Yesterday - no more deflation Today - no rate increase (yet) CONGRATS TO THE NEW ADVERTISER FOR THIS FORUM ha ha ha
Pretty much mundane sound stuff from Greenspan. The rate is going to go up, sure .. we all know that. And when is does, does a quarter on such a low current base rate of 1% amount to much more than diddly squat? Corporate profits are steaming ahead and CEO's will for next year or 2 be concentrating on keeping going a high or increasing profit performance.
The news is always the best at the top! Corporate profits are still being manipulated, (excluding this, excluding that, one time charges occurring over and over, option expensing, just alot of smoke and mirrors.) But as long as the markets don't collapse WHO CARES!
The short-term portion of the yield curve has already "priced-in" a rate increase, thus everything that Greenspan does from here on out will be simply putting a "label" on what the markets have already adjusted to. Meanwhile, quarterly earnings comparisons going forward vs the same quarters last year are going to get much tougher, and I believe that the market is already starting to sense this. One last note: What if the non-farm payroll number comes in "weaker" than expected on May 7th?
The FED is not a gov institution it is a PRIVATE BANKERS GROUP (even if it was fundamentally it wouldn't change much as they can reclaim independancy like in europe). It is a fraud according to the economist Galbraith and it is THE PROBLEM of our economy according to Milton Friedman. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...=glance&s=books The Economics of Innocent Fraud by John Kenneth Galbraith (Author) Kenneth Galbraith has been at the center of the American economy since before the First World War. In this his new book, he offers a distillation of these years in both the public and the private sectors, the academy and the government, and explains where we are and how we got there. Galbraith argues that inherent in our economic system is a continuing divergence between reality and "conventional wisdom," or as he puts it self-serving belief and contrived nonsense, or "fraud." He contends that we observe the current state of the nation in a cloud of myth, believing that stockholders and owners run our corporate world. In reality, it is the management of giant corporations that controls not only the private sector, but also the public sector, too, from politicians, to the Federal Reserve Bank, to the Pentagon. Milton Friedman http://minneapolisfed.org/pubs/region/92-06/int926.cfm Friedman: One unsolved economic problem of the day is how to get rid of the Federal Reserve (yes he said it at the Minneapolis fed ). The most unresolved problem of the day is precisely the problem that concerned the founders of this nation: how to limit the scope and power of government. Tyranny, restrictions on human freedom, come primarily from governmental institutions that we ourselves set up. Abraham Lincoln talked about a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Today, we have a government of the people, by the bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats, including in the bureaucrats the elected members of Congress because that has become a bureaucracy too. And so undoubtedly the most urgent problem today is how to find some mechanism for restructuring our political system so as to limit the extent to which it can control our individual lives. You know, people have the image, have the idea, that somehow "we the people" are speaking through the government. That is nonsense.