Saturday, August 14, 2021

DESTROYING AMERICA - 50 YEARS OF JOE BIDEN'S CORRUPTION CATCHES UP WITH AMERICA

YOU CAN BET THE BIDEN, PELOSI, SCHUMER INFRASTRUCTURE HOAX WILL NOT ONLY HAND AMNESTY TO 50 MILLION MEXICAN FLAG WAVERS BUT WILL RICHLY REWARD THEIR CRONIES ON WALL STREET.

Chris Hedges | WHY The Democrats Are HOPELESS!





The Four Horsemen of the Biden Apocalypse

In the waning days of the Trump administration, the country was showing signs of economic improvement, people were feeling more confident about battling COVID, and the border was relatively secure as the wall was finally being constructed.

What a difference seven months can make.  It has been a horrific 207 days since President Joe Biden and his radical administration were unleashed on the country.

In effect, a political apocalypse is approaching.  In the New Testament Book of Revelation, the four horsemen of the apocalypse are revealed to be "Conquest, War, Famine, and Death."  In the Old Testament Book of Ezekiel, the four horsemen are referred to as "sword, famine, wild beasts, and plague."

In the era of Joe Biden, the four horsemen of our political apocalypse are the border invasion, the economic catastrophe, the assault on our families, and the use of the COVID plague to eliminate our constitutional rights.

1. Invasion.  Biden inherited a secure border and immediately decided to destroy the progress of President Donald Trump and create an unmitigated disaster for Americans.  The border wall was foolishly stopped, the policy of "catch and release" was reinstituted, the "Remain in Mexico" policy was ended, and illegal aliens were given an invitation to enter the United States.

As a result, the flood of illegal aliens has been unprecedented.  The number of new apprehensions is increasing each month at the border, reaching the highest level in 25 years in July.  Over 210,000 illegal aliens were apprehended on the southern border last month.  Simultaneously, an untold number of people have been entering the country without detection.  Coupled with ongoing legal immigration efforts, the United States of America is being radically and quickly transformed.

These illegal aliens are not being tested for COVID, are not being vaccinated, and are being sent all over the country.  This is spreading the virus across the country while cynically changing the demographics of many "red" states.  Although most citizens living in these areas are opposed to this resettlement, they have been powerless to stop it.

2. Catastrophe.  Upon entering office, Biden should have continued Trump-era economic policies that were working.  Instead, he stopped the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and displacing thousands of workers from their jobs.  Biden also placed a moratorium on the issuance of new oil and gas drilling leases on federal territory, both onshore and offshore.

As a result, America is transitioning from being energy independent for the first time in decades, under President Trump, to being energy-dependent once again.  Ironically, Biden is now asking OPEC members to increase their oil production.

Biden has also happily supported radical legislation in Congress that will add to the national debt while spending trillions of dollars that will create severe inflationary woes in our county.  During the Biden administration, prices on a wide range of items such as gasoline, lumber, and groceries are rapidly escalating.  This has created the sharpest rise in inflation in 20 years.

If it passes in the U.S. House of Representatives, the new $1.2-trillion "infrastructure" bill that just was approved in the U.S. Senate will be an economic disaster.  It includes very little real infrastructure, but it does include tax increases, at least $256 billion in additional federal debt that will exacerbate inflationary pressures, and a grab bag of liberal proposals.  The bill advocates zero-emission vehicles, combats "racist" highways, and for good measure uses the word "equity" 64 times.

It sets the stage for an even bigger monstrosity, the "human infrastructure" bill that will cost over $3.5 trillion.  It is being advertised as a de facto "Green New Deal" that will include a staggering number of climate change initiatives.  The economic chaos that such a bill will institute is mind-boggling to contemplate.

3. Assault.  Across America, our cities are on fire as crime is exploding.  An increasing number of innocent Americans are being victimized each day.  Incredibly, liberal politicians have used the opportunity to demand the defunding of police departments.  This has only increased the number of police officers resigning and retiring.  As a result, police departments are understaffed, and recruitment is becoming extremely difficult in urban areas that are viewed as being anti-police.

The answer, according to Biden and the Democrats, is always more gun control and never more criminal control.

