{"id":107508,"date":"2014-02-07T07:37:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T07:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?guid=a2b7f6df282fa7491d0574d41f010282"},"modified":"2014-02-07T07:37:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-07T07:37:00","slug":"bernanke-at-brookings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/bernanke-at-brookings\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernanke at Brookings"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\"><b>Bernanke at Brookings<\/b><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">by Stephen Lendman<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">On January 31, he stepped down as Fed chairman. Janet Yellen replaced him. He&#8217;s entering a new world of million-dollar book deals. He&#8217;ll make $100,000 a pop speeches.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Expect appointments to corporate boards. CEOs value his rainmaking services.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">On February 3, Brookings <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/about\/media-relations\/news-releases\/2014\/0203-bernanke-hutchins-center\"><span style=\"color: #1255cc;\">headlined<\/span><\/a> &#8220;Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to Join Economic Studies at Brookings.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">He&#8217;s a &#8220;Distinguished Fellow in Residence.&#8221; He&#8217;s affiliated with the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy (HCFMP). On January 16, Brookings launched it.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Its board of trustees vice chair Glenn Hutchins contributed $10 million in seed money. He co-founded the multi-billion dollar private equity firm Silver Lake Partners. Guess what type policies HCFMP will endorse.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">&#8220;We are proud to welcome chairman Bernanke into the Brookings family,&#8221; said president Strobe Talbot. He&#8217;s Clinton&#8217;s former deputy secretary of state. He was directly involved in some of his worst policies.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Brookings&#8217; agenda is brazenly imperial. It&#8217;s pro-corporate. It&#8217;s anti-populist. It feigns concern about inequality. It supports government of, by and for privileged elites alone. Expect Bernanke to fit right in.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">His Fed tenure was deplorable. He betrayed the public trust. His record attests to his wickedness.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">His agenda was ruthlessly anti-populist. He did more to thirdworldize America for profit than any of his predecessors.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">He handed Wall Street crooks multi-trillions of dollars. He facilitated the greatest wealth transfer in history. He created a protracted Main Street Depression. No end in sight looms.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Noted investor Jeremy Grantham&#8217;s commentaries are refreshing. He cuts to the heart of issues. He pulls no punches doing so.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">He titled an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scribd.com\/doc\/40187158\/Grantham-October\"><span style=\"color: #1255cc;\">earlier commentary<\/span><\/a> &#8220;Night of the Living Fed: Something Unbelievably Terrifying.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">He highlighted &#8220;runaway commodities, (zombi) banks back to life, homes destroyed, families evicted, and currency wars.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">He blamed Bernanke. &#8220;If I were a benevolent dictator,&#8221; he said, he&#8217;d limit the Fed solely to maintaining price stability.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">He&#8217;d make sure the economy got enough liquidity to function normally. He&#8217;s &#8220;force (the Fed) to swear off manipulating asset prices through artificially low rates and asymmetric promises.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">He referred to the Greenspan\/Bernanke put. He&#8217;d eliminate &#8220;immoral hazard.&#8221; It&#8217;s immoral behavior. It&#8217;s outsized excess. It&#8217;s grand theft.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">It bails out large investors. Doing so encourages imprudent risks. Winning is guaranteed. Regulatory checks are absent. Anything goes is policy.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Things persist &#8220;under the guise of &#8216;saving the system,&#8217; &#8221; said Grantham. Money manipulators have things their way.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Fed chairmen are tools of monied interests. They know who butters their bread. They return favors manyfold. Greenspan did from August 1987 through January 2006.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Bernanke exceeded his worst policies. He did so from February 1, 2006 through January 31, 2014.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Both chairmen qualify as maestros of misery. They created bubble financial conditions. America&#8217;s 1% profited hugely. They did so at the expense of most others.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Virtually all global assets are overpriced. Bubble conditions exist. Grantham compared them to Einstein&#8217;s definition of insanity. The madness of repeating the same mistakes. Expecting a different outcome doesn&#8217;t work.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Last spring, Grantham compared Fed policy to beating a donkey. He called it the 1% growing economy. &#8220;(H)e keeps beating it until it either turns into a horse or drops dead from too much beating,&#8221; said Grantham.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">&#8220;We&#8217;ve been conned.&#8221; We&#8217;re manipulated to believe &#8220;debt is everything.&#8221; In 1982, it was one-and-a-quarter times GDP.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">It&#8217;s nearly triple that amount now. It has nothing to do with long-term growth. It&#8217;s an &#8220;accounting world. It&#8217;s paper,&#8221; said Grantham.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">&#8220;The real world is the quantity and quality of your people, and the quality and quantity of capital spending.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">&#8220;Are you building new machines? Are you being inventive?&#8221; Are you educating a new generation properly?<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">&#8220;We&#8217;re in this death grip that only paper things matter.