The Federal Reserve's Crony’s Hillary And Ben Bernanke On The Economy Hunter Lewis mises.org May 18, 2014
Policy of virtually giving away money to favored institutions may go on and on into the indefinite future Hillary Clinton’s speech yesterday revealed some of her thoughts about reviving the economy. She said she was trying to “encourage more companies to come off the sidelines and, frankly, for some to use some of that cash that is sitting there waiting to deploy.” This echoes the naïve idea embraced by the Obama administration that economies are fueled by ever more borrowing and spending. But this is not how jobs are created. Jobs are created when businesses deploy their cash savings wisely. It is always the quality of investment that counts, not the quantity. If high quality investment opportunities are lacking, often because of government interference with the economy, businesses actually help us all by refusing to waste their cash on projects that will blow up in short order and just create even more unemployment in the long run. When this false recovery, fueled by all the wasteful spending, blows up, as it will eventually, what will pull us out of the next crash? It will be those businesses and individuals who have refused to play at the casino, who have saved and put money away, who will be able to step in, invest, and start a genuine, not a phony, recovery process. Hillary’s viewpoint is as crony capitalist as President Obama’s. They both complain that government has done favors for business and business in turn must do favors for government. Favors start with campaign contributions, but extend to more hiring, especially before an election. Who cares about quality of investment, or long run results? “In the long run we are all dead,” as Lord Keynes, the godfather of crony capitalism, helpfully reminded us.
Hillary further stated that “as secretary of state I saw the way extreme inequality corrupted other societies.” This is a clever reversal of the truth . It is corruption, in particular crony capitalist corruption, that creates the worst kind of inequality, in which the poor, the young, and the middle class fall further and further behind while rich government cronies thrive. There was more nonsense in Hillary’s speech. She boasted about how 23mm new jobs had been created during her husband’s administration and the government’s budget balanced, without mentioning the role of the dot-com bubble in making it all look good until the mini-crash of 2000. In truth, today’s rotten economy had its origin under the Clinton administration, but who will believe this when the 2016 election rolls around? This speech has been called “populist” by the press, and much of it purported to be. Hillary said that “some are calling [today’s economy] a throwback to the gilded age of the robber barons.” This is ironic coming from Mrs. Clinton, who is the master manipulator of the crony system, and of late has been busily giving speeches on Wall Street and elsewhere for as much as $450,000, and often for $200250,000, usually with a private jet thrown in for transportation. Mrs. Clinton has been doing this since leaving the secretary of state job. Ben Bernanke waited for two months after leaving the chairmanship of the Fed, but is now cashing in the same way. He has spoken at an Abu Dhabi conference, on a private telechat to Japan, and at select Wall Street dinners hosted by the likes of JP Morgan Chase at posh restaurants such as Le Bernardin. His speech fee is also reported to be around $250,000 with private transportation extra. According to participants in the dinners, Bernanke suggests that the Fed a) wants reported inflation of at least 2% and b) will hold interest rates down for a long time. In effect, then, the present policy of virtually giving away money to favored institutions may go on and on into the indefinite future. Meanwhile another report today reveals that savers lost $750 billion in interest they could have earned since 2008 if the Fed had not repressed rates. This estimate is very much on the low side, and much of this money came right out of the pocket of the endlessly abused middle class. It is a shame to see Ben Bernanke enriching himself among the people he enriched as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Prior to this, as much as he contributed to the corruption rampant in this economy, he had not personally benefited from it.
