Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts
Yesterday the Fed raised short term interest rates by three quarters of one percent, and the stock market rose. The stock market did not rise because of the rate hike. The stock market rose because the Atlanta Federal Reserve bank dropped its forecast for second quarter (ends June 30) GDP growth to zero — 0.0 — which means that technically we are in a recession.
As interest rate hikes worsen recessions, the stock market has concluded that Fed tightening is over. Soon the Fed will be lowering interest rates to fight recession and unemployment. The real question is: why did the Federal Reserve raise interest rates on the same day it knew the economy had descended into recession?
The Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell disclaimed any intention of causing or worsening a recession by ratcheting up interest rates. But the real unanswered question is why did the Fed raise interest rates after the Fed knew we were in a recession unless the Fed wants a serious recession?
The unexplored question among economists is who does the Federal Reserve really serve. In the universities students are brainwashed that the Federal Reserve serves the public’s interest by maintaining noninflationary full employment via careful adjustments of the money supply. There is no historical record to support this claim, but this is what is taught. It is part of the propaganda that turns Americans into dumbshits.
Since QE began, the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet has risen from 800 billion dollars to 9 trillion dollars. This was the money creation that drove up bond, stock, and real estate prices and created a Forbes 400 list of nothing but multi-billionaires. If memory serves, when I was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, there were only 2 billionaires on the 400 list.
The Federal Reserve has said that it is going to take the 9 trillion dollars that it pumped into financial assets back out of the economy. This means, if you believe the Federal reserve, that the Federal Reserve is going to take the money out of the rise in stock, bond, and real estate prices. If the Federal Reserve goes ahead with its plan, there will be a wipeout in paper wealth.
Pension funds will be hit hard if the Federal Reserve attempts to take out the money it poured into the support of the New York Banks, which meant into support of financial assets. This raises another issue. How did we have 12 or 14 years of the Fed pouring out money and still unable to reach the Federal Reserve’s target of 2% inflation, yet suddenly have 8%, 10%, or 12% inflation depending on the measure used? How does inflation jump from less than 2% to double-digits overnight?
Especially, how does this happen when the US dollar is rising. All great inflations, such as the German inflation, resulted from the collapse of the currency. The US dollar might well deserve to collapse, but it isn’t, or not yet. So what explains the inflation?
Is it made up, fake news to allow excess profits to sellers? Is it a product of the mindless Covid lockdowns that destroyed many businesses and disrupted many supply chains? In other words, the lockdowns reduced supply. If demand did not reduce correspondingly, prices rise. Is inflation a produce of Washington’s sanctions when the Wall Street Journal reports that Russia’s oil exports have increased by 300,000 barrels daily? Why are food prices going up? Why are some African countries allegedly experiencing starvation? Is it fake news, or is it the result of the Western world forcing countries out of being self-sufficient in food into producing one export crop and importing their food from the US? In other words, has “globalism” been successfully used to create a monopoly over food supply, a monopoly that is using the “Russian excuse” to raise prices?
Whatever your answers are, the only conclusions at which you can arrive is that “your government” is either totally incompetent or acting against your interests and those of everyone else in the world.
Are Americans too insouciant and gullible to be aware that they live in a world of lies created by their rulers and sustained by the presstitutes? Donald Trump brought just over half of US citizens into this realization, resulting in his two presidential elections. But the realization was not strong enough for the majority of the voters to prevent the corrupt and evil Democrats from stealing the election from Trump. Of course, it wasn’t just the Democrats wanting the powers of office for their perverted agendas of critical race theory, identity politics, transgender indoctrination, and other extraordinary assaults on the authority of parents and morality. We are living under a full scale assault by Democrats on normality, on the US Constitution, on truth, on morality.
Trump and the Republicans are themselves far from a reliable defender of freedom, free speech, and free thought. Republicans have supported the PATRIOT Act and all other legislation that erodes liberty in the name of security, just as Benjamin Franklin, a Founding Father, said would happen. Scare the Americans and they run into the embrace of the totalitarian state.
In addition to these powerful corruptive elements that are destroying the free world, we how have in addition the attacks on the indigenous white populations of the Western word, the fount of modern progress. White people are racists who must be replaced or exterminated, who first must pay reparations, who must first confess their sins against “people of color,” homosexuals and lesbians, feminists, transgendered, transpecies, and everyone else in the universe whether fanciful or real.