&#8221; Vital issues go unaddressed. Wealth keeps getting transferred &#8220;from the poor to the rich.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Interest rates are outrageously now. They&#8217;re practically zero. Speculators benefit. Ordinary people lose out.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Retirees are deprived of vital income. Financial interests are served at the expense of the real economy.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">During his tenure as Fed chairman, Bernanke handed speculators over $20 trillion. Most was practically interest free. They took full advantage.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Money printing madness defines Fed policy. Helicopter Ben dropped none on Main Street. In 2002, his helicopter money speech said:<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">&#8220;The US government has a technology, called a printing press (today its electronic equivalent).&#8221;&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">It &#8220;allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Most circulating money is bank-generated credit. It&#8217;s created out of thin air. It&#8217;s when banks extend loans.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">When old ones are repaid faster than new ones, money supply shrinks. QE is supposed to reverse things.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Things haven&#8217;t worked out this way. Key is where Fed money goes. Dropping it on Main Street stimulates economic growth.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Handing it to Wall Street crooks parks it in their reserve accounts. It&#8217;s not used for lending.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Former Reagan budget director David Stockman said it &#8220;stayed trapped in the canyons of Wall Street.&#8221; He called it &#8220;high grade monetary heroin.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">It&#8217;s &#8220;kill(ing) the patient.&#8221; It&#8217;s &#8220;legalized bank robbery.&#8221; It&#8217;s recklessly out-of-control.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">It &#8220;inflate(d) yet another unsustainable bubble.&#8221; They all burst. No exceptions. This time isn&#8217;t different.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Money printing madness and bailouts reflect &#8220;the single most shameful chapter in American financial history,&#8221; said Stockman.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Bernanke operated by Abraham Maslow&#8217;s maxim. &#8220;(I)f the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail,&#8221; he said.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">QE continues. It&#8217;s slowing. Yellen can rev it up full bore any time. It&#8217;s self-defeating. It contracts the money supply. It&#8217;s by sucking up collateral needed to create credit.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">It constrains economic growth. It doesn&#8217;t create jobs. It solely benefits Wall Street. Banksters made out like bandits. Speculators profited hugely. They did so at the expense of Main Street.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Financial warfare rages. America and other societies are affected. Ordinary people are hurt most. Hard times keep getting harder.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">QE works when used constructively. Money injected responsibly into the economy creates growth. It creates jobs. When people have money they spend it.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">A virtuous cycle of prosperity follows. America once was sustainably prosperous. Today it\u2019s in decline. It&#8217;s heading for third world status. It&#8217;s more kleptocracy than democracy.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Money power in private hands assures trouble. Ellen Brown explained more. Up to 40% of &#8220;everything we buy goes (for) interest.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">It goes to &#8220;bankers, financiers and bondholders.&#8221; A third or more of national wealth shifts from Main Street to Wall Street.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Complicit politicians let it happen. They do so for generous benefits derived. Greed is the national pastime. So is looting America for profit.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Most people think paying bills and credit card charges on time avoids interest charges. Not so, says Brown.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">&#8220;Tradesmen, suppliers, wholesalers and retailers all along the chain of production rely on credit to pay their bills.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Their costs pass on to consumers. Unwittingly they pay. Ordinary people make wealthy ones richer. They do so at their own expense. What better argument for public banking than that.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Borrowing from public banks eliminates or greatly reduces interest rate charges. It works at federal, state and local levels.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Public banks don&#8217;t have to earn profits. They&#8217;re not beholden to Wall Street or shareholders. They&#8217;re self-sustaining. They can lend for their own needs. They can do it for businesses, farmers and consumers.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">The more loans roll over, the more debt-free money is created. If used productively for growth, it&#8217;s virtually inflation-free. As long as new money produces goods and services, price stability follows.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Economies flourish. All boats are lifted. Millions of high-pay\/good benefit jobs can be created. Homes become more affordable. Foreclosures end. So do out-of-control speculation, booms and busts.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Private savings, pensions, and investments become secure. So do Social Security, Medicare and other vital social programs. They can be in perpetuity.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Surpluses replace deficits. Sustained prosperity follows. It&#8217;s not pie in the sky. It happened before. It can happen again.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Good policies achieve good results. Bad ones wreck things for most people. Hard times get harder. Current conditions reflect Exhibit A.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">They didn&#8217;t happen by accident. Bernanke&#8217;s Fed bears full responsibility. Economist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessspectator.com.au\/article\/2014\/1\/21\/economy\/bye-bye-bernanke\"><span style=\"color: #1255cc;\">Steve Keen commented<\/span><\/a> on his legacy.