Mark America

What Will It Buy You?

There’s a new report by CNBC that the Federal Reserve is considering some more “quantitative easing,” also known as “firing up the printing presses.” They’re going to make money cheaper again, and when it’s cheaper, it’s necessarily worth less.  For those of you who don’t really follow how all of this works, let me remind you of a few things I’m sure you’ve heard, but which you may not pay much ongoing attention.  The idea is to try to stimulate the economic activity by putting more cash into circulation, theoretically making it easier for banks to loan money for new home construction, businesses, and all manner of things.  The notion is that with more cash flowing, more economic activity will result, and more jobs will be created.  That’s the theory, and it sounds simple enough until you recognize some complicating factors.

First, every time the Federal Reserve follows this procedure, what’s really happening is that for all intents and purposes, they’re flooding the economy with new money.  There’s really no new value being added to the system, so what this effectively accomplishes is to devalue all existing money by some amount.  What this causes in turn is a diminution of your money’s purchasing power.  A loaf of bread costs $1.20 instead of $1.10, or a gallon of gasoline goes from $3.50 up to $4.00, or a 2″x4″ down at the home improvement store goes up in price, but the total effect is that money is less valuable.

Back when QE2(Quantitative Easing, Round 2) was announced, back in late 2010, Sarah Palin came out and warned against it, and was scoffed at by the geniuses who push this inflationary policy upon us. Of course, with predictable regularity, she was right about it, as we who pay attention knew would be the case, so now the Federal Reserve is considering more of the same. As with last time, most of the inflation has been hidden by the fact that amazingly, energy and food are not counted in the CPI(Consumer Price Index) but of course, that’s an absurdity since it’s where much of our spending is concentrated.  This helps the politicians and the Federal Reserve shield from your eyes the true cost of their stimulus, but what you should know is that it amounts only to a delaying tactic.  What they’re hoping is to buy time until the economy can somehow catch up, but the problem is that the policy they’ve undertaken ultimately leverages against that end, since it will take ever more dollars for you to fund your energy and food costs, and those aren’t things on which you can really do substantial trimming if you intend to go to work each day.

The whole thing is a colossal fraud, and it’s one of the reasons I agree with Ron Paul that we need to re-examine the role of the Federal Reserve.  It’s become obvious that they’re just as willing as most politicians to lie to you about the end result of their policies.