The Ben Bernank and the Quantitative Easing

22 Nov

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and the response:

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17 Responses to “The Ben Bernank and the Quantitative Easing”

  1. BobbyCat November 22, 2010 at 6:52 am #

    Why are the headlines on WNYMedia so obscure? A headline should entice the reader not scare them away. I am not intrigued by ‘quantiative easing” or “white house white boards” or “fitzmagic graphics”.

    I’m trying to be snarky but your headlines are terrible.

    Reply
    • Alan Bedenko November 22, 2010 at 9:56 am #

      Also, if you’d watch the first video for its first few seconds, you’d get the reference, if not the joke.

      If you haven’t heard the term quantitative easing in any form over the last few weeks, – regardless of whether you know what it means – then you’re frankly not informed about the domestic economy.

      Reply
  2. BobbyCat November 22, 2010 at 6:53 am #

    Correction: I’m NOT trying to be snarky.

    Reply
  3. Hapklein November 22, 2010 at 7:03 am #

    This is all getting scarier and scarier.

    Note that while the US is fighting at least two wars that only get noticed when somebody dies or gets a medal and still has to borrow every penny to fight them Washington fell into a rage with the intelligent suggestions that some incrreas in taxes and small cuts in beneifts may be in order.

    Why sacrifice when we can print money.

    These products of the imagination are not just American either. I see Ireland is getting the same printing machine that Greece got last year and Portugal is getting in line for.

    We can conclude that we just go on borrowing and printing lots of money so we can buy lots of oil from Arabia and develop our own industry for the day that they run out. Just because the co2 is zooming to the highest level in human history can be ignored since the US Senate has passed an Legal Act that Climate change does not occur. So there.

    We can take the combination of these unreal developments and just be thankful that the American Beeer Industry is reaching levels unseen, per capita, since colonial times.

    Between Printing Presses and Breweries lie our destiny.

    Reply
  4. Jesse November 22, 2010 at 8:27 am #

    Sorry, the reply is stupid in the first 45 seconds: The corporations and big banks want to turn the people against the organization that they control? Sorry, that doesn’t add up whatsoever.

    Even the turn QE is a frigging euphemism for what they’re actually doing: debasing our fucking currency. It’s a brutally efficient way to transfer wealth from the poor and middle class up to those with the purse strings.

    Reply
  5. Jesse November 22, 2010 at 8:32 am #

    Ye gods, it’s early: “turn” should be “term”.

    Let me see if I can get this straight from the corps / big banks perspective:
    1. Get central bank to print us more money that we can hoard, knowing the only way to get out of our shitty government-backed risk-taking is by monetizing our debt (another euphemism for the same “debase our currency” evil).
    2. Get the public to get mad at that central bank.
    3. ???

    What the hell is the point of getting enough of the public pissed at the Fed to actually demand Congress do something about it? I mean, if what video #2 was suggesting were true, why the hell wouldn’t they have kept the Fed on the down-low, like it was for the last 90 years as they’ve systematically reduced the value of a dollar to $.05 or whatever it is now? They’ve got everyone conditioned to believe inflation is normal and “good”… why would they screw that up and get millions of people who’ve never even thought about monetary policy before to suddenly start yelling “End The Fed!”?

    Reply
  6. Chris Sasiadek November 22, 2010 at 9:34 am #

    What the first video ignores is that deflation is directly correlated with unemployment. Deflation is great if you have awesome job security and it bad if you don’t. Otherwise this is a pretty funny and informative video.

    Q: “Is this an episode of the Twilight Zone?”
    A: “I don’t think so.”

    Reply
  7. BobbyCat November 22, 2010 at 10:21 am #

    Not one person in a thousand knows what “quantitative easing” means. But then, I think you know that. I’m not one of those elite few, and shucks, my subscription to “The Economist” ran out. My go-to guy for economics is Krugman. I read him a lot. He would never lead with an arcane term without first defining it for his readers. But last time I mentioned his name here, somebody called him a ‘jackass’, his Nobel prize notwithstanding.. This club is getting too exclusive for me. I guess I’m not smart enough. I am soooooo sorry.

    Reply
    • Alan Bedenko November 22, 2010 at 10:37 am #

      I didn’t know what quantitative easing was, but was informed enough to have heard of it. The two videos I posted offer competing views of what it all means. I’m not Krugman, nor is this the newspaper.

      Reply
  8. Brian Castner November 22, 2010 at 11:07 am #

    I called Krugman a jackass because he’s conceited, self-righteous, condecending, and gives off a tone that he has never once considered for a moment that he may be wrong about anything. Look up Krugman in the thesarus, and “humility” appears as an antonym. Having a Nobel Prize means that you had a groundbreakingly good idea, the best one in your field that year. I does not mean you are incapable of being a douche bag. My judgement on his character is separate from his ideas. Those I can logically discuss, his research and policy proposals, without getting wrapped up in any personal emotions about his demeanor or fussiness.

    Reply
  9. Brian November 22, 2010 at 11:16 am #

    Bernanke is George Bush’s appointee. He know the Republican mantra: screw the workers. ‘Nuff said. The fix is in. Elections DO NOT matter, not for president, Congress, or anything else. The banks will gamble, and we will bail them out EACH AND EVERY TIME.

    Reply
  10. BobbyCat November 22, 2010 at 11:20 am #

    Clear writing and beinging understood is fundamentals to any writing, not just newspapers. When I see something that reads like Greek – in this case, foggy headlines, I point it out – trying to be helpful.

    When I was 18 or 20-something I shunned all criticism, “How dare they criticize my masterpieces?”

    Then I listened and learned a few things.

    Reply
    • Christopher Smith November 22, 2010 at 2:10 pm #

      I didn’t say I’m not listening, I hear your complaints. We’ve incorporated feedback in pretty much every design element on this website and listen to content feedback all the time. I’m also letting you know that we design and write our website in a specific way for a reason. We found our niche years ago and we’ve been pretty successful with it. Our goal was to create a site for people to discuss news and read viewpoints about the news they’ve gathered elsewhere. We still gather our own news, which is usually news we think is being ignored and the tenor of the coverage for that is often different.

      So far, we’ve been visited by over 10MM readers and we think the way we do things is working out pretty well.

      Reply
  11. Mike In WNY November 22, 2010 at 2:13 pm #

    Video 1 is more or less correct. Video 2 is the Fed’s spin. QE may provide short term improvements but will be saddled with long term negative results.

    Here’s an excerpt from our own local, esteemed Professor of Finance:

    The main point to be made is that when a government resorts to quantitative easing, it shows that it has run out of other means to finance its endeavors. It has reached the end of the line. A government finances itself by taxes. Borrowing is a hidden form of taxation; it defers the taxes to the future. Taxes are more or less visible to the population. They are voted on by Congress or a similar body. They are coercive, but they have at least the partially redeeming feature of being somewhat in the open and somewhat controllable by the citizens who vote for their representatives. Inflationary seizure or coercion via quantitative easing means that the government wants to spend more than it can raise by taxation and borrowing. Its ambition exceeds its grasp. “Ordinary” coercive means of finance no longer suffice. The government resorts to the printing press.
    All such money manipulations, which, of course, are accepted widely by economists as the norm, are the antithesis of a free market. The results cannot be good if society sets up a body with power to inject purchasing power if, when, and as it pleases and to whom it pleases. This is too much power without control over the consequences. This power simply augments government, giving it an uncontrollable option to seize the society’s goods and services. This cannot be a good idea. The supposed benefits of central banking are all illusory and impossible. Standing beside those imagined good effects are the inevitable bad consequences for many, many people, such as the now millions of unemployed whose trades and occupations are now found to be not in demand and who will now be years making the adjustments to find new work and incomes.

    Reply
  12. BobbyCat November 23, 2010 at 8:20 am #

    @Chris

    Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m not in your ‘niche’ market and out of the loop. I don’t claim to be hip to everything that’s going on. But I suspect that most people can’t decipher many of your headlines. I have no idea who “H.T.Marquil, Eric Lingenfelter, Clarence Farquhert or Ben Bemank” are. If most people are familiar with those names, then I’m wrong.

    Reply
  13. Hank November 23, 2010 at 11:19 am #

    Quantitative Easing is to National Finance as “Resettlement” meant to millions of Jews and Gypsies and Hungarians in WW2. It will bring the same results. At least it will be our currency that dies, not millions of human beings. A Shitty Euphemism that really says, You’ll need a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a watermelon. I guess Bernake and the Boys at the Fed never saw the price tag on a watermelon in Germany that said 460 Millionen Marks during their depression.

    Reply
  14. Russell November 24, 2010 at 3:26 pm #

    whomever made the seconds video used the same voice for both characters. they can’t even make a proper video, yet they expect me to believe their insane theories?

    did the second video actually say that goldman sachs is bot benefiting from these FED programs? give me a fucking break.

    the first video kick your

    Reply

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