I’ve finally had the time to thoroughly study Bernanke’s entire Press Club speech, his appearance before Representative Paul Ryan’s House Budget Committee and bulk of the recently released 2005 FOMC minutes.
The conclusion I have drawn from all this data is that the captain of our economy, Ben Bernanke, is either an economic imbecile or a financial terrorist. Through evil intent, or sheer stupidity, the outcome remains unchanged. The bottom-line: He has hijacked our economy flight and changed our destination. Bernanke is about to crash Flight 666 and all 308 million of us sitting helplessly in the passenger cabin into Zimbabwe’s airport known as Hell’s Hyperinflation Field.
There is only one way we can avert this disaster, but time is running out, we are passing that critical fuel point - the point where there is not enough fuel to safely divert. Therefore it doesn’t look likely that we will be landing anywhere nice on our journey to the impoverished southern continent of Africa.
In the summer of 2005 CNBS asked Bernanke about the possibility of a housing bubble. His exact words were “I guess I don’t agree with your premise.” Three short years later the biggest bubble in economic history (the housing bubble) exploded and nearly took down the entire global economy.
You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist or an economist to realize that adding 7-10 million --- once unqualified buyers --- a year to a market with limited inventory and then reseting their interest rates would spell anything but HOUSING BUBBLE followed by an ECONOMIC HIROSHIMA. Especially sincethe only thing that changed them from “unqualified” to “suddenly qualified” was the banks ability to off (read: sell/get rid of) their mortgages to some dimwit who considered himself or herself to be an “investor”.
Since 6 out of 10 jobs were housing related theguaranteed pop created systemic risk. A lot of this trash was falsely rated as AAA, it was sold to “investors,” entire countries, states, local municipalities and pension funds. This of course greatly exacerbated the mess. The counterparty insurance risk caused by underfunded or unfunded insurance parties [AIG and alike firms] added to the quagmire.
The Fed knew about the housing bubble in 2005, it is buried in the release of 2005 FOMC minutes. They were laughing about it.
Bernanke’s flight crew was literally laughing at the biggest economic disaster in history. NOT the hallmark of good leadership.
Apparently they didn’t realize that cockpit voice recorder was capturing this. “I came across a new television series on the Discovery Channel entitled “Flip That House.” [Laughter] As far as I could tell, the gist of the show was that with some spackling, a few strategically placed azaleas, and access to a bank, you too could tap into the great real estate wealth machine. It was enough to put even the most ardent believer in market efficiency into existential crisis.” [Laughter]
On February 3, 2011, Bernanke spoke and took questions at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. He was asked: “Do you believe that any of the growing political unrest around the world, especially in Tunisia and Egypt is linked to higher food prices which the questioner says result from the Fed’s large scale asset purchases [Quantitative Easing]?”
Bernanke’s answer? “I’m not sure I accept the premise of the first half of the question!”
Nice flying Captain @$$face.
The simple, historically proven, translation for Ben Bernanke’s “I guess I don’t agree with your premise,” and, or, “I’m not sure I accept your premise” is this: ‘It’s an effing certainty.’ ‘Bank on it.’ ‘Bet on it.’ ‘It [hyperinflation as the result of a currency I made totally worthless by monetizing debt] will happen.’
‘Ladies and gentleman, from the flight deck this is your captain Ben Nagasaki Bernanke - we will be crashing - I mean landing - in Zimbabwe shortly.’ [Sounds of every computer generated audible cockpit warning horn can be heard in the background during this entire announcement. If you look closely under the cockpit door you will notice the flashing warning lights - the instrument panel is lit up like a yellow and red christmas tree.] Bernanke is ignoring all this, focused on his ivory tower skewed fuzzy statistics or is assinine belief that he can secretly debase half of our 128 trillion dollar debt away with worthless dollars.
If you are unfamiliar with how the government tweaks data, if you don’t know what Hedonics, weighting, imputations are, or you haven’t heard of a “deflator” you should take a moment to watch Dr. Chris Martenson’s video titled “Fuzzy Numbers.”
And Chris’s short chapter on inflation while you are at it.
Chris is a brainiac who pulled the economy apart and explained it so even an economically challenged fourth grader could “get it”. Best yet he fully grasps the fact that a population pushing 7 billion and finite resources, resources that our economy is predicated upon is all tied together.
The entire point of this missive is this:
What you should hear when you hear the Bernanke uses the old “I’m not sure I accept the premise of the first half of the question!” --- is that it is either time to take action now or crap your pants later.
My gold and silver life vest is donned, my food ration (a freezer with a dead cow in it), and the security I need to protect my family when we enter a nationwide Katrina is there for me to cling to. I for one don’t want to subject my family to some Superdome camp where rape and drugs are rampant because our collective leadership can’t manage their way out of a Fiat currency crisis. Fiat currency crises are regular events, the average unbacked paper (Fiat) currency lasts 39 years, ours is 40 years off the gold standard. There have been 3,800 Fiat currencies that have failed. Not one has ever lasted.
In other words - this should be a big surprise to NO ONE!
