Surviving Capitalism (Not) : How Much Does the Fed’s Plan Really Help Main Street?

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, September 15, 2012

How Much Does the Fed’s Plan Really Help Main Street?

Click here to access article by Peter Eavis from the NY Times.

The banks are choosing not to reduce mortgage rates further. One reason: By keeping the rates elevated, they are able to earn much larger profits when they sell the mortgages into the bond market.

It is clear that the latest Fed action is to increase income for banks, most of which are carrying many toxic mortgage assets. It is another way to bailout banks at the expense of the public. But what this NY Times article does not mention, for obvious reasons, is that whenever the Federal Reserve, which is operated by private bankers with a thin covering of government participation, creates money from nothing to buy anything, it is more debt owed to the Fed by the American people. Since the recent economic collapse of 2007/2008 such Fed actions have only benefited the One Percent while putting the general population into more debt servitude to the One Percent in order to cover their bad bets in the capitalist casinos. Thus, banksters and Wall Streeters love it when they do this because in the short term the money usually benefits either bankers or stock market players; and in the long run, it eventually results in more transfers of wealth from ordinary citizens to the One Percent.