Tuesday, August 10, 2010

The Fed Vows To Print More Money

Oh, goodie - more free money for the banksters:

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve acknowledged on Tuesday that its confidence in the economic recovery had dimmed, and announced that it would use the proceeds from its huge mortgage-bond portfolio to buy long-term Treasury securities.

Saying it would buy relatively modest amounts of government debt, analysts said the Fed signaled that it had no intention to back away from steps that it took, starting in 2007, to prop up the financial and housing markets. While the central bank held off on taking more aggressive steps, like a new, huge round of asset purchases, it left open the possibility that additional easing of monetary policy could take place in the fall if the recovery were to continue to weaken.

The Fed’s new stance marked the completion of a turnabout from a few months ago, when officials were discussing when and how to eventually raise interest rates and gradually shrink the $2.3 trillion balance sheet the Fed amassed through its response to the 2008 financial crisis.

In buying new Treasury securities to the tune of about $10 billion a month — a small fraction of the roughly $700 billion in Treasury debt sitting on the Fed’s balance sheet — the Fed will not let the balance sheet shrink for the time being.

More than anything, the announcement was a signal to the markets that the Fed was concerned about the pace of the recovery, and had shifted from its more optimistic assessment earlier this year, that economic growth was sufficiently strong to begin thinking about how to gradually return to normal monetary policy.


It would be nice if the Uncle Ben and the rest of his merry men and women gave a shit about, you know, jobs.

Actually it would be nice if President Accountability gave a shit about the same thing.

But so long as the banksters are happy, Uncle Ben and the FOMC are happy.

And so long as the ed deform movement is happy and Uncle Arme has $4.3 billion in walking around money to fire teachers, close schools and hire all sorts of people who don't know the first thing about education or school turnaround, President Accountability is happy.

And really, other than those things, what else matters?

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