Category Archives: Money

On November 27, Bloomberg News reported the results of its successful case to force the Fed to reveal the lending details of its 2008–09 bank bailout. In 29,000 pages of documents, the Fed revealed that by March 2009, it had committed $7.77 trillion in below-market loans and guarantees to rescuing the financial system; and that these nearly interest-free loans came without strings attached. The Fed insisted that the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, but the banks reaped a $13 billion windfall in profits; and “details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.” Continue reading →

Feeling angry about being betrayed by a corrupt government owned by rich and corporate elites has driven the Occupy Wall Street movement. Emphasizing how the top one percent has prospered incredibly while the bottom 99 percent have been screwed royally is supported by countless data. New data show this is a global phenomenon and that even in the worst of economic times the wealthiest make out like the bandits they are, and there are a lot more of them than one percent. Continue reading →

Stripped from the fancy (and mystifying) jargon, quantitative easing (QE) simply means increasing the quantity of money supply, or easing credit conditions—in the hope of stimulating the stagnant economy. This is usually done by having central banks inject a pre-determined quantity of money into the coffers of commercial banks in return for the purchase of their financial assets, which consist largely of government bonds. Although it is typically done electronically, or on paper, its practical effect is the same as printing money. Continue reading →

Hey, let’s go into McGlinchey’s, the cheapest bar in Center City. When I first entered this place in 1982, I was only 18, so to make myself look somewhat legal, I wore an old man jacket, bought at a thrift store for 2 bucks. Inside, I was thrilled to discover that a draft of Rolling Rock was only 50 cents, and a hotdog 25. Now they are $1.25 and 75 cents, respectively. This low life bar, my kind, is still dirt cheap, but that’s inflation for you. Continue reading →

If Russian prime minister Putin’s recent description of America as “a parasite on the world” was reported by the US media, little doubt but that most Americans were infuriated. We are the virtuous people. Without us good guys to police the world there would be mayhem and wars everywhere, not merely the ones we started in the Middle East, Asia, and North Africa. Without the American white hats people everywhere would be starving and dying from natural disasters. It is us chosen ones who provide the rescue operations and good deeds. How dare the former KGB monster slander our country! Continue reading →

The game of Russian roulette being played with the U.S. federal debt has been called a “grotesque political carnival” and political blackmail. Continue reading →

Democrats and Republicans in Washington are emitting much sound and fury on the issue of federal debt and a balanced budget. What they won’t be telling us is that we could have it all: a balanced budget, no national debt, full employment, greatly reduced income taxes and expanded social programs. How this is even remotely possible will never be addressed by our two corporate political parties or the U.S. corporate stream media. Continue reading →

On June 30, QE2 ended with a whimper. The Fed’s second round of “quantitative easing” involved $600 billion created with a computer keystroke for the purchase of long-term government bonds. But the government never actually got the money, which went straight into the reserve accounts of banks, where it still sits today. Worse, it went into the reserve accounts of FOREIGN banks, on which the Federal Reserve is now paying 0.25 percent interest. Continue reading →

Washington, DC, is a Potemkin village of alabaster and marble where the perpetually stalled and broken escalators of the city’s subway system are a perfect metaphor for the government’s inability to generate positive, upward movement. Yet with all the calumnies that are committed on an hourly basis behind the facade of our nation’s capitol, what had local media there outraged a few days ago? Lemonade. Continue reading →

The war between fiat paper money and precious metals continues as the price of gold keeps going through the roof and the US paper debt-currency submerges. Continue reading →

A game of Russian roulette is being played with the national debt ceiling. Fire the wrong chamber of the gun, and the result could be the second Great Depression. Continue reading →

“Deficit terrorists” are gutting governments and forcing the privatization of public assets, all in the name of “deficit reduction.” But deficits aren’t actually a bad thing. In today’s monetary scheme, in which most money comes from debt, debt and deficits are actually necessary to have a stable money supply. The public debt is the people’s money. Continue reading →

I present herein ‘The Quantum Theory of Money.’ The name is not some silly gimmick; it is meant to illuminate, if I may be so presumptuous. Continue reading →

It was Abraham Lincoln who followed his Constitutional right to coin a US currency. President Lincoln created US Greenbacks from 1862–1871, printed by the US mint, delivered to the US Treasury to conduct and pay off the Civil War debt. Yet, after his tragic (if not related) assassination, the country returned and departed again from private banking systems. Continue reading →

The banks are back! They’re paying out bonuses and raking in profits, we hear. But just how did they bounce back so fast? Continue reading →

The late, great American historian Howard Zinn, as professor emeritus in Boston University’s History Department, said in January 2001, “For progressive movements, the future does not lie with electoral politics. It lies in street warfare—protest movements and demonstrations, civil disobedience, strikes and boycotts using all of the power of consumers and workers have in direct action against the government and corporations.” Continue reading →