Yellin' Yellen's Yin-Yang

Ben Bernanke's Helicopter QE Money PolicyYin-Yang. In Eastern thought, two complementary forces make up all aspects and phenomena of life. Yin is present in even numbers. Yang is present in odd numbers. Their interplay on one another (as one increases the other decreases) being a description of the actual process of the universe and all that is in it.

The overall economic philosophy contrasting Yellen to Bernanke is their policy making. Ben acted upon market pressures of the moment instead of Yellen believing in the government wisdom to guide the economy constantly throughout - ever heard of socialism, communism? 

So, who is 'Yin' or 'Yang' here?

Ben is a 'Milton Friedman,' 'free-market laissez-faire' economist, but with some of his own 'momentus intervention' such as 'quantitative easing', QE, aka 'printing money and buying back our bonds' to buoy up U.S. currency while creating inflation - contrary to Milton Friedman's basic precepts.

Janet is a 'Maynard Keyes,' 'government centrist' economist, but with a 'James Tobin' twist, as a 'reconstructionist' about unemployment as the central focus over maintaining price stabilities to control inflation. She embraces the 'Phillips Curve' and 'NAIRU', non-accelerating inflation rate of employment, the trade-off between inflation and unemployment which means always doing the fine-tuning and meddling micro-management.

In the 'new Keynesian' theories, it assumes recessions are caused by some economy-wide market failure. So, Keynesian economics provides a rationale for government intervention into the entire economy, such as countercyclical monetary or fiscal policy. That means people are not circulating enough money and the Central Government needs to get more cash out into circulation with lower interest rates on bank loans and to increase numbers of recipients for Federal benefits to put into their open hands more money to spend.

This alternating sequence of expansion and contraction in economic activity is imperfect to say the least, unpredictable to say more which leans toward outright clairvoyance riddled with glitches in deciding future events. It does take from months to years to affect different sectors of the U.S. economy; i.e., finance and banking are immediate as monies flow directly from the Federal Bank, businesses and industries are cyclical due to seasonal changes, business cycles, or technological advances can take up to years while sporadically infusing funds. So, instead of letting the 'marketplace' dictate QE timing, the 'new-Keynesian' economists forecast with their crystal balls the 'marketplace' timing of QE - just like a coach that flips a coin on whether to put a player in the game.

So, Janet says, "Let's start up the printing presses, it's QE 'funny-money' time!"  Bring out large wheelbarrows too. You'll need a bunch more bills to buy bread at $6/loaf, milk at $8/gallon and gasoline at $12/gallon.

It's again like the German Weimar Republic (1919-1933) In 1919, one loaf of bread cost 1 mark; by 1923, the same loaf of bread cost 100 billion marks.

Inflation - "It's deja vu all over again!"

A Short History Lesson by FDR

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt - (1933-45), pushed his major legislation package and issued a proliferation of executive orders that instituted the New Deal with a variety of programs designed to produce relief (government jobs for the unemployed), spur recovery (economic growth), and reform (through regulation of Wall Street, the banks and transportation). Unemployment fell dramatically in his first term, from 25% when he took office to 14.3% in 1937 and then it increased to 19.0% in 1938. So why did the economy improve so rapidly from 1933 to 1937, but then relapse into a deep recession?

A Shorter History Lesson by Obama

Hate to say it, but if you don't look into the past, history has a strange way of repeating itself! Or as the NY Yankee's catcher, Yogi Berra, said, "It's deja vu all over again!" ...Hello Obama, why aren't you looking back?  These lessons learned are useful and in the case of this President of the United States, the people will suffer. The sad truth is that it's because of Obama's history lesson lapses. 

 "Running by the Seat of your Pants" by FDR

These actual events and facts drawn from "Lords of Finance" (see our Rovalocity web site library) on pages 471-475 show a lesson learned, but not remembered or revisited today by the current Obama administration. This monetary manipulation is going on today BIG TIME as you read this history lesson.