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">&#8220;It certainly won&#8217;t be as he expected,&#8221; said Keen. He&#8217;ll likely &#8220;be blamed for causing the &#8216;Great Recession&#8230;&#8217; &#8220;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">He blamed his predecessors &#8220;for causing the Great Depression.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">&#8220;His finger-pointing doesn&#8217;t get any more blatant than&#8221; praising Milton Friedman on his 90th birthday. It was in 2002.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">&#8220;I would like to say to Milton and Anna (Schwartz): Regarding the Great Depression. You&#8217;re right. We did it. We&#8217;re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won&#8217;t do it again.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">He&#8217;s done it and then some. The worst is yet to come.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">&#8220;(I)f Ben had truly learned from both his analysis of the data and &#8216;Milton and Anna (Schwartz), then you&#8217;d think that surely he would have ensured that the rate of growth of M1&#8221; would never drop &#8220;to or below zero, wouldn&#8217;t you?&#8221;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">That&#8217;s exactly what happened. America&#8217;s money supply is lower than when he became Fed chairman. He has no control over whether banks choose to make loans.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Doing so increases money supply growth. Holding back shrinks it. &#8220;So on Ben&#8217;s own theory of what caused the Great Depression, he could quite easily be found guilty,&#8221; said Keen.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Crisis conditions occurred on his watch. His policies were &#8220;the very things he said the Fed got wrong in the late 1920s.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">He wrote his own legacy. It won&#8217;t change now. He&#8217;s ideologically over-the-top. He&#8217;s responsible for more human wreckage than any of his predecessors.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">He caused epidemic levels of poverty, unemployment and deprivation. He engineered the greatest wealth heist in world history.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">He debauched the dollar. He created multiple market bubbles.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">He created worse crisis conditions than in 1929.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Market analyst Yves Smith calls him Greenspan on steroids. He&#8217;ll be remembered as the economy wrecker of last resort.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">He&#8217;s unapologetic. Debt pyramiding doesn&#8217;t work. Money printing madness reflects grand theft. Accountability isn&#8217;t Bernanke&#8217;s long suit.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">He&#8217;s off to greener pastures. He&#8217;s cashing in for services rendered. He&#8217;ll be well rewarded for enriching Wall Street. Banksters take care of their own.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">His new book is titled &#8220;Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">http:\/\/www.claritypress.com\/LendmanII.html<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;\"><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;\">http:\/\/www.progressiveradionetwork.com\/the-progressive-news-hour<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div><b>Bernanke at Brookings<\/b><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>by Stephen Lendman<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>On January 31, he stepped down as Fed chairman. Janet Yellen replaced him. He&#8217;s entering a new world of million-dollar book deals. He&#8217;ll make $100,000 a pop speeches.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Expect appointments to corporate boards. CEOs value his rainmaking services.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>On February 3, Brookings <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/about\/media-relations\/news-releases\/2014\/0203-bernanke-hutchins-center\"><span>headlined<\/span><\/a> &#8220;Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to Join Economic Studies at Brookings.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He&#8217;s a &#8220;Distinguished Fellow in Residence.&#8221; He&#8217;s affiliated with the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy (HCFMP). On January 16, Brookings launched it.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Its board of trustees vice chair Glenn Hutchins contributed $10 million in seed money. He co-founded the multi-billion dollar private equity firm Silver Lake Partners. Guess what type policies HCFMP will endorse.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;We are proud to welcome chairman Bernanke into the Brookings family,&#8221; said president Strobe Talbot. He&#8217;s Clinton&#8217;s former deputy secretary of state. He was directly involved in some of his worst policies.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Brookings&#8217; agenda is brazenly imperial. It&#8217;s pro-corporate. It&#8217;s anti-populist. It feigns concern about inequality. It supports government of, by and for privileged elites alone. Expect Bernanke to fit right in.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>His Fed tenure was deplorable. He betrayed the public trust. His record attests to his wickedness.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>His agenda was ruthlessly anti-populist. He did more to thirdworldize America for profit than any of his predecessors.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He handed Wall Street crooks multi-trillions of dollars. He facilitated the greatest wealth transfer in history. He created a protracted Main Street Depression. No end in sight looms.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Noted investor Jeremy Grantham&#8217;s commentaries are refreshing. He cuts to the heart of issues. He pulls no punches doing so.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He titled an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scribd.com\/doc\/40187158\/Grantham-October\"><span>earlier commentary<\/span><\/a> &#8220;Night of the Living Fed: Something Unbelievably Terrifying.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He highlighted &#8220;runaway commodities, (zombi) banks back to life, homes destroyed, families evicted, and currency wars.