…is still telling it. David Stockman Q&A from USA Today:
Q: And what are the consequences of that?
A: The consequences are horrendous. If you could make the world rich by having all the central banks print unlimited money, then we have been making a mistake for the last several thousand years of human history.
Q: How does it end?
A: At some point confidence is lost, and people don’t want to own the (Treasury) paper. I mean why in the world, when the inflation rate has been 2.5% for the last 15 years, would you want to own a five-year note today at 80 basis points (0.8%)?
If the central banks ever stop buying, or actually begin to reduce their totally bloated, abnormal, freakishly large balance sheets, all of these speculators are going to sell their bonds in a heartbeat.
That’s what happened in Greece.
Here’s the heart of the matter. The Fed is a patsy. It is a pathetic dependent of the big Wall Street banks, traders and hedge funds. Everything (it does) is designed to keep this rickety structure from unwinding. If you had a (former Fed Chairman) Paul Volcker running the Fed today — utterly fearless and independent and willing to scare the hell out of the market any day of the week — you wouldn’t have half, you wouldn’t have 95%, of the speculative positions today.
Q: You sound as if we’re facing a financial crisis like the one that followed the collapse of Lehman Bros. in 2008.
A: Oh, far worse than Lehman. When the real margin call in the great beyond arrives, the carnage will be unimaginable.
No GOP Presidential candidate will deal with this. They’d rather let Israel get us stuck in a 3rd trillion dollar Middle East War. The folks running for Congress just want to keep their successful partisan franchises running. I’d like to think Obama would like to deal with this but that his hands are tied by the GOP snake oil machine. I want the GOP out of Congress but if they’d run folks like David Stockman I’d vote for their candidates in a New York minute. Sadly they just give us retreads like Nolan, Wannabes like Clark and nonentities like Jeff Anderson. As for the GOP. Cravaack seems to think we should help Israel attack Iran too.
First-term Republican Rep. Chip Cravaack said he’s drawn a clear conclusion from what he’s learned.
“I think that they are on a positive path to building a nuclear weapon and when they can build that nuclear weapon, they will build it,” Cravaack said.
So, of course, following the GOP line we’d better bomb their enrichment facilities to set them back a year or two and make all the dissident Iranians rally arround their nation’s sovereign right to forge ahead despite the threats from the “Great” and “lesser Satan.” Oh and pull out of the nuclear treaties that allow the rest of the world to inspect their facilities.
Brilliant Chip, Brilliant!