Citizens are unsafe on the streets of our cities, and our children are unsafe in our public-school classrooms.  Families are facing hostile environments in schools as teachers are using Critical Race Theory to educate students about American history.  Instead of celebrating the greatness of our founding documents and the uniqueness of our system of government, teachers are demonizing our Founding Fathers and casting blame on white Americans for racism and unfair treatment of minorities.  In many schools, students are being separated by race, and white students are being made to feel guilty for the color of their skin.  While parents are expressing their anger, too many school boards remain committed to the divisive curriculum.

4. Plague.  Schools are also one of the focal points of the insane battle over how to deal with the COVID pandemic.  Teacher unions and Biden officials are touting masks in classrooms, while a growing number of parents are fighting this nonsense at school board meetings across the country.

The Biden administration is not stopping at mask mandates but is considering COVID vaccine requirements for all Americans.  The Defense Department will be requiring vaccines for all the members of the respective branches.  This obligation will be enforced starting in mid-September.

The president has also mandated vaccinations for members of the United States Department of Veterans' Affairs.  Surely other government agencies will face similar mandates in the foreseeable future.

Whenever he addresses the media, Biden pushes vaccinations on the public.  He implies that unvaccinated Americans are not only unpatriotic but also contributing to the deaths of their fellow citizens.  In addition, the president is actively encouraging businesses to implement vaccine mandates at their workplaces.

All these initiatives are quite disturbing, as Americans should have medical privacy and the right to make their own health decisions.  In a "free" country, a citizen should not be forced to inject any sort of experimental vaccine into his body.  Americans should have the freedom to say "no," without any negative repercussions.  

Individually, each of the four horsemen of the Biden apocalypse is extremely worrisome.  Unfortunately, Americans are facing all four of them simultaneously.

In addition, we must deal with a mentally incompetent president; a biased press; social media sites that censor conservatives; and a "woke" corporate, entertainment, and Big Technology culture that are promoting these dangerous trends in our country.

It is crunch time for America, and "We the People" must stand up to protect our rights, our families, and our futures.  This Biden agenda must be stopped immediately.  Otherwise, we can say goodbye to America and say hello to Venezuela. 

Jeff Crouere is a native New Orleanian.  His award-winning program, Ringside Politics, airs nationally on Real America's Voice Network, AmericasVoice.News weekdays at 7 A.M. C.T. and from 7 to 11 A.M. weekdays on WGSO 990-AM & Wgso.com.  He is a political columnist, the author of America's Last Chance, and provides regular commentaries on the Jeff Crouere YouTube channel and on Crouere.net.  For more information, email him at jeff@ringsidepolitics.com.

Image: Gage Skidmore via FlickrCC BY-SA 2.0.


Six months of the Biden administration—A balance sheet

Six months ago, Joseph Biden was inaugurated president of the United States, under conditions of unprecedented crisis of US capitalism and the entire social and political order.

President Joe Biden speaks about updated guidance on mask mandates, in the Rose Garden of the White House, Thursday, May 13, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

His predecessor, Donald Trump, did not attend the ceremony, signaling his refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election. Only two weeks before, on January 6, Trump’s supporters had stormed the Capitol and temporarily halted the congressional certification of state electoral votes. The aim of the attempted coup was to stop the transfer of power and establish a personalist dictatorship. In the words of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, it was Trump’s “Reichstag moment.”

When Biden took office, 400,000 people were dead from the COVID-19 pandemic, while millions were unemployed. Just months earlier, every city, town, and village in America had seen protests in opposition to police violence.

Biden marked the six-month anniversary with brief remarks presenting American society in glowing terms. “For all those predictions of doom and gloom six months in, here’s where things stand,” he said. “Record growth, record job creation, workers getting hard-earned breaks.” He added, “Put simply: Our economy is on the move, and we have COVID-19 on the run.”

Summing up his prognosis, the US president proclaimed: “It turns out capitalism is alive and very well.” The truth is that the policies of the Biden administration have entirely failed to resolve the social crisis in America and they cannot, because they are based on the framework of American capitalism.

The pandemic, far from being “on the run,” is undergoing a new resurgence. Since Biden took office, an additional 225,000 people have died from the pandemic. All indications are that by the winter, with the new surge accompanying the spread of the Delta variant, the death toll under Biden will have exceeded that under Trump.

