Secrets and Lies of the Bailout | Hacker News Reader

Secrets and Lies of the Bailout

rollingstone.com

46 pointsbcn5 comments

TLDR: "So what exactly did the bailout accomplish? It built a banking system that discriminates against community banks, makes Too Big to Fail banks even Too Bigger to Failier, increases risk, discourages sound business lending and punishes savings by making it even easier and more profitable to chase high-yield investments than to compete for small depositors. The bailout has also made lying on behalf of our biggest and most corrupt banks the official policy of the United States government. And if any one of those banks fails, it will cause another financial crisis, meaning we're essentially wedded to that policy for the rest of eternity – or at least until the markets call our bluff, which could happen any minute now."

I agree with the author except with the markets calling the US's bluff. The FED is in every market worldwide with QE to eternity. Other nations follow the FED.

QE only affects reserves, if anything it decreases net private assets as it takes interest bearing assets out of the private sector. Credit creation for bidding up existing assets is where the instability comes from.

Tighten regulations and increase net private assets through fiscal policy; preferably as diffuse as possible, e.g. full payroll-tax holiday.

QE effects everything. The government needs to inflate away the debts left behind by the housing bust and the enormous amount of public debt created to offset the impact of the global financial crisis of 2008. Inflation goes up and the real value of those debts goes down. (I think the official inflation figures are selective. Have a look at http://www.shadowstats.com to see how the way to measure inflation changed over the years. The same thing with measuring unemployed people).

Public debt is just bonds, i.e. the private sector savings. Why is it problematic that the private sector has savings? Why would we need to inflate that away, rather than letting it continue to exist to support people during their retirements?

Private savings (public debt) is not inflationary, private and public SPENDING is inflationary. If it's too much for the capacity of the economy to absorb it, then it bids up the prices goods (demand pull). If the economy is running below capacity and extra funds are injected to facilitate demand, then economic activity revs up to meet the extra demand.

As to the CPI, I'm sure it has its flaws, but I'd trust it more than a website offering $150+ newsletter subscriptions. The CPI changes over time because people buy different things, and tying inflation estimations to a static set of goods carries its own problems.

Here's Matt Taibbi on Democracy Now talking about this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OsqAhYb9Fc

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