Yesterday Fed chairman Ben Bernanke attacked Bloomberg claiming that its reporting was misleading. It looks like the Fed missed the mark on just about every issue.

Perhaps the most important issue is the Fed’s claim that it did not lend at a below market rate to banks, thereby effectively giving them a subsidy. In fact, it is almost definitional that the rate did provide a subsidy.

No one forced the banks to borrow from the Fed. If they had better options, they would have borrowed elsewhere. Instead the Fed made large amounts of money available to banks at a time when liquidity carried an enormous premium. This meant that the banks could relend the government’s money to others and earn a substantial profit.

This lending may have been justified to stem the financial crisis, but in principle the government could have imposed conditions (e.g. real caps on executive pay, downsizing the too big to fail banks, modifying mortgages) on the banks as the price of getting access to credit at below market rates. Bernanke and Congress did not seek to impose such conditions.

Given Bernanke’s strenuous opposition to the release of data on the bailout programs it would be interesting to know if he now feels that it is more difficult for the Fed to conduct monetary policy.

(Source: theamericanbear)

from The Daily Bell Saturday, October 15, 2011 – by Anthony Wile

Slovakia has now approved the European debt-crisis bailout fund, but the problems Europe is experiencing are similar to those faced by America in the grip of the Fed’s immense bailouts of the past two years.

Increasingly, these are seen as morally repugnant by citizens throughout the West. And this has significant consequences that the mainstream press declines to report.

Dominant social themes work by omission as well as commission; in this column, I want to re-examine potential ramifications. I’ve done it before, but I think it’s worth repeating. Not enough commentators, even in the alternative media, point them out in my humble opinion.

Money continues to flood Western regimes and financial institutions with billions and billions that they don’t deserve and cannot properly apply. Perhaps there is no alternative but to “kick the can down the road.” On the other hand, perhaps the bailouts are part of a wider elite destabilization effort, one intended to generate chaos and misery that will pave the way for global governance and maybe a new world currency. This is the view of the more conspiratorially-minded among the alternative media.

For whatever reasons, the bailouts, against all logic, continue apace and are being increasingly resisted … not merely for their Draconian impacts but because people are using technology to become more informed. This bailout saga, therefore, has been unusual, not only for the incalculable wealth that’s been extended but also because it’s played out in front of millions.

The ramifications continue to be felt in my view. The push-back began in the US with TARP and then continued with revelation of US$16 trillion-plus (probably more) in short-term loans extended by the US Federal Reserve to financial institutions – not just in America but around the world.

Now US Congressman Ron Paul is conducting the Federal Reserve’s first “audit.” Ben Bernanke speaks, but his pronouncements have nowhere near the power or authority of his predecessor Alan Greenspan. Occupy Wall Streetand alternative journo Alex Jones are both holding organized protests outside Fed buildings. In Southern Europe, protests and riots (Greece) rise wherever the EU and its bankers attempt to impose “austerity.”

The Internet has allowed people to see – finally – exactly what’s going on. Prior to the Internet, the controlled mainstream news would have explained in unison that the Fed “made massive adjustments to the global financial fabric to ensure that systemic collapse was mitigated …” or employed other nonsensical euphemisms. These sorts of non-explanations would have been repeated ad nauseum.

But in the era of the Internet, such gobbledygook has been effectively negated by literally millions of articles (and thousands of videos) explaining what central banking really is – monetary price fixing – and how central bankers “print money from nothing” to advantage their cronies at the expense of everyone else.

The system survived because it appeared so incomprehensible that it was beyond criticism. Not anymore. People around the world “get it” and the anger is breaching even the indolence of the political class. Eventually, if certain fundamental knowledge becomes widespread enough, the elites may have to take a “step back” as we have predicted they might. Resistance is spreading.

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