The policies of the Biden administration have been driven by the interests of Wall Street and the super-rich. This is why, despite occasional criticisms of Trump’s callous and anti-scientific response to the coronavirus pandemic, Biden has pursued the same policy of restoring corporate profit-making by forcing workers back to work and children back to school as quickly as possible, regardless of the dangers to their lives and health.

Trump’s response to the economic depression that accompanied the onset of the pandemic was to pour trillions into bolstering the banks, hedge funds and corporations, with bipartisan bills like the CARES Act. Biden pursues essentially the same policy, although with less support from the Republicans than the Democrats gave Trump. He boasts of success on the economic front, although seven million fewer workers have jobs today than before the pandemic began, and millions face wage cuts, poverty, eviction and foreclosure.

Only in foreign policy is there a significant shift from Trump to Biden, and this in tactics only, not strategy. Biden has placed more emphasis on the US utilization of NATO and the “Quad,” a de facto alliance with Japan, Australia and India. Significant sections of the military-intelligence apparatus backed Biden against Trump because they sought a more effective mobilization of US power against Russia and China.

And if Biden’s statement that “capitalism is alive and very well” were true, it begs the question: Why is there a mounting fascist threat to American democracy?

In the six months since Biden’s inauguration, the Republican Party has maintained its intransigent opposition to any serious investigation into the events of January 6. Half-hearted Democratic proposals, first for an “independent” bipartisan commission to investigate the attack, then for a bipartisan congressional investigation, have been blocked outright or endlessly delayed.

Meanwhile, evidence continues to emerge of the central role played by Trump and his allies in Congress in seeking to carry out a political coup d’état to overturn the results of the election and maintain himself in office. But neither Trump nor his accomplices have even been questioned, let alone tried, convicted and jailed.

Instead, Trump has renewed his agitation against the election, seeking to transform the Republican Party into an openly fascistic movement subordinated to his personal authority. And his supporters in the Republican Party are using their control of state legislatures to enact unprecedented and sweeping attacks on the right to vote.

Biden himself acknowledged something of the reality of the crisis of American capitalism in a speech last week in Philadelphia, when he declared “We are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.” But he offered no way forward, except to appeal to “my Republican friends in the Congress, states and cities and counties to stand up” against this assault—although they are the very ones carrying it out.

In an effort to prop up illusions in the Democratic Party, the representatives of its “left” wing, portray Biden’s policies in extravagant terms. Last week Senator Bernie Sanders claimed that Biden’s “reconciliation” bill on social spending amounted to “the most consequential piece of legislation for working families since the 1930s.” Or, like Bhaskar Sunkara of Jacobin, affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, they express disappointment in what has been achieved so far, but express the hope that “Biden has shown a willingness to think big,” and that additional pressure should be brought to bear on congressional Democrats.

For his part, Biden uses every possible occasion to make clear he has no intention of implementing any measures that challenge the interests of the financial oligarchy, declaring last weekend, “Communism is a failed system, universally failed system. I don’t see socialism as a very useful substitute.”

The truth is that the Biden administration is based on Wall Street and the military, mobilizing behind it sections of the upper middle class through the utilization of identity politics. Well aware of the explosive social conditions developing in America, moreover, the administration supports the union “organization” campaign at Amazon and the PRO Act, to make it easier to install unions at work locations where they otherwise would have difficulty convincing workers to pay dues for the privilege of having their wages and benefits cut.

It is telling that when workers engage in genuine anti-corporate struggles, like the strikes waged by autoworkers against Volvo Trucks in Dublin, Virginia, the supposedly “pro-labor” president falls completely silent. Biden is for the unions, not for the workers, because he correctly sees the unions as an instrument of the US ruling class in policing the working class.

Workers must draw the lessons of six months of the Biden administration. None of the problems confronting the working class, from the disastrous pandemic response to unparalleled levels of social inequality, to the danger of imperialist world war and fascist dictatorship, can be addressed without breaking the grip of the financial oligarchy over every aspect of society.


