Comments for Economics Lesson for Charles Lane at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 10 out of 10 comments http://www.cepr.net Sun, 19 May 2013 18:01:59 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/economics-lesson-for-charles-lane#comment-20504 "Interest on reserves written by Scott Supak, December 04, 2012 5:21 What's going on with the fed paying way more on reserves than what they're supposed to?" This is a pure handout to the banks and is evidence that the banks are not truly healthy in the eyes of the Fed. It is easier to hand money to the banks by paying money on excess reserves, than have obvious direct cash payments. Note, if the Fed wanted to encourage lending, it would pay zero interest on excess reserves, and the loss of bank income would encourage the banks to lend to businesses. This also may be evidence of the Fed's embarrassment that it completely missed, or did nothing to prevent, the housing bubble and hopes the various handouts to the financial industry (TBTF insurance, handing unnecessary interest payments to banks) won't be noticed. And the Fed may be correct, as the political class moves to "entitlement reform" which could have a large negative effect on middle/lower class effective net worth, the Fed's actions might be largely missed by the media, as bookeeping transfer entries between the well-connected go unnoticed. - John Wright Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:52:20 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/economics-lesson-for-charles-lane#comment-20500 in order to understand what the problem is, you have to read far more than the ny times or wa post. in other words, you have to really cover the foreign press to have a true understanding of the depth of america's problems. the problem is far more than just the collapse of the housing market. in addition to the housing bubble bursting, other just as relevant factors are the tremendous waste of money & lives in iraq & afghanistan. remember our veterans may need to be taken care of for 5 or 6 decades meaning many trillions of dollars they deserve but which all would trade for the chance to be made whole again. the neocons wanted these wars, but wanted the middle class & working class to pay for them, while the wealthy profited from them & got a tax cut so they wouldn't have to pay for them. since at least 5 million jobs have been outsourced to china & other low wage countries, & since our economy is based on consumer spending, there will never be a recovery when half the people in this country can't pay their student loans, their car payments or their mortgages. the fed doesn't care about these people, their only concern is to make sure the too big to fail banks & firms on wallstreet don't pay when there speculation fails. since the fed continues to create more money to lessen the debt of these giant corporations, the question is what does the rest of the world think about their holdings in the united states shrinking as a result of the fed's increasing monetization? well you don't have to be very intelligent to understand what's going on. we all know that gold, silver & oil have really spiked since the the bailout of the banks. china, japan & the saudis among others hold a tremendous amount of our debt. so, japan & china are negoiating to trade without using the dollar. so are russia, india, brazil, china & south africa. of course the american press ignores this most important foreign news which when they enact trade in non-dollar currencies will cause the dollar's exchange value to plummet & hyper-inflation in america will occur, which will be reminiscent of germany after ww1 when a wheelbarrow full of marks were needed for a loaf of bread. needless to say, the future for america isn't bright at all. - mel in oregon Tue, 04 Dec 2012 11:37:27 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/economics-lesson-for-charles-lane#comment-20499 What's going on with the fed paying way more on reserves than what they're supposed to? [url]http://uneasymoney.com/2011/10/10/is-the-fed-breaking-the-law/[/url] - Scott Supak Tue, 04 Dec 2012 11:21:44 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/economics-lesson-for-charles-lane#comment-20496 That we issue our own currency, and all our debt is denominated in that currency? Fed Funds rate is zero, and will stay there so long as Fed keeps it there. There is no inflation right now. So he is wrong on so many levels. - Mcwop Tue, 04 Dec 2012 09:48:09 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/economics-lesson-for-charles-lane#comment-20490 "Actually the market is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing. Interest rates are extraordinarily low now because of the massive amount of excess resources in the economy." Wrong. Interests rates are only controlled by the market insofar as the Fed lets them be. Interest rates are low because the Fed has let the banking system build up excess reserves. Govt deficits push interests rates down because a deficit adds reserves to the banking system. As the amount of excess reserves increase, banks are willing to lend them to each other at lower and lower rates (banks don't lend reserves to the public). Besides, the govt doesn't truly borrow money. The notion of borrowing is meaningless for the issuer of the currency. Treasuries, reserves, and cash are all different forms of the exact same thing, namely govt liabilities. They differ primarily in their interest rate and maturity. - joe Tue, 04 Dec 2012 07:27:32 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/economics-lesson-for-charles-lane#comment-20486 http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/ There was a bubble in 2008/9, but they really haven't done much since then, certainly not the $6T or so issued by the treasury. No real deficit anyway, just transfers. Transfers are not real deficit, no macro effect. - pete Tue, 04 Dec 2012 05:41:49 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/economics-lesson-for-charles-lane#comment-20482 When the government can borrow all it wants at 1.6 or 1.7% interest for ten years, the last thing one should worry about is the deficit. It would be nice to bring it down when doing so won't damage the economy and raise unemployment, but it is hardly a crisis at the present time. - Chris Tue, 04 Dec 2012 05:06:27 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/economics-lesson-for-charles-lane#comment-20479 deficit scolds: "Muffle that signal, as the Fed’s policy is doing now, and politicians are less able to guess right about how much time they really have to fix fiscal policy and to feel less pressure to do so."" So bond markets determine policy, not the voter? Okay so we'll raise taxes to cut the deficit. Deficit scolds: "No that will hurt growth. We need to cut entitlements." Like in the '90s? Cutting entitlements will hurt growth. Blowing housing bubbles will hurt growth. Having a trillion dollar/year output gap and high unemployment will hurt growth. - Peter K. Tue, 04 Dec 2012 04:49:30 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/economics-lesson-for-charles-lane#comment-20476 Why use unified budget numbers? We knew in 2003 that the off-budget surplus was diminishing and could not really be included if we wanted to answer the question of whether deficits were/are sustainable. - Arne Tue, 04 Dec 2012 04:22:28 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/economics-lesson-for-charles-lane#comment-20474 Lane also forgot to mention that the Fed isn't even buying USTs anymore. From the latest FoF survey: [img]http://www.jseydl.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/UST-purhases-Q22012.png[/img] - JSeydl Tue, 04 Dec 2012 04:14:26 +0100