I apologise to readers around the world for having defended the emergency stimulus policies of the US Federal Reserve, and for arguing like an imbecile naif that the Fed would not succumb to drug addiction, political abuse, and mad intoxicated debauchery, once it began taking its first shots of quantitative easing.
My pathetic assumption was that Ben Bernanke would deploy further QE only to stave off DEFLATION, not to create INFLATION. If the Federal Open Market Committee cannot see the difference, God help America.
We now learn from last week’s minutes that the Fed is willing “to provide additional accommodation if needed to … return inflation, over time, to levels consistent with its mandate.”
NO, NO, NO, this cannot possibly be true.
Ben Bernanke has not only refused to abandon his idee fixe of an “inflation target”, a key cause of the global central banking catastrophe of the last twenty years (because it can and did allow asset booms to run amok, and let credit levels reach dangerous extremes).
Worse still, he seems determined to print trillions of emergency stimulus without commensurate emergency justification to test his Princeton theories, which by the way are as old as the hills. Keynes ridiculed the “tyranny of the general price level” in the early 1930s, and quite rightly so. Bernanke is reviving a doctrine that was already shown to be bunk eighty years ago.
Inflation targeting: is Bernanke the new Von Havenstein, head of the Weimar Reichsbank?
So all those hillsmen in Idaho, with their Colt 45s and boxes of krugerrands, who sent furious emails to the Telegraph accusing me of defending a hyperinflating establishment cabal were right all along. The Fed is indeed out of control.
The sophisticates at banking conferences in London, Frankfurt, and New York who aplogized for this primitive monetary creationsim – as I did – are the ones who lost the plot.
My apologies. Mercy, for I have sinned against sound money, and therefore against sound politics.
I stick to my view that Friedmanite QE ‘a l’outrance‘ is legitimate to prevent a collapse of the M3 broad money supply, and to prevent outright deflation in economies with total debt levels near or above 300pc of GDP. Not in any circumstances, but where necessary, and where conducted properly by purchasing bonds outside the banking system (not the same as Bernanke “creditism”).
The dangers of tipping into a debt compound trap – as described by Irving Fisher in Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depresssions in 1933 – outweigh the risk of an expanded money stock catching fire and setting off an inflation surge later. Debt deflation is a toxic process that can and does destroy societies as well as economies. You do not trifle with it.
But deliberately creating inflation “consistent” with the Fed’s mandate – implicitly to erode debt – is another matter. Nor can this be justified at this particular juncture. M3 has been leveling out. M2 has begun to rise briskly. The velocity of money has picked up. The M1 monetary mulitplier has jumped.
We have a very odd world. The IMF has doubled its global growth forecast to 4.5pc this year, and authorities everywhere have ruled out a serious risk of a double dip recession.
Yet at the same time the Bank of Japan has embarked on unsterilised currency intervention, which amounts to stimulus, and both the Fed and the Bank of England are signalling fresh QE.
You can’t have it both ways. If the US is not in deep trouble, the Fed should not be thinking of extra QE. It should step back and let the economy heal itself, if necessary enduring several years of poor growth to purge excess leverage.
Yes, U6 unemployment is 16.7pc. But as dissenters at the Minneapolis Fed remind us, you cannot solve a structural unemployment crisis with loose money.
Fed is trying to conjure away the hangover from the last binge (which Greenspan/Bernanke caused, let us not forget), as if to vindicate its prior claim that you can always clean up painlessly after asset bubbles.
Are the Chinese right? Are the Americans and the British now so decadent that they will refuse to take their punishment, opting to default on their debts by stealth?
Sooner or later we may learn what the Fed’s hawkish bloc of Fisher, Lacker, Plosser, Hoenig, Warsh, and Kocherlakota really think about this latest lurch into monetary la la land, with all that it implies for moral hazard and debt contracts.
If I have written harsh words about these heroic resisters, I apologise for that too.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100007777/shut-down-the-fed-part-ii/
This in my opion is another one of those cases where the government is trying to tar and feather someone, then when they have accomplished their task which is just to ruin a reputation or have you question the persons character, then they move on and leave them alone again.
Baby snatched for dad's politics back with parents
Reunited! Newborn returned to family where father accused of being 'Oath Keeper'
A tiny baby girl snatched from her parents' custody a week ago when her father was accused of being an "Oath Keeper" was returned to her parents today.
According to WND sources close to the case, the accusations against the father, Johnathon Irish, whose fiancée, Stephanie Taylor, is the mother of Cheyenne, have been dropped.
WND originally reported on the case last weekend when the state took the baby, ordering the father to stand with his hands behind his back and frisking him while social workers took the child. The affidavit supporting the actions cited the father's affiliation with the patriotic organization Oath Keepers.
Irish, reached today by telephone by WND, said New Hampshire state law prevents disclosure of details of family court disputes. But the WND source confirmed that the little girl had been returned to the family and there were no future court dates scheduled in the case.
Officials with the state Family Court system could not be reached by WND.
Learn how to foil those who would damage the nation. Get "Taking America Back" now from the WND Superstore.
Just hours earlier a protest was held outside the court where the hearing was going on, and as WND reported, officials with Oath Keepers submitted a demand letter to the state's social services agency to remove the reference in the affidavit in the Irish case.