Exclusive–Kobach: Federal Court Rules Biden Administration’s Termination of the Migrant Protection Protocols Was Illegal

Migrants part of the Remain in Mexico policy wait at the entrance to the Paso del Norte International Bridge on February 28, 2020, in Ciudad Juárez. - Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as the Remain in Mexico Policy was blocked by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth …
PAUL RATJE/AFP via Getty Images
3:12

On Friday evening, a federal district court in Texas handed the Biden Administration a huge defeat.  In so doing, the court also handed the people of the United States a huge victory.

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas ruled in the case of Texas and Missouri v. Biden that the Biden Administration’s termination of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) violated both the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), as well as federal immigration law requiring that certain illegal aliens be detained.

The MPP was one of the most successful elements of the Trump Administration’s immigration policies.  Under the MPP, illegal aliens arriving at the United States border and making claims of asylum were issued a notice to appear at a future immigration court hearing and were ordered to wait in Mexico until the time of the hearing.

As Judge Kacsmaryk noted, requiring such aliens to remain in Mexico was especially important, since 86 percent of the asylum claims between FY 2008 and FY 2019 were rejected.  If the illegal aliens making these bogus claims for asylum are allowed to enter the United States, many simply disappear into the fabric of country and never show up for their hearings.

In terminating MPP, the Biden Administration failed to explain why the program’s success should be ignored—especially when DHS had sung the praises of MPP before Biden took office.  As Judge Kacsmaryk pointed out, “DHS … found that MPP addressed the perverse incentives” created by allowing ‘those with non-meritorious claims … [to] remain in the country for lengthy periods of time.’” 

Judge Kacsmaryk’s decision ordered the Department of Homeland Security to “enforce and implement MPP in good faith until such a time as it has been lawfully rescinded in compliance with the APA and until such a time as the federal government has sufficient detention capacity to detain all aliens subject to mandatory detention under Section [1225] without releasing any aliens because of a lack of detention resources.”

Judge Kacsmaryk’s decision is thorough and well written—making it likely to survive the inevitable appeal by the Biden Administration.  The judge gave DHS seven days to appeal to the Fifth Circuit before his decision takes effect.  But assuming that no emergency stay is granted by the court of appeals, the country may finally see some relief in the relentless immigration crisis at the border.

Kris W. Kobach served as the Secretary of State of Kansas during 2011-2019.  Prior to that, he was a law professor at the University of Missouri—Kansas City School of Law.  An expert in immigration law and policy, he was an informal adviser to President Trump, He is currently representing five Texas sheriffs and an association of ICE officers who are suing the Biden Administration over its violation of laws requiring the deportation of illegal aliens.  His website is kriskobach.com.

Arizona Gov. Ducey Calls for the Resignation of DHS Chief Mayorkas

Homeland Security Security Alejandro Mayorkas listens to a question as he testifies before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on unaccompanied minors at the southern border, Thursday, May 13, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Mandel Ngan/Pool via AP)Homeland Security Security Alejandro Mayorkas listens to a question as …
Mandel Ngan/Pool via AP
5:44

Arizona’s Governor Doug Ducey is calling for the resignation of President Joe Biden’s border chief, one day after border officials admitted they allowed a record 117,000 migrants to enter the United States in August.

Ducey said in a Friday statement:

It is time for Secretary Mayorkas to resign, and for him to be replaced with someone who will tell the American people the truth publicly, stand up to the radical activists inside the Biden-Harris administration and once and for all end the crisis at the southern border. The safety of Arizona and our entire nation depends on it.

Ducey’s press statement referred to leaked August 12 comments from Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s pro-migration secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. Ducey’s press statement began:

Governor Doug Ducey today called for the resignation of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas following explosive leaked comments in which Mayorkas called the border crisis “unsustainable,” said “these numbers cannot continue” and said “if our borders are the first line of defense, we’re going to lose.”

….

Mayorkas also said he was “very well” aware that portions of the border came close to “breaking” recently, according to news reports. “We can’t continue like this, our people in the field can’t continue and our system isn’t built for it,” Mayorkas reportedly said.

The Fox News report only provided fragments of Mayorkas’s August 12 comments to border officers.