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He blamed Bernanke. &#8220;If I were a benevolent dictator,&#8221; he said, he&#8217;d limit the Fed solely to maintaining price stability.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He&#8217;d make sure the economy got enough liquidity to function normally. He&#8217;s &#8220;force (the Fed) to swear off manipulating asset prices through artificially low rates and asymmetric promises.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He referred to the Greenspan\/Bernanke put. He&#8217;d eliminate &#8220;immoral hazard.&#8221; It&#8217;s immoral behavior. It&#8217;s outsized excess. It&#8217;s grand theft.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It bails out large investors. Doing so encourages imprudent risks. Winning is guaranteed. Regulatory checks are absent. Anything goes is policy.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Things persist &#8220;under the guise of &#8216;saving the system,&#8217; &#8221; said Grantham. Money manipulators have things their way.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Fed chairmen are tools of monied interests. They know who butters their bread. They return favors manyfold. Greenspan did from August 1987 through January 2006.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Bernanke exceeded his worst policies. He did so from February 1, 2006 through January 31, 2014.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Both chairmen qualify as maestros of misery. They created bubble financial conditions. America&#8217;s 1% profited hugely. They did so at the expense of most others.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Virtually all global assets are overpriced. Bubble conditions exist. Grantham compared them to Einstein&#8217;s definition of insanity. The madness of repeating the same mistakes. Expecting a different outcome doesn&#8217;t work.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Last spring, Grantham compared Fed policy to beating a donkey. He called it the 1% growing economy. &#8220;(H)e keeps beating it until it either turns into a horse or drops dead from too much beating,&#8221; said Grantham.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;We&#8217;ve been conned.&#8221; We&#8217;re manipulated to believe &#8220;debt is everything.&#8221; In 1982, it was one-and-a-quarter times GDP.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It&#8217;s nearly triple that amount now. It has nothing to do with long-term growth. It&#8217;s an &#8220;accounting world. It&#8217;s paper,&#8221; said Grantham.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;The real world is the quantity and quality of your people, and the quality and quantity of capital spending.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;Are you building new machines? Are you being inventive?&#8221; Are you educating a new generation properly?<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;We&#8217;re in this death grip that only paper things matter.&#8221; Vital issues go unaddressed. Wealth keeps getting transferred &#8220;from the poor to the rich.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Interest rates are outrageously now. They&#8217;re practically zero. Speculators benefit. Ordinary people lose out.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Retirees are deprived of vital income. Financial interests are served at the expense of the real economy.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>During his tenure as Fed chairman, Bernanke handed speculators over $20 trillion. Most was practically interest free. They took full advantage.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Money printing madness defines Fed policy. Helicopter Ben dropped none on Main Street. In 2002, his helicopter money speech said:<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;The US government has a technology, called a printing press (today its electronic equivalent).&#8221;&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It &#8220;allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Most circulating money is bank-generated credit. It&#8217;s created out of thin air. It&#8217;s when banks extend loans.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>When old ones are repaid faster than new ones, money supply shrinks. QE is supposed to reverse things.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Things haven&#8217;t worked out this way. Key is where Fed money goes. Dropping it on Main Street stimulates economic growth.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Handing it to Wall Street crooks parks it in their reserve accounts. It&#8217;s not used for lending.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Former Reagan budget director David Stockman said it &#8220;stayed trapped in the canyons of Wall Street.&#8221; He called it &#8220;high grade monetary heroin.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It&#8217;s &#8220;kill(ing) the patient.&#8221; It&#8217;s &#8220;legalized bank robbery.&#8221; It&#8217;s recklessly out-of-control.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It &#8220;inflate(d) yet another unsustainable bubble.&#8221; They all burst. No exceptions. This time isn&#8217;t different.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Money printing madness and bailouts reflect &#8220;the single most shameful chapter in American financial history,&#8221; said Stockman.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Bernanke operated by Abraham Maslow&#8217;s maxim. &#8220;(I)f the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail,&#8221; he said.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>QE continues. It&#8217;s slowing. Yellen can rev it up full bore any time. It&#8217;s self-defeating. It contracts the money supply. It&#8217;s by sucking up collateral needed to create credit.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It constrains economic growth. It doesn&#8217;t create jobs. It solely benefits Wall Street. Banksters made out like bandits. Speculators profited hugely. They did so at the expense of Main Street.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Financial warfare rages. America and other societies are affected. Ordinary people are hurt most. Hard times keep getting harder.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>QE works when used constructively. Money injected responsibly into the economy creates growth. It creates jobs. When people have money they spend it.