The doctrine is hardening everywhere in Western universities where the solution to humanity’s problems is the elimination of normal white people.
This despite the proven fact that the black slaves brought to what became the United States were slaves captured by the Black King of Dahomey, who sold the excess to Arab and Jewish slave traders. No colonist or 19th century resident of North America ever enslaved anyone. The slaves arrived enslaved. They were enslaved by the black victors who captured them in slave ares, enslaved and sold them.
Conservative defense of business no longer makes any sense. American corporations moved high value-added, high productivity jobs out of the country. When the goods and services they produce abroad are sold in the US, they enter as imports and worsen the US trade deficit. Thus the corporations have reduced the income growth of Americans and the tax base while worsening the trade deficit. That is, the corporations are acting against the interests of the country.
How does a country survive when its own corporations work against it and when its universities attempt to delegitimize normality?
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fed-recession-interest-rate-hikes-june-15-2022-203734474.html
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The destruction of the United States Nation requires destruction of everything, and most importantly destruction of Euro-Americanism. When will white conservatives finally understand what is being done to them?
The American economy is an inverted pyramid held together by everyone’s hopes and dreams that it is still on and has values. All you have to do to stop the economy is stop buying anything. Live below your means and don’t spend anything. Even if you pay cash, as soon as your money hits a bank the government controls it. Don’t buy anything. Why did the markets suffer during “””COVID”””? It’s because people only bought what they had to. Capitalism is designed for endless unsustainable growth. Partner with friends, own things in common, trade what you need, from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
The markets suffered for 3 weeks. Are you as brain dead as you appear? Stick your commie bullshit up your ass.
Nice Marx quote. Who determines abilities and needs?
You’re thinking of crony capitalism. I.e. Fascism. The exact type of system decried in the article above. Say, where a ‘private’ entity is given license to control the money supply so long as it endorses endless purchase of federal debt. That is a mob swindle, not a free market.
Capitalism is simply finding a fair medium of trade, agreeable to all parties involved, absent coercion. Kind of like this:
Acts 4:32-35
Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition
32 And the multitude of believers had but one heart and one soul: neither did any one say that aught of the things which he possessed, was his own; but all things were common unto them.
33 And with great power did the apostles give testimony of the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord; and great grace was in them all.
34 For neither was there any one needy among them. For as many as were owners of lands or houses, sold them, and brought the price of the things they sold,
35 And laid it down before the feet of the apostles. And distribution was made to every one, according as he had need.
I dunno the church?
Careful. Cherry-picking bible quotes out of context can lead to messy conclusions.
This passage refers to the missionary commune of the early church. This is what modern religious communes are modeled on. Cloisters of nuns, monasteries, the priesthood, etc. They own nothing so as not to hinder their holy work. But this model was not meant to apply to society writ-large. The religious still DO rely on productive society for their bodily sustenance.
Think about it: the multitude of believers sold all their stuff, then gave the money to the apostles, who distributed the money. Did they all then eat the money?
Also notice the Apostles were usually begging for donations for the Saints in Jerusalem.
“Let’s throw everything in the pot and take only what we need didn’t work for the early Church.
“corrupt and evil Democrats ” Roberts gets it.
This has been going on since this country was founded the globalist Jew bankers and the British aristocracy they controlled manipulated booms and busts in the 19th century to gain control with the creation of the federal reserve in 1913. On to the next manipulation of the American. Imbecile.
Only my wife has a claim to what I have because I made a vow to her.
One of the best articles I’ve read in a loooong time.
Bet rays…set to stun (until Doc Milgramstein gives the expert order to crank the voltage to kill). By the house. Which now, like vegas casinos, only ever much more so, has “eyes in the skies.”
“Our slots pay lots!”
The house sez place your bets – buy a house!
House, M.D. sez “everybody lies” (he also sez “lumbar puncture” a lot).
Canada is in the same predicament as the United States. Our Bank Of Canada serves an oligarchy while working against middle, and lower income Canadians. Middle and lower class Canadians should unite with middle and lower class Americans to fight left wing centralist government, and neocon imperialism.