The Meat Crisis Is Here: Price Of Shrimp Up 61% – 7 Million Pigs Dead – Beef At All-Time High Michael Snyder Economic Collapse May 16, 2014
As the price of meat continues to skyrocket, will it soon be considered a “luxury item” for most American families? This week we learned that the price of meat in the United States rose at the fastest pace in more than 10 years last month. As the price of meat continues to skyrocket, will it soon be considered a “luxury item” for most American families? This week we learned that the price of meat in the United States rose at the fastest pace in more than 10 years last month. Leading the way is the price of shrimp. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the price of shrimp has jumped an astounding 61 percent compared to a year ago. The price of pork is also moving upward aggressively thanks to a disease which has already killed about 10 percent of all of the pigs in the entire country. And the endless drought in the western half of the country has caused the size of the U.S. cattle herd to shrink to a 63 year low and has pushed the price of beef to an all-time high. This is really bad news if you like to eat meat. The truth is that the coming “meat crisis” is already here, and it looks like it is going to get a lot worse in the months ahead. A devastating bacterial disease called “early mortality syndrome” is crippling the shrimping industry all over Asia right now. According to Bloomberg, this has pushed the price of shrimp up 61 percent over the past 12 months… In March, shrimp prices jumped 61 percent from a year earlier, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The climb is mainly due to a bacterial disease known as early
mortality syndrome. While the ailment has no effect on humans, it’s wreaking havoc on young shrimp farmed in Southeast Asia, shrinking supplies. This disease has an extremely high mortality rate. In fact, according to the article that I just quoted, it kills approximately nine out of every ten shrimp that it infects‌ Cases of early mortality syndrome, which destroys the digestive systems of young shrimp, were first reported in China in 2009, said Donald Lightner, a professor of animal and comparative biomedical sciences at University of Arizona in Tucson. The disease, which kills about 90 percent of the shrimp it infects, traveled from China to Vietnam to Malaysia and then to Thailand, he said. Cases also were reported in Mexico last year, Lightner said. A different disease is driving up the price of pork in the United States. It is known as the porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, and in less than a year it has spread to 30 states and has killed approximately 7 million pigs. The price of bacon is already up 13.1 percent over the past year, but this is just the beginning. It is being projected that U.S. pork production could be down by as much as 10 percent this year, and Americans could end up paying up to 20 percent more for pork by the end of 2014. The price of beef has also moved to unprecedented heights. Thanks to the crippling drought that never seems to end in the western half of the nation, the size of the U.S. cattle herd has been declining for seven years in a row, and it is now the smallest that is has been since 1951. Over the past year, the price of ground chuck beef is up 5.9 percent. It would have been worse, but ranchers have been slaughtering lots of cattle in order to thin their herds in a desperate attempt to get through this drought. If this drought does not end soon, the price of beef is going to go much, much higher. As prices for shrimp, pork and beef have risen, many consumers have been eating more chicken. But the price of chicken is rising rapidly as well.
In fact, the price of chicken breast is up 12.4 percent over the past 12 months. Unfortunately, this could just be the very beginning of this meat crisis. As I wrote about recently, some scientists are warning that we could potentially be facing “a century-long megadrought“. And right now, there are no signs that the drought out west is letting up. Just check out the map posted below. It comes from the U.S. Drought Monitor, and it shows how the drought in California has significantly intensified since the beginning of the year…
And considering how much the rest of the nation relies on the agricultural production coming out of California, it is very alarming to see that the drought is getting even worse. Right now, things are so bone dry in most of the state that it is easy for wildfires to get out of control. In fact, Governor Jerry Brown has just declared a state of emergency in San Diego County because of the vicious wildfires that are raging there… Officials ordered another round of evacuations early Thursday north of San Diego as gusty winds and near 100-degree temperatures offer little relief from at least nine fires that have consumed a 14-square mile area of Southern California. Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for San Diego County, which frees up special resources and funding for the firefight. The fires, coming earlier than normal in the wildfire season, are being fed by brush and trees left brittle by prolonged drought. They are also being whipped by a Santa Ana wind system that reverses the normal flow of wind from the Pacific Ocean and creates tinderbox fire conditions. For the first time in its 14-year-history, the U.S. Drought Monitor, a federal website that tracks drought, designated the entire state of California as in a severe (or worse) drought.
If you do not live out west, you may have no idea how very serious this all really is. For years, I have been warning about the potential for dust bowl conditions to return to the western half of the country. Now it is actually starting to happen. And we already have tens of millions of people in this country that are struggling to feed themselves. If you doubt this, please see my previous article entitled “Epidemic Of Hunger: New Report Says 49 Million Americans Are Dealing With Food Insecurity“. So what happens if drought, diseases and plagues continue to cause food production in this country to plummet? Those that have studied these things tell us that there is a clear correlation between food prices and civil unrest. For example, the following is a short excerpt from a recent Scientific American article… Since the beginning of 2014, riots have occurred in countries including Thailand and Venezuela. Although they’re different cultures on different continents, these mass protests movements may all have one commonality; increasing food prices may have contributed to their occurrence. The cost of food has been steadily increasing in both Thailand and Venezuela; last month demonstrators in Caracas took to the streets marching with empty pots to protest food shortages. According to Dr. Yaneer Bar-Yam and fellow researchers at the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), events such as these may be anticipated by a mathematical model that examines rising food costs. The events of 2014 aren’t without precedent; the price of food has provoked (and placated) throughout history, beginning in Imperial Rome when Augustus introduced grain subsidies. In recent years, the Middle East has been particularly affected by the cost of grain. Centuries after Egypt developed bread as we recognize it, the nation experienced a bread intifada – the country rioted for two days in January 1977 following Anwar Sadat’s decision to drastically decrease food subsidies. More recently, under the rule of Hosni Mubarak, the price of grain rose 30 percent between 2010 and 2011. Then, on January 25, 2011 a new revolution began in Egypt. Could rapidly rising food prices cause civil unrest in the United States eventually? It won’t happen today, and it won’t happen tomorrow, but some day it might. Meanwhile, you might want to start carving out a significantly larger portion of the family budget for food for the foreseeable future. The Meat Crisis Is Here! VIDEO BELOW http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzylgCQkj4U
INFOWARS.COM BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND