Thread by @LibertyBlitz

1/ It's Friday, so time for my weekly thread. I'm gonna go over some key points from my latest piece and expand a little on it.
Here it is:
libertyblitzkrieg.com/2019/03/11/fed…

2/ First, it's important to recognize how rare it is for a Federal Reserve chair to do an interview on 60 minutes. The last time it was done was Ben Bernanke in 2010, before it was clear if financial central planners would be able to kick the can for a decade (they did).

3/ As such, you have to ask why Powell decided to go on "average joe" television and essentially say nothing new at all at this particular moment in time. I think there are two main drivers.

4/ For starters, the Fed is clearly spooked about the state of the global economy. It's rolling over severely in China, other parts of Asia and in Europe. The U.S. has not been spared, with 1Q19 GDP forecast to be below 2%.

5/ Powell made sure to blame external factors for the U.S. slump. This is key, because the Fed always has to make sure it takes credit for the good and deflects blame to others for the bad. Have you ever heard the Fed come out and say, well we really messed that up? No.

6/ Which is ludicrous, because whenever you have a handful of humans essentially deciding monetary policy for the planet you'll have mistakes and when they make mistakes these are usually disastrous. But the Fed can't admit to being flawed or clueless.

7/ This is because the Fed is granted extraordinary powers and they quite like using them. They must portray themselves as all-knowing magicians or the public might start questioning what they're doing, you know, like average people looking at the following and saying WTF.

8/ The Fed wants to get ahead of whatever is coming with a firm narrative in place. That narrative is everything was going great until China and Europe came along to ruin the expansion. It's key they make people believe this so they can do whatever they want the next time around.

9/ But this is a false narrative. What the Fed has in fact done is destroyed the entire social fabric of this country. Foreign central bankers have done the same exact thing to their respective societies.

10/ If you judge an economy based on stock market performance, negative yielding bonds and aggregate GDP, you might think the Fed did a great job over the past decade, but...

11/ if you judge it based how we’ve turned an entire generation of young people into debt slaves, arrived at levels of inequality unseen since before the Great Depression and catalyzed an explosion of populist politics across western world, you may be ready to grab a pitchfork.

12/ To summarize, through the printing of money and buying of financial assets, the Fed has funneled money to the very tippy top of the socio-economic structure, while pushing the general public and young people in particular into mountains of new debt. They broke society.

13/ And remember, the Fed never admits it made a mistake, so these people think they did a fantastic job (or at least that's their story). Which means they plan to do the same thing and worse the next time they get a chance. I'm not making this up, they've been saying it.

14/ Who actually gets crazy rich from the Fed funds rate at 0%. Not the average person, but financial and corporate oligarchs. Blackstone bought everyone's foreclosed properties to turn around and rent them back to those evicted.

15/ CEOs pile their companies with absurd levels of debt in order to splurge on share buybacks at the top of the cycle, and even worse, executives then rush to sell their shares to their newly leveraged companies before the music stops. Unconscionable.

16/ Meanwhile, what sort of daily experience does the average pleb see when it comes to interest rates? Well, credit card rates just hit the highest level in a decade. Yep, that's right.

17/ "The national average APR is currently at its highest point in more than a decade and shows no signs of reversing course any time soon." Thanks for playin' suckers.
creditcards.com/credit-card-ne…

18/ Then the Fed wants you to come out and thank them for saving the world. A bigger bunch of thieving charlatans I can not think of. Simply disgusting.

19/ The other thing that has them freaked out is the increased talk of MMT and how more and more people are discussing the monetary system and debt in general. They don't want the rabble thinking about any of this stuff.

20/ That's why they intentionally make simple things sounds complicated. It's not money printing, it's "quantitative easing." You are not meant to look behind the curtain, but people are looking and they don't like that very much.

21/ The Fed is just a simple scam intentionally hiding its actions in complexities. In practice, it's just a gigantic reverse robin hood swindle. We have 10 years of evidence now.

22/ I was sort of shocked to see Michael Hudson on the @jimmy_dore show recently, but I was very pleased and impressed that these things are being discussed to a wider, non-financial audience. It's well worth your time:

23/ So Powell went on 60 minutes to remind everybody of who is in charge, and that they stand ready to do whatever it takes when necessary. Which just means more for the top and lots more debt for you. It means whatever is left of the social fabric, you can say bye bye to that.

24/ The Fed has no intention of stopping or going away, and it depends on the public being ignorant and confused. My message is don't be. Especially young people. You saw the last 10 years, you want 10 more of that?

25/ Anyway, I'm tired of typing. I hope this was helpful. If you like my work, consider supporting it. I no longer take ads, so it's all reader supported.
libertyblitzkrieg.com/support-libert…

26/ I'm almost at 100 people on Patreon, so if you want to help me get over the hump, that'd be nice.
patreon.com/michaelkrieger

27/ Finally, there's Bitcoin. Thanks for your consideration.
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