The organization collects affirmations from soldiers and peace officers that they would refuse orders that violate the U.S. Constitution in light of what they perceive as the advance of socialism in the U.S.
Irish had told WND that an affidavit signed by Child Protective Service worker Dana Bickford seeking government custody of newborn Cheyenne a week ago said the agency "became aware and confirmed that Mr. Irish associated with a militia known as the 'Oath Keepers.'"
While officials with Oath Keepers confirmed that there were other issues involved in the case, they were stunned to learn that the court ruling had described their organization as a militia and had referenced participation with them as an accusation.
"This poorly conducted investigation used unsubstantiated and unsupported information regarding our organization. A journey to our website, and a reading of our bylaws, could have easily confirmed what we are and are not," said the Oath Keepers letter, delivered today to state officials.
"We are an association of currently serving and retired police, military, and emergency personnel. We are not a militia. Our goal is simply to educate all current service personnel on their obligations under the law and in particular our Constitution."
WND reported earlier when the dispute erupted, including when Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes wrote on his website that the citation of his organization sends a seriously troubling message.
Details of the resolution of the case were withheld behind the curtain of Family Court restrictions. But Rhodes described it as a "fundamental point" to have government agencies condemning defendants for their political affiliations.
"Talk about chilling speech! If this is allowed to continue, it will chill the speech of not just Mr. Irish, but all Oath Keepers and it will serve as the camel [nose] under the tent for other associations being considered too risky for parents to dare," he continued. "'Don't you dare associate with such and such group, or you could be on 'the list' and then child protective services might come take your kids.'"
While Oath Keepers is not a militia, he said, it would make no difference if it was.
"A parent associating with a militia is not engaged in child endangerment and is not evidence of child endangerment," he said.
Oath Keepers' members promise not to obey any order "to disarm the American people," conduct warrantless searches, "detain American citizens as 'unlawful enemy combatants,'" work to impose martial law, invade or subjugate any state, blockade American cities, put Americans in detention camps or "make war against our own people."
Rhodes himself was a U.S. Army paratrooper injured in an parachuting accident, a former firearms instructor and a former member of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul's Washington staff.
The organization's board of directors includes Army veteran Sgt. Dave Freeman, Army veteran Capt. Chauncey Normandin, Navy veteran Capt. Gregory Gooch, Celia S. Hyde of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, all retired.
Others are Marines, members of the Air Force, local law enforcement and even of the U.S. Army Special Forces.
The demand letter apparently was addressed by the court's action, although Rhodes said he'd been given no direct response to the concerns. It said, "As police officers, we have been called all manner of vile names by criminal suspects, but nothing compares to the offensive assertion that to associate with us and our military counterparts is child endangerment. We respectfully request that any reference to Oath Keepers be removed from your affidavit by whatever mechanism New Hampshire law allows or requires."
The letter continued, "On behalf of all of the active duty and retired police and sheriff personnel within our organization, as well as our military and firefighter brothers and sisters, we demand that you remove the offensive verbiage in the affidavit filed by your investigator, Dana Bickford, which states, 'the Division became aware and confirmed that Mr. Irish associated with a militia known as the 'Oath Keepers …''
"By so listing the political associations of a parent as a reason to take a newborn baby from her mother's arms, the affidavit politicizes child protective services. That politicization was unfortunately furthered by the judge in this case who adopted Bickford’s entire affidavit as the Court's 'findings of fact' setting forth the reasons for issuing the order to take the baby."
The letter explains Oath Keepers members "have seen first-hand the heart-rending abuse that children can suffer at the hands of dysfunctional adults. It is to prevent such abuse that child protective services is given great latitude and power. Politics has no place in this process precisely because of the immense power you wield. All that should matter is the welfare of the children, not the politics of the parents. Such politicization not only hurts the families and children involved, but also chills the speech of other parents who now will worry that their political affiliations will be used as grounds for taking their children."
It was signed by Capt. Chauncey Normandin, retired, from the Lowell, Mass., police department; Sgt. David Freeman, retired, from the Las Vegas police department; Chief Celia S. Hyde, retired, of the Bolton, Mass., police department; retired Graham County, Ariz., Sheriff Richard Mack; and almost half a dozen actively serving law enforcement officers in Texas, Pennsylvania, Utah and others.
According to the original court documents, copies of which were posted by Oath Keepers, "Mr. Irish was court ordered to attend Ending the Violence with Scott Hampton, however, to date, has not completed this program." The court affidavit continued, "The Epsom Police Department stated they were very familiar with Mr. Irish, as they have responded to multiple calls, which involved Mr. Irish and firearms, one of which resulted in a pending charge for possession of a concealed weapon without a permit.
"The division became aware and confirmed that Mr. Irish associated with a militia known as the 'Oath Keepers,' and had purchase several different types of weapons including a rifle, handgun and taser," the court documents said.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=215537
This is one of those got to love the comment.
Meanwhile In Sydney Australia – Gun Cloud
Kind of looks like a Hi-Point to me. In other news, the government is now working on a cloud vacuum to quickly eradicate future gun clouds.
http://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/2010/10/15/meanwhile-in-sydney-australia-gun-cloud/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+GunBlog+(Everyday,+No+Days+Off+-+Gun+Blog)
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