye for an eye, so you know how they operate.
Gotta forgive them said Jesus. Love your neighbor said Jesus.
So, you have to forgive Mr. Huszar for being such a sorry ass along with all of the other sorry asses that surround him everday.
Dumbasses one and all.
Hell awaits them.
...ranted the town drunk before he passed out and bashed his head on the curb of the gutter, again.
'Jeebus'....LOL no wonder we're so fucked.
What amazes me is that there are tens of millions who still cannot connect the dots.
He was Judean. He was NOT a Jew.
Do you even own a Bible?
One upon a time there was a flick called "No way out". Today, we're all living just that.
Is the Master Plan -the grandest of conspiracies-for the Fed to keep printing money buyiing mortgagae backed securities and other assets, so that they own most of the housing? Then collapse the economy, all the homes are underwater and the Fed (or government -they are synonomous) would foreclose on the collateral and thus own all the assets? A bank would go under with such a collapse-the Fed simply prints money, and they own the hard assets.
Where is this analysis wrong? I have commented on this several times over the past year and no one can refute this.
Truth is hard to refute.
Sad to see that $MDB hasn't weighed in on this yet. So depressed I need a laugh. $MDB you out there?
Here we have a classic confession - and most people will STILL not believe the government and banks conspired to defraud them.
They are trained now that all conspiracy theories are false and no thinking person wants to be associated with them.
Which is mighty convenient for the next conspirators.
Bagbalm. I could care less about dumbed downed meaningless talkers of sports,stars,politics of shit and any other meaningless dribble that comes from there sewer.Fuck em.
A dream job? Fascist cunt.
"Instead it was a feast for Wall Street"
Gee, ...... ya think?
Thank you Captain Obvious.
Fed disintermediates Bank fails.
Like Stockman it is nice to have people from inside the beast follow their conscience and come out and talk about the wholesale rape of the American public.
Thanks ZH for finding and publishing it.
If anyone is stupid enough to believe that this is not war, then nothing will convince them.
"Demoralized, I returned to the private sector."... WHY?!!!
Possibly the most ironic passage in this whole article. Why didn't he jump off the JPM building when he knew what he had done?
But hey the revolving door between the Federal Government and commercial business has only been metastasizing and it didn't start with the bailouts 5 years ago.
Great to see a confession letter like this...
This is why I made the music video below -- please check it out. It's called "WORLD OF DEBT":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99xsqxzJnXs
ALSO, see "JIM CRAMER TERRIBLE STOCK PICKS--MUST SEE!" BELOW:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lhwplunz7-I
Banker slime turns over a new leaf? What a load of shit! What's he selling?
Would be nice if they had these kind of epiphanies before they implement these kind of financial sector welfare programs.
NEVER EVER underestimate DESPERATION.
(think of an animal cornered).
Rats flee sinking ships. Literally. They say if you see rats jumping off a ship, that ship is going down, and soon. Rats somehow intuitively know when a vessel is no longer seaworthy.
progress! the enlightenment project ended up getting everyone else locked into this giant concentration camp. so much for the envisioned emancipation from tyranny, dogma, bondage , superstition, and etc. welcome to dark age 2.0, in which the trinity is the Father is Kapital, the Messiah is Market, and the Holy Spirit is Free Enterprises.
Glad the truth is spoken by ex employees, soon employees and then the new leaders of the fed who will blame the retired ones.
The question is, one the Ponzi scheme is over, who holds what? If they taper and the economy tanks, we will be holding their heads. Of they don't and inflation picks up, we will hold their heads. Anything else is free game to make or lose more money.
You can only say 'I'm sorry'? OK that's nice....now you have an appointment with the guillotine!
Actually this guy is just acting rationally. Rationally, not morally.
His reasoning, Probability analysis:
1) Probability and need to make more money VS
2) Probability of being around to spend it
You don't just turn off that self interest gene....