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>A virtuous cycle of prosperity follows. America once was sustainably prosperous. Today it&rsquo;s in decline. It&#8217;s heading for third world status. It&#8217;s more kleptocracy than democracy.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Money power in private hands assures trouble. Ellen Brown explained more. Up to 40% of &#8220;everything we buy goes (for) interest.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It goes to &#8220;bankers, financiers and bondholders.&#8221; A third or more of national wealth shifts from Main Street to Wall Street.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Complicit politicians let it happen. They do so for generous benefits derived. Greed is the national pastime. So is looting America for profit.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Most people think paying bills and credit card charges on time avoids interest charges. Not so, says Brown.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;Tradesmen, suppliers, wholesalers and retailers all along the chain of production rely on credit to pay their bills.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Their costs pass on to consumers. Unwittingly they pay. Ordinary people make wealthy ones richer. They do so at their own expense. What better argument for public banking than that.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Borrowing from public banks eliminates or greatly reduces interest rate charges. It works at federal, state and local levels.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Public banks don&#8217;t have to earn profits. They&#8217;re not beholden to Wall Street or shareholders. They&#8217;re self-sustaining. They can lend for their own needs. They can do it for businesses, farmers and consumers.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The more loans roll over, the more debt-free money is created. If used productively for growth, it&#8217;s virtually inflation-free. As long as new money produces goods and services, price stability follows.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Economies flourish. All boats are lifted. Millions of high-pay\/good benefit jobs can be created. Homes become more affordable. Foreclosures end. So do out-of-control speculation, booms and busts.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Private savings, pensions, and investments become secure. So do Social Security, Medicare and other vital social programs. They can be in perpetuity.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Surpluses replace deficits. Sustained prosperity follows. It&#8217;s not pie in the sky. It happened before. It can happen again.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Good policies achieve good results. Bad ones wreck things for most people. Hard times get harder. Current conditions reflect Exhibit A.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>They didn&#8217;t happen by accident. Bernanke&#8217;s Fed bears full responsibility. Economist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessspectator.com.au\/article\/2014\/1\/21\/economy\/bye-bye-bernanke\"><span>Steve Keen commented<\/span><\/a> on his legacy.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;It certainly won&#8217;t be as he expected,&#8221; said Keen. He&#8217;ll likely &#8220;be blamed for causing the &#8216;Great Recession&#8230;&#8217; &#8220;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He blamed his predecessors &#8220;for causing the Great Depression.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;His finger-pointing doesn&#8217;t get any more blatant than&#8221; praising Milton Friedman on his 90th birthday. It was in 2002.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;I would like to say to Milton and Anna (Schwartz): Regarding the Great Depression. You&#8217;re right. We did it. We&#8217;re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won&#8217;t do it again.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He&#8217;s done it and then some. The worst is yet to come.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;(I)f Ben had truly learned from both his analysis of the data and &#8216;Milton and Anna (Schwartz), then you&#8217;d think that surely he would have ensured that the rate of growth of M1&#8221; would never drop &#8220;to or below zero, wouldn&#8217;t you?&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>That&#8217;s exactly what happened. America&#8217;s money supply is lower than when he became Fed chairman. He has no control over whether banks choose to make loans.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Doing so increases money supply growth. Holding back shrinks it. &#8220;So on Ben&#8217;s own theory of what caused the Great Depression, he could quite easily be found guilty,&#8221; said Keen.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Crisis conditions occurred on his watch. His policies were &#8220;the very things he said the Fed got wrong in the late 1920s.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He wrote his own legacy. It won&#8217;t change now. He&#8217;s ideologically over-the-top. He&#8217;s responsible for more human wreckage than any of his predecessors.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He caused epidemic levels of poverty, unemployment and deprivation. He engineered the greatest wealth heist in world history.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He debauched the dollar. He created multiple market bubbles.<\/div>\n<div>He created worse crisis conditions than in 1929.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Market analyst Yves Smith calls him Greenspan on steroids. He&#8217;ll be remembered as the economy wrecker of last resort.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He&#8217;s unapologetic. Debt pyramiding doesn&#8217;t work. Money printing madness reflects grand theft. Accountability isn&#8217;t Bernanke&#8217;s long suit.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He&#8217;s off to greener pastures. He&#8217;s cashing in for services rendered. He&#8217;ll be well rewarded for enriching Wall Street. Banksters take care of their own.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>His new book is titled &#8220;Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>http:\/\/www.claritypress.com\/LendmanII.html<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div>http:\/\/www.progressiveradionetwork.com\/the-progressive-news-hour<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1217,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-107508","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-editorials"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}