However, Mayorkas has repeatedly argued in public that he is trying to control the border crush by legalizing even more migration — even though that policy will allow U.S. employers to hire more low-wage migrants instead of Americans, and will allow landlords to rent more housing to groups of migrants at inflated prices.

At his August 12 press conference, for example, Mayorkas said:

In the coming days, our department will announce that we are making changes and improvements to how we process asylum claims. We continue to rebuild our immigration system to ensure fairness and promote equity.

The reference by the Cuban-born Mayorkas to “fairness and … equity” refers to his pr0gressive policy of putting migrants’ interests ahead of Americans’ concerns. So far, Mayorkas has shown no concern for the many millions of Americans who are worried about their jobs and wages, their rents and schools, their children’s future, and their increasingly threatened political status in their own country.

Ducey’s statement continued:

Today we are seeing the truth of what’s playing out behind closed doors — what the federal government isn’t telling the American people. Chaos, dysfunction and a defeatist attitude has infiltrated the highest level of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. This administration has completely lost control of the border. And with his comments, Secretary Mayorkas demonstrated that he fully understands the catastrophe playing out at the border, and yet he lacks the skill, ability and will to address it adequately.

“The buck must stop somewhere. A defeatist is not what we need when it comes to fighting for border security. It is time for Secretary Mayorkas to resign, and for him to be replaced with someone who will tell the American people the truth publicly, stand up to the radical activists inside the Biden-Harris administration and once and for all end the crisis at the southern border. The safety of Arizona and our entire nation depends on it.

Ducey’s statement also included a record of his efforts to curb migration into his state:

Governor Ducey in April declared a state of emergency and deployed the Arizona National Guard to the state’s southern border. The Governor also convened the State Emergency Council to immediately fund the mission with $2.5 million as well as $200,000 for county sheriffs.

In June, Governor Ducey and Texas Governor Abbott requested all U.S. governors send available law enforcement resources to the border. Governor Ducey joined 19 fellow governors in May calling on President Biden and Vice President Harris to reverse their destructive border policies.

Overall, investors and business coalitions want to import more migrants — even impoverished, ill, aging, or criminal migrants — because the migrants spike consumer sales, boost rental rates, cut wages, minimize management hassles, and so raise profits and stock values. The migrants also serve as clients for Democrat-run welfare agencies, and eventually, as voters for Democratic candidates.

But migration damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, raises their rents, curbs their productivitycontradicts their political preferences, and fractures their open-minded, equality-promoting civic culture. Migration also widens the growing economic gap between interior states and coastal states.

For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates.

This opposition is multiracialcross-sexnon-racistclass-basedbipartisanrationalpersistent, and recognizes the solidarity Americans owe to each other.

The voter opposition to elite-backed economic migration coexists with support for legal immigrants and some sympathy for illegal migrants. But only a minority of Americans — mostly leftists — embrace the many skewed polls and articles pushing the 1950’s corporate “Nation of Immigrants” claim.


“Consumers reported a stunning loss of confidence in the first half of August,” said Richard Curtin, the survey’s chief economist.

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Consumer Sentiment Crashes to Lowest Level in 10 Years

US President Joe Biden speaks next to a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 4xe after delivering remarks on the steps his Administration is taking to strengthen American leadership on clean cars and trucks on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, on August 5, 2021. (Photo by JIM WATSON …
Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
2:29

The confidence of Americans in the economy suffered an unexpected severe collapse in the first weeks of August.

The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment index fell to 70.2 from the end of July score of 81.2, the lowest score since 2011.

“Consumers reported a stunning loss of confidence in the first half of August,” said Richard Curtin, the survey’s chief economist.

The score was lower than the 71.8 hit at the depths of the pandemic lockdown in April 2020.

The expectations component of the survey fell to 65.2 from 79. The current conditions component fell from 84.5 to 77.9.

“Over the past half century, the Sentiment Index has only recorded larger losses in six other surveys, all connected to sudden negative changes in the economy: the only larger declines in the Sentiment Index occurred during the economy’s shutdown in April 2020 (-19.4%) and at the depths of the Great Recession in October 2008 (-18.1%),” Curtin explained in a statement.

The loss of confidence was “widespread across income, age, and education subgroups and observed across all regions. Moreover, the loses covered all aspects of the economy, from personal finances to prospects for the economy, including inflation and unemployment,” Curtin said.

