247Bull.com Editor: The way this money creation, or debt monetization process works, is this: The US Treasury issues debt in the form of government bonds. These bonds are then purchased at auction by one of the primary dealers, such as Goldman Sachs or J.P. Morgan, and the Federal Reserve then buys the debt from these securities dealers.
The money that gets credited to the accounts of firms like Goldman is brand new high-powered money, which is essentially just counterfeit money. The investment banks are then free to use the money however they like. The Fed would like them to loan it into the economy, but for the most part they’re just holding on to the money, which is why money velocity is at a 50-year low and inflation hasn’t yet been a problem.
The latest is the Business Week article “QE Cubed: A modest proposal for more Fed buying. A lot more.” Frankly, the presentation is so preposterous that I’m still not convinced it isn’t a joke. No sign of The Onion logo, and its date is February 1, not April 1, so maybe it’s real.
The author is David Kemper, CEO of Commerce Bancshares and former President of the Federal Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve. And according to Mr. Kemper, the Fed, and its fine business acumen, can save us all:
“The ongoing depressing news about the American fiscal situation has obscured the startling and very impressive earnings performance recently announced by the Federal Reserve. The Fed, in its usual understated way, just revealed it will be turning over $90 billion in 2012 profits to the U.S. Treasury, a much-needed contribution that will put a sizable dent in our nation’s current $1 trillion federal deficit.”
See what I mean? That’s just the opening paragraph and it’s already a parody of itself. How on Earth can the Fed not be be immensely profitable when the only thing it produces is digital money out of thin air? If Congress would allow me to create dollars by keying digits into my account, I could produce a pretty tidy sum myself.
“The Fed’s earnings performance over the last several years has been exceptional. It earned more than twice Apple’s after-tax earnings last year, the result of a simple but powerful strategy: borrow money at very low rates, then buy long-term bonds.”
Yes, printing money and using it to buy bonds is indeed a simple but powerful strategy.
However, to use the word earned to describe how they came by that money is a bit of a stretch of the definition. Apple had to actually create a product that people voluntarily purchased in the market. There is no competition in marketplace of money. The federal government prohibits it.
“Why not go with a business model that has proven to be such a winner?…
That is why I propose the Federal Open Market Committee’s next move be to take our central bank to a whole new level—a 2013 campaign that I call QE Cubed. Why not expand the Fed balance sheet exponentially, from its current $3 trillion to $33 trillion? Earning an extra 3 percent on another $30 trillion in bonds would allow the Fed to return an additional $900 billion to the Treasury—thus wiping out most of our federal deficit while avoiding actually having to do anything about current government spending.”
Ok, ok. You got me. This doesn’t even make sense by central banking standards. But you’ll have to cut me some slack. After all of that talk about trillion dollar coins, nothing seemed too much of a stretch for these guys. This clearly appears to be satire in the tradition of Jonathan Swift. But why? Perhaps he is mocking the thought process he finds himself surrounded by? Whether he is personally on board with this program makes little difference, as it is clearly the dominant attitude towards our insolvency.
Keep in mind that what appears to be a parody today is often reality tomorrow. We may not get 30 trillion dollars all at once, but before this is over, we may very well get close.
247Bull