Plus right now he wants both 1 and 2 by going back to the WS Criminalistas
As far as J. Yellin in concerned, it's "moar fail"
Wall street can be back door bailed out by money printing to get the books to appear to look right based on the rules of money. But to get mainstread bailed out, that takes real energy and real resources based on the rules of physics, and those are appearing constrained if you look in the right places.
Buy tangible goods and trade in those FRNs while they still have worth.
Keep calm and carry on.
You can take your sorry ass excusses and shove them into your butt. Sorry for my French.
Nothing new here. Time to move along.
Thank you for your confessions Mr. Huszar. Perhaps you'll be sparred the hangman's noose. There is, however, nothing which can be done to save the major body of your peers. The first assignment in the commission and execution of your atonement will be to bring down the first of handful of your former fellows. God Speed and may your hand be swift.
a fucking apology - well that fixes everything, doesn't it?
So the worthless POS is sorry? End game must be near.
There is no end game. This is Risk + Monopoly and it will go on forever and ever if we allow it. Placing more Infantry pieces in North Africa and mortgaging every house on Baltic Ave. Which player do you think will win?
it looks like the onion already pulled this... or was it an onion article to begin with?
I can't wait for the day this experiment blows up in their faces. The picture will be worth a million.oh wait a billion oh wait a trillion..............
Obama Belongs In A Prison Cell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I1X-y8IqMw
Get the pitchforks out!
Interesting, "Demoralized, I returned to the private sector." He didn't realize that he was the inner sanctum of the private sector? Other than that, this article tied with articles on HFT clearly indicate that the stock market plays no role in the actual economy.
In fact, can anyone explain how a stock market crash will make the real economy marginally worse than it alreay is today?
@Atticus, ok, I'll bite.
Stock market crash will DESTROY pensions - primarily government - and 401(k)s.
Union workers, and clueless victims because the savers will be sacrificed first, will scream and fret and freak the hell out until new rounds of taxes and regulations and rules will errupt to "fix" the problem. Which it won't, will only make it worse as history has shown.
That round of "saving" will finish off the "economy" while continuing to enrich those like this writer.
We, the productive, apologies in hand or not, will pay.
We always do, they just say "sorry" and pocket their billions on the way up, and on the way back down. Same as it has always been.
So, Mr. Huszar decides to apologize by turning to the 50c a word paradigm of one of the Wall Street Urinals .. classic.
I got screwed in the largest financial fraud in history and all I got was a lousy apology.
Welcome to the Revolution Mr. Huszar. May the judges of the financial terrorist trials go easy on you.
Long live BitCoin.
Maybe the Fed's doing what it's supposed to be doing. Serving its masters. The Federal Government and the banks. Those who created the Fed. The Fed is both bailing out the banks and financing the deficit.
Onion, is that you? How did this article make an MSM? Are TPTB now openly mocking the sheep and their futility?
Im sorry, I didnt see this on MSM. After the Larry Flynt headline, I said fuck it. NFLX is the new MSM
Big business LOVES QE; it allows them to aquire companies at a cheap cost, buyback shares to prop up their stock price, cover up accounting fraud, and most importantly, help suppress wages.
GUys like this do more harm than good. From what I understand, he was only there for a short period of time and was not very competent. The issue is NOT the effectiveness of the first QE - it is very clear that the FIRST round of MBS purchases was rather effective -FEd was acting in its role as "lender of last resort". \ and helped stablize the market. Totally approprate at the time.
NOW - what is at issue is QE2/3/4 etc - which has been TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE, not necessary (market was functioning just fine) and has damaged the MBS market (liquidity terrible and declining trading volumes). THE WSJ did not do any due diligence on this guy - He is wrong about QE1 and therefore makes those who have legitimate arguments against QE 2/3/4 look silly. WSJ screwed the true anti qe gang. His argument is too esily disputed.
QE 2/3/4 etc has been a total failure - that is what we should be focused on. The FED over-stepping its bounds