Jon Stewart catches Ben Bernanke in a lie about "printing money" video tape here

Quote from FerdinandAlx:

QE is a program that exchanges longer term notes and bonds for 30 day T-bills. It's akin to moving money from your savings account to your checking account. The idea is to provide stability to the banking system by increasing liquidity reserves (30 day t-bills)

It does not increase the amount of money that's in circulation. It just alters the term structure of the assets that banks are holding. It's not a jobs program either as the Federal Reserve likes to pretend. No one is being *hired* as a result of QE and demand for loans in not increased. All it prevents is outright demand destruction caused by an unstable banking system in the form of liquidity crunches and skyrocketing interest rates.

Wow, I didn't realize that $600 billion was involved every time someone moved money from a savings to a checking account. Learn something new every day...
 
Quote from MKTrader:

Wow, I didn't realize that $600 billion was involved every time someone moved money from a savings to a checking account. Learn something new every day...

Yeah well, it does when the entire financial system is involved.
 
Quote from FerdinandAlx:

Yeah well, it does when the entire financial system is involved.

So your analogy is off. The gov't is printing $600B and buying bonds. Just admit it...
 
Quote from MKTrader:

All the obfuscation aside, the Fed is

1) Buying securities. Where do they get the money to do this?

2) Those who "sell" the securities have their accounts credited with U.S. dollars.

Call it QE, call it "non-money printing" or whatever Orwellian term you wish, but that's what's happening.

And if Bernanke was so confident this wasn't printing, why did his body language show otherwise (very clear on 60 Minutes)?

Isn't it just semantics? Isn't the result more important?

Like, if banks were just sitting on those reserves, then we shouldn't see anything inflating. Do you see anything inflating?
 
Quote from MarketMasher:

Isn't it just semantics? Isn't the result more important?

Like, if banks were just sitting on those reserves, then we shouldn't see anything inflating. Do you see anything inflating?

Uh, cotton, wheat, gold, oil. You know..things that aren't hedonically-adjusted. But that's another discussion.
 
Quote from MKTrader:

So your analogy is off. The gov't is printing $600B and buying bonds. Just admit it...

Not through QE. I do support "printing" money by the government though. I'm not talking QE, I'm talking budget deficits. The government should aggresively cut income taxes in order to increase the amount of money that's available for spending and debt retirement by families. Contrary to uninformed believe this does not mean that our children will have to pay off more debt. The government is not operationally constrained by the issuing of debt. Government debt is issued instead as way to absorb the increased private sector savings that go along with the public sector deficits. Public deficits mean private surpluses and that's what we need to see right now.
 
Exactly. Once he said this he leaned forward, crossed his legs, held his arms close to his body, and made an expression with only one part of his face. That is a classic sign of lying.


Quote from MKTrader:

And if Bernanke was so confident this wasn't printing, why did his body language show otherwise (very clear on 60 Minutes)?
 
Quote from the1:

Exactly. Once he said this he leaned forward, crossed his legs, held his arms close to his body, and made an expression with only one part of his face. That is a classic sign of lying.

Is the1 short for "Tim Roth"?
 
Quote from FerdinandAlx:

Not through QE. I do support "printing" money by the government though. I'm not talking QE, I'm talking budget deficits. The government should aggresively cut income taxes in order to increase the amount of money that's available for spending and debt retirement by families. Contrary to uninformed believe this does not mean that our children will have to pay off more debt. The government is not operationally constrained by the issuing of debt. Government debt is issued instead as way to absorb the increased private sector savings that go along with the public sector deficits. Public deficits mean private surpluses and that's what we need to see right now.

I don't have any ideaological problems with your other points, though I think it's likely the U.S. will default on its debt one day (rather than hyperinflate) regardless of what they do now.

Back to QE. We'll have to agree to disagree. The $600B has to originate from somewhere. It's not a transaction cost. In the two analogies below, it's the (b) scenario.

(a) I walk into a bank, open a new checking account by transferring all the money from my checking account. Nothing gained or lost. Zero sum game.

(b) I walk into a bank and walk out with $5,000 in U.S. Treasuries without touching my checking/savings accounts or spending anything else out-of-pocket.
 
Back
Top