Quote of the Day: Mark Spitznagel

Mark Spitznagel. Photo credit: CNBC

From “How the Fed Favors the 1%” in the Wall Street Journal.

The Fed, having gone on an unprecedented credit expansion spree, has benefited the recipients who were first in line at the trough: banks … and those favored entities and individuals deemed most creditworthy. Flush with capital, these recipients have proceeded to bid up the prices of assets and resources, while everyone else has watched their purchasing power decline. …

The Fed is transferring immense wealth from the middle class to the most affluent, from the least privileged to the most privileged. This coercive redistribution has been a far more egregious source of disparity than the president’s presumption of tax unfairness (if there is anything unfair about approximately half of a population paying zero income taxes) or deregulation.

As I have noted before, Fed policy is orchestrating a silent but massive transfer of wealth in the U.S. While our president harps on Warren Buffett’s tax rate and touts a reform that will close about one percent of the budget gap, he says nothing while Ben Bernanke engineers higher inflation rates (almost 3% now) that erode the living standards of the masses while he funnels credit to a privileged few.

Where are those who keen over the disparity of wealth in our society? Why are they so silent? Is it because Bernanke’s zero-interest rate policy allows the world’s largest creditor, the United States government, to continue its spendthrift ways?

— JAB


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  1. Peter Galuszka Avatar
    Peter Galuszka

    Very interesting thoughts here. You might also find useful this from the New Yorker:

    http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/04/23/120423crat_atlarge_lemann

  2. How the Banks Endangered Medicare
    http://tinyurl.com/6vgb2xo

    the die was cast long before Obama……or the Fed.

    I can’t get over how Bush and the GOP royally screwed the pooch and
    now it’s all about Obama and the Fed as they struggle with the mess they received.

    If the Fed backs off of QE, there is a real danger of the economy falling back.

    there are clear danger signs with employment and unemployment.

    so Bush and the GOP take us from a surplus to 5 trillion debt and a structural deficit … stood by why Fannie/Freddy and the housing market imploded (WHERE was Greenspan?)…. doubled the DOD budget and then fled the scene when everything turned to crap.

    AND NOW… it’s all about Obama and Geitner and Bernanke (who was appointed by Bush).

    It’s Basically Obama’s fault that he cannot clean up the financial meltdown…in 3 years.

    and so.. right now.. Bernanke is supposed to do what…exactly?

    of the 15 trillion in debt, virtually all of it has come from the structural deficit that was in place in 2008. About 2 trillion of it came from Obama..Tarp and Stimulus but the rest of it came from the Congressional budgets of the Bush Years.

    It’s TRUE that none of it has been cut… but the guys who put it there to start with ..now refuse to cut DOD which is double what it was in 2000.

    When you ask the GOP candidates how they would fix this… you hear the most comical ideas – even from Romney. None of those guys have a clue.

    Paul Ryan is a joke. The man thinks you can balance the budget by cutting Medicare and MedicAid and not cutting DOD… his “plan” is to cut the entitlements, cut taxes, and watch supply-side generate enough new revenues to pay for DOD.

    does this sound familiar ? It should. It was the Bush plan…

    and now we chew on Bernanke for QE and 3% inflation…so he needs to quit that stuff and do what?

    we are 15 trillion in debt and it’s growing every year from a structural deficit.

    Obama wants to cut across the board including DOD and let some or most of the Bush Tax cuts expire in December.

    What is the GOP PLan? It’s Paul Ryan’s ..the Bush Plan reconstituted…..

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