"By October 1933, though the dollar had fallen by more than 30 percent, commodity prices began to sink again and the economy started to stall once more.  Roosevelt decided that it was time for a new initiative. Roosevelt's former Harvard professor, George Warren, recommended that the government give the dollar another nudge downward by itself buying gold in the open market."

First FDR Fireside Chat - March 23, 1933. "On October 22, in a Fireside Chat, FDR expressed that the U.S. dollar was too greatly influenced by internal policies of other nations and by political disturbances. Therefore, the U.S. must take control in its own hands the gold value of the dollar. This was a masterpiece of obfuscation." FDR was disingenuously blaming foreign governments and the current world-wide political unrest for the poor performance of the  American economy to mask the real problems due to FDR Administration monetary policy failures.

"So, the following day the U.S. began to buy gold."  It was a massive manipulation of the world gold prices in order to stimulate the U.S. economy with cheaper goods to sell to the world markets. Instead, it produced even further erosion of public confidence in the global financial markets.  It was a formula made for disaster! 

Today, it's even easier to devalue U.S. dollars by simply running more ink on paper through printing presses without any gold treasury deposits and instead only "backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government". 

Obama dumping excess US currency inflates the world currency markets causing a global-wide recession too.

Keynesian Economics

"Maynard Keynes was among few economists to applaud Roosevelt's decision to devalue the dollar.  In an article in the Daily Mail headlined "President Roosevelt is Magnificently Right," he hailed the message as an invitation to "explore new paths" and "to achieve something better than the miserable confusion and unutterable waste of opportunity in which an obstinate adherence to ancient rules of thumb has engulfed us." This was saying to throw the gold market prices to the wind to create arbitrarily set price. John Maynard Keyes - 62 (1883-1946) He and Obama would've no doubt liked each others standards for the Federal Government which benefited more spending programs.

Keynes is the economist that Liberals love and Conservatives hate. Keynes best known for his proposal that when national economies suffer a downturn, governments should borrow and spend money to boost economic activity. Part of the proceeds of the resulting economic growth should then be used to repay the debt. Obama loves "Keynesian Monetary Policies" as it demands more "Stimulus Spending" to expand by printing more money leading to theoretically paying for more government goods and services.  Just one problem, "Inflation", too much money supply around, devalues buying power and the ability to pay back debt and creates even more "National Debt" on the books ...Big Oops!

"The Gold fix is in" - "The Yolks on the Folks!"

In the following weeks, "every morning at nine o'clock, Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of Treasury, Jesse Jones, head of the Reconstruction Finance Corp, and George Warren, a Cornell economic advisor, would meet witGold Barsh FDR over his breakfast of soft-boiled eggs to determine the price of gold for that day.  They originally began at $31.65 an ounce.  The next morning this increased to $31.71, then $31.76 and $31.82."

"No one had a clue how they went about setting the price, although everyone presumed that some subtle analysis of the world bullion and foreign exchange markets went into their calculations.  In fact, the choice of price was completely random.  All they were trying to do was push the price a  little higher than the day before.  The exercise brought out the juvenile in Roosevelt.  One day he picked an increase of 21 cents, and when asked why, replied that it was a lucky number, three times seven." And, this is who Obama says he wants to emulate? - I can definitely see why!

Ten More Years to Get Ahead - 1935 to 1945

"Again, many of Roosevelt's measures to boost prices or wages by government fiat raised the cost of hiring workers and hampered recovery.  Because the contraction had gone so deep, it still took ten years for the economy to regain its old trend."  It appears that it finally took a WW2 economy, not FDR's policies, to kick-start jobs and the manufacturing sector creating economic growth.  FDR, very sickly, died finally in 1945. FDR was three terms too long.  Obama is already one term too long, so thank God for term limits as he finishes his final term in office.

"While the rebound was powered by an abundance of money at low interest rates, the Fed found itself ejected from the driver's seat.  Having made such a mess during the collapse, it had lost whatever prestige it once possessed." That sure sounds like what has happened today ...It's deja vu all over again!

Are we doomed to repeat this sad History all over again under Obama?

 ~ VOTE Change in 2016! ~