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The Best in Alternative News

Two Examinations of U.S. Economic Policy…

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Today I am pleased to present a double feature on economic policy. Michael Hudson leads off with an explanation of economic policy as a social cost to the working class, and I follow up with an explanation that US economic policy is an act of national suicide…

Fed Data Shows a Half Century of Moderate Growth in the Fed’s Balance Sheet through Two World Wars – Then a Seismic Explosion Under Bernanke, Yellen and Powell…

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Last month the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released its 2021 annual report from its “Markets Group.” That’s the group that operates a trading floor (complete with speed dials to the trading houses on Wall Street) at the New York Fed, located not far from the New York Stock Exchange, as well as another trading floor on the premises of the Chicago Fed, which is not far from the futures exchanges in Chicago…

Stocks and Bond Yields Crater As the ‘American Consumer Is Strong’ Narrative Implodes

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While most blinkered investors ignored last week’s record surge in revolving consumer credit (i.e. credit card spending), this week’s Walmart and Target earnings brought it home to the rest of the country that the “American consumer is strong” or “consumer has best balance sheet ever” narrative imploded, crashing on the shores of a gigantically lopsided and divided national aggregate that hides the reality that most of America is unable to pay the ‘cost of living’ under Bidenomics 40-year-high inflation without resorting to the plastic…

Fed Chair Powell Telegraphs the Perfect Storm for Wall Street’s Megabanks: Rapid Rate Hikes Hitting $234 Trillion in Derivatives…

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The Federal Reserve (the Fed) is the central bank of the United States. It sets monetary policy, including control of the benchmark short-term interest rate known as the Federal Funds rate, or in Wall Street jargon, the “Fed Funds” rate. This is a key rate because it signals the rate at which overnight loans are made between financial institutions and the direction of interest rates in general…

At 3:12 P.M. Yesterday, the Stock Market Changed Its Mind on another Four Years of Jerome Powell and Plunged…

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Fed Chair Jerome Powell now finds himself in the same position as Morgan Stanley’s Howie Hubler and JPMorgan’s Bruno Iksil: he’s got a big trade on and no exit plan. The problem for the U.S. economy is this: Hubler and Iksil were gambling with billions of dollars. Powell is gambling with trillions of dollars. Powell’s Fed has effectively become the Whale in the U.S. debt market…

A Forensic Look at Jerome Powell’s “Pants on Fire” Explanation for His $1 Million to $5 Million Stock Sale…

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On Monday, October 18, the fearless Robert Kuttner at the American Prospect, broke the news that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell had sold between $1 million and $5 million of the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund on October 1, 2020, the same day that Powell had been on four phone calls with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who was coordinating the White House response to the financial crisis resulting from the pandemic…

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