In the same fashion that the European Central Bank is now able to buy unlimited amounts of debt from bankrupt countries like Spain, the Fed has given itself the prerogative to buy unlimited amounts of mortgage loans in an attempt to artificially lower interest rates and ‘stabilize’ the crashing home loan market. The $64 million question is how much will this unlimited easing help to rescue the mortgage market? Not much according to Ben Bernanke himself, who has said the move is not a panacea.
As some US media reported, the Fed once again pulled the trigger, but only to shoot the country on the other foot; an action that will certainly result in more difficult times for Americans. The U.S. Federal Reserve announced the ‘liquidity boost’ to help the economy and that such injection of fiat money will continue, which according to Ben Bernanke, shows the Fed’s commitment to help with the recovery. Double speak? Mind games?
At the end of their two-day meeting, the Fed said in a statement that it intended to “launch a program to buy mortgage-backed securities valued at $40 billion a month” and that the program would not have a limit in the amount spent or a deadline to conclude.
The organization led by Ben Bernanke said that if you add the “Operation Twist”, a program to swap short term bonds for long term ones, to the new scheme to buy mortgage backed securities, the Fed will be buying about $85 billion a month. Also, the U.S. central bank said it will keep interest rates at exceptionally low levels between 0% and 0.25%, until “at least mid-2015″, instead of the end of 2014 as announced in January of this year.
The Fed said that “highly accommodative monetary policy will remain appropriate for a considerable time until the economy strengthens.”
The chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed), has defended the new measures adopted Thursday by the institution, while economists question the validity of a program that not even Bernanke sees as a real solution to the real problem. The chairman of the Fed insisted in his speech that his actions are not the “panacea” and “do not cure all ills” now affecting the economy.
In the press conference following the meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the Fed, Bernanke said that monetary policy alone — especially the wrong kind — will not solve all problems by itself, so politicians have to do their part. He also, emphasized that the Fed can not be rushed when leaving a highly accommodative monetary policy and pledged to hold such policy until the recovery is sustainable and allows for job creation.
However, he added that no set of policies can be extended until the objectives of his mandate are achieved. Those supposed goals include a significant improvement in employment, manufacturing and consumer spending. There is no need to say that under the current policies and the new ones the Fed has adopted, none of the goals will be ever accomplished. In fact, it is quite the opposite. The continuous unrestricted pumping of fake money into the economy will only prolong the disease.
Bernanke acknowledged that the situation in the labor market is still assessed as concerning, and stressed that the current level of economic recovery is not good enough to have the unemployment rate fall.
The Daily Sheeple
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