When Professor Friedman Opened Pandora’s Box: Open Market Operations
By David Stockman: At the end of the day, Friedman jettisoned the gold standard for a
remarkable statist reason. Just as Keynes had been, he was afflicted
with the
economist’s ambition to prescribe the route to higher national income
and prosperity and the intervention tools and recipes that would deliver
it. The only
difference was that Keynes was originally and primarily a fiscalist,
whereas Friedman had seized upon open market operations by the central
bank as the
route to optimum aggregate demand and national income.
There were massive and multiple ironies in that stance. It put the
central bank in the proactive and morally sanctioned business of buying
the government’s
debt in the conduct of its open market operations. Friedman said, of
course, that the FOMC should buy bonds and bills at a rate no greater
than 3 percent
per annum, but that limit was a thin reed.
Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss the latest peek-a-boo accounting
fashion trends looking great matched with a missold swap or wrapped in
an accidental misplacement of segregated client funds. If your name is
Jane Tacky Toe Polish, however, do not try the latest in financial fraud
trends as you'll be sent to prison for a long time. In the second half,
Max talks to Francine McKenna of TheAuditors.com about the Bernie
Madoff of munis and the cooked bailout books at Anglo-Irish bank.
Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, speaks with Laurette Lynn
from Unplugged Mom about the effects of his cancer diagnosis and
treatment, including the relief from the burden of inconsequential
worries, the state usurpation of parenthood and conditioning.
By Martin Armstrong:
QUESTION: Why do banks seem to always fail?
ANSWER: The
business model is inherently flawed. They borrow short-term on demand
and lend long-term. They take your demand deposits in your checking
account and lend for mortgages out 30 years or speculate with your money
like M.F. Global who Obama protected proving my point – Democrats &
Republicans are the same. They make noize on the social issues only –
but when it comes to money, they smile with their hand out for crumbs
from the bankers.
There is ALWAYS a bank failure because the business
model is simply unsound. The way to correct the problem is simple.
Long-term lending must be matched ONLY with term
deposits – never demand deposits. I have advised banks as well as been
on the board of a bank. So I have been there, seen it all, and
understand it clearly.
The real problem is that the bankers sell the government debt and
threaten them that if they do not bail them out every time they lose
money, government goes down. Total blackmail. That has to STOP.
AJ: Wesley Clark says Americans love the surveillance state as we learn a
WikiLeaks volunteer was a paid FBI informant and a FOIA request show
that the FBI had plans to kill Occupy leaders with sniper rifles. Source
By Richard Cottrell: Points of detail are important.
Edward Snowden
is not an NSA sub contractor. He worked for the ‘consultancy’ Booz
Allen Hamilton which is a shop front for the CIA, not the NSA. First
warning.
Second. None of the ‘secrets’ he revealed are even vaguely secret,
since the information concerning NSA snooping on foreign powers was
already in the public realm, many times over. The problem is that
newspapers and journalists intoxicate themselves with spy stories and
rarely bother to sift through all the parallel information. Takes too
long.
Third. His hop, skip and jump activities were clearly well planned in
advance. Who, exactly, set up the fake exit to Cuba story, which put a
truckload of journalists on the wrong (teetotal) flight? Snowden? Pull
the other one. He had that sort of power over Aeroflot? Who put the
story around anyway? Snowden again? Hey this guy was wasted working for
the CIA, he should have been in PR.
Fourth. He got on a plane to Russia without a visa. I have been to
Russia many, many times and I can tell you that is an impossible feat
without real inside connections.
PressTV: They are supposed to be the ones in charge of upholding Britain's law
and order but the men and women of police forces across the
country are not averse to breaking the rules themselves. A freedom of
information request revealed a shocking rise in the number of officers
disciplined for misconduct. Source
SubMan USN: Are there any similarities between Orwellian societies and feminism?
By Frank Hollenbeck: When it comes to deflation, mainstream economics becomes not the science
of common sense, but the science of nonsense. Most economists today are
quick to
say, “a little inflation is a good thing,” and they fear deflation. Of
course, in their personal lives, these same economists hunt the
newspapers for the
latest sales.
The person who epitomizes this fear of deflation best is Ben Bernanke,
chairman of the Federal Reserve. His interpretation of the Great
Depression has
greatly biased his view against deflation. It is true that the Great
Depression and deflation went hand in hand in some countries; but, we
must be careful
to distinguish between association and causation, and to correctly
assess the direction of causation. A recent study by Atkeson and Kehoe
spanning a period
of 180 years for 17 countres found no relationship between deflation and
depressions. The study actually found a greater number of episodes of
depression
with inflation than with deflation. Over this period, 65 out of 73
deflation episodes had no depression, and 21 out of 29 depressions had
no deflation.
By Michael Krieger: A very disturbing pattern is becoming evident all across the nation. For a country that has 5% of the world’s population yet 25% of the entire planet’s prisoners,
we sure do seem to eager to bump that figure up even higher. My guess
is the trend has a lot to do with the private prison system in the
country, which means higher levels of incarceration equals higher
profits. I think it also has to do with a troubling move toward
criminalizing speech and an attack on the First Amendment generally.
This particular case occurred in Austin, Texas and nineteen year old
Justin Carter now faces eight years in jail for an insensitive joke on
Facebook. Thanks to the site Texas Prison Bid’ness, we can gain some perspective on the private prison industry in the Lone Star State:
Now, here’s the story from KHOU in Houston:
Justin Carter was 18 back in February when an online video game “League of Legends” took an ugly turn on Facebook.
When Professor Friedman Opened Pandora’s Box: Open Market Operations