Medium term inflation expectations got worse in August, with the public expecting three percent inflation, above the 2.8 percent in July. One-year inflation expectations came in at 4.6 percent, one-tenth of a point below July’s figure, which was the highest in 12 years.

Curtin blamed the swift decline on the public’s reaction to the Delta variant.

“There is little doubt that the pandemic’s resurgence due to the Delta variant has been met with a mixture of reason and emotion,” Curtin said. “Consumers have correctly reasoned that the economy’s performance will be diminished over the next several months, but the extraordinary surge in negative economic assessments also reflects an emotional response, mainly from dashed hopes that the pandemic would soon end.”

Others pointed at the persistently higher than expected inflation data as the likely cause of the crash in sentiment.


V.P. Biden ’09: ‘We Have to Go Spend Money to Keep From Going Bankrupt’

 By Craig Bannister | August 13, 2021 | 10:09am EDT

 
 
V.P. Joe Biden in 2009

While Republicans warn that President Joe Biden’s multi-trillion government-spending plans will bankrupt the nation, Biden claims they are merely “investments” – a philosophy he touted as Barack Obama’s vice president, when he declared that spending is actually the only way to avoid bankruptcy.

Back on July 16, 2009, while pitching the yet-to-be-passed Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) at an AARP town hall meeting, Vice President Biden said that the U.S. would go bankrupt unless it spends more:

“We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation.
 
“Now, people, when I say that, look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’

“The answer is, ‘Yes,’ that's what I’m telling you.”

On Wednesday, Democrats passed a $3.5 trillion budget resolution and, with the help of 19 Republicans, a $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill.

According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the total public debt outstanding as of Aug. 9, 2021, was $28,427,651,083,061.54, or roughly $28.4 trillion.

At the 2009 town hall, Biden told AARP that the Obama health plan would not eliminate people’s ability to choose their health care insurance and that, if people can’t afford insurance, “We’ll help you pay for it” because “We’re going to subsidize it.”
 
A transcript of Biden’s claim, as reported by CNSNews.com on July 16, 2009, is presented below:

“And folks look, AARP knows and the people with me here today know, the president knows, and I know, that the status quo is simply not acceptable. It’s totally unacceptable. And it’s completely unsustainable. Even if we wanted to keep it the way we have it now. It can’t do it financially.
 
“We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation.
 
“Now, people, when I say that, look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’

“The answer is, ‘Yes,’ that's what I’m telling you.”

The business and economic reporting of CNSNews.com is funded in part with a gift made in memory of Dr. Keith C. Wold.


FROM DAY ONE, JOE BIDEN HAS BEEN UP THE BANKSTERS' ASSES BIG TIME. HE IS A MAJOR REASON WHY THE BANKSTERS WERE NEVER SENT TO PRISON FOR DESTROYING TRILLIONS IN HOME EQUITY AND LOOTING THE AMERICAN ECONOMY TO ITS KNEES.

IT'S HAPPENGING AGAIN, AND OL' JOE IS RIGHT THERE TO HELP THEM!

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Fed maintains money flow to Wall Street

The US Federal Reserve has kept its base interest rate at near zero and maintained its asset purchases at the rate of $120 billion a month. That decision, announced yesterday after a two-day meeting of its policy-making committee, was expected.

But in response to concerns by some members of the Fed’s governing body that the present sharp rise in inflation may prove to be permanent rather than a “transitory” effect of economic recovery from the pandemic, the official statement from the meeting hinted that “tapering” of its bond purchases may be closer than previously thought.

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Last December, the Fed said its asset purchases would continue until “substantial further progress” had been made toward its goals—full employment and 2 percent inflation.

“Since then,” the statement said, “the economy has made progress towards these goals, and the committee will continue to assess progress in coming meetings.”

This was widely interpreted as a signal that it was at least moving to a closer consideration of a wind-back in asset purchases.

But Fed chair Jerome Powell, who has been characterised as occupying a centre position between the so-called doves and hawks within the governing body, made clear there were no immediate plans to withdraw the unprecedented levels of support the central bank has provided to financial markets and Wall Street.

With US employment levels still some 7 or 8 million below where they were before the pandemic, he said further gains in employment would be needed before any tapering of asset purchases.

“We have some ground to cover on the labour market side,” he said at his press conference following the meeting. He repeated his assertion that inflation was “transitory” while insisting the Fed would use its “tools” to counter any permanent rise.

In his prepared remarks he said conditions in the labour market had continued to improve and demand for labour was “very strong” but “nonetheless, the labour market has a ways to go.”

The focus on the state of the labour market as the reason for the maintenance of flow of money is essentially a cover for the real objective which is to ensure that the monetary props for Wall Street remain in place—a fact that is well known in financial circles.

As Thomas Hayes, chairman of Great Hill Capital, an investment management firm, commented to the Wall Street Journal on Powell’s remarks: “I don’t think he could have been more dovish. There’s nothing that the Fed could do that would be more accommodative to the stock market.”

Despite the Fed’s claim that the US economy is on the road to recovery there are significant contradictory signals. While inflation is rising, along with economic growth, the yields on Treasury bonds have been falling—an indication that financial markets consider growth could stall, if not develop into a recession.

Asked about the divergence between the economic growth outlook and the bond market at his press conference, Powell could offer no explanation apart from saying that it may be due to “technical” factors “where you put things you can’t quite explain.”

The fall in bond yields, a result of increased demand and rise in their price (the two move in opposite directions), has been significant.

At the end of March when there was an expectation of increased growth and inflation, the yield on the 10-year Treasury bond was at a 13-month high of 1.75 percent. By the middle of June it had fallen to 1.57 percent—a significant movement in this market—before dropping further to 1.26 percent on Wednesday. This could well be on the back of financial market expectations that what lies ahead is stagflation––higher prices combined with lower growth.

In an interview on CNN Financial Times columnist and editorial board member Rana Foroohar said in her 30 years in finance journalism she had never seen so many variables—from the effect of the Delta variant, inflation, to lower growth in China—impacting on the global economic outlook.

Apart from the continuing stimulus for Wall Street, another significant decision by the Fed was to establish a new facility to provide liquidity to big Wall Street banks as well as foreign central banks in times of financial turbulence.

Under the facility, the Fed would enter overnight repurchase (repo) agreements in which it would take in Treasury debt and mortgage-backed securities in return for cash at a rate of 0.25 percent. There would be a daily cap on the facility of $500 billion. A similar facility would be extended to foreign central banks with a daily limit of $60 billion. The facility may also be expanded in the future to include deposit-taking banks.

The new facility has been developed in response to the financial market crisis of March 2020 when the $21 trillion US Treasury market—the bedrock of US and global financial system—effectively froze in what was dubbed a “dash for cash” as buyers for Treasury debt disappeared.

The measure has been under discussion for some time as the Fed continues to try to assess what took place in the March crisis. New York Fed chief John Williams said earlier this month that a standing repo facility would not be used much in normal times but if there was an “unanticipated shock” it would keep short-term interest rates from spiking.

Its establishment indicates that another crisis on the scale of March 2020 could take place because none of the underlying problems and contradictions that gave rise to it have been resolved.

The decision of the Fed is in line with recommendations in a report from a group of 30 former central bankers and financial policymakers issued yesterday. The group, which includes former US Treasury secretaries Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers and former Bank of England governor Mervyn King, said reforms were needed to ensure that the most essential bond market was able to function smoothly in times of financial stress.

It said a “standing repo” repo facility was the “single most important near-term measure” that should be adopted.

But it pointed to deeper concerns. “This is a market that has outgrown its infrastructure and its regulatory framework, Oversight is fragmented and diffused. The capacity of existing market makers has not grown with the size of the Treasury market itself,” the group said.

According to Geithner, in remarks reported by the Financial Times, the pressure for reform could be “undermined by the belief that the Fed can always step in and fix things” and this was “not a particularly wise approach.”

The report underscores the findings of a report by the G20 Financial Stability Board last November. It said that while the intervention by the Fed in March 2020, when it pumped out trillions of dollars, may have stabilised the situation, the “financial system remains vulnerable to another liquidity strain, as the underlying structures and mechanisms that gave rise to the turmoil remain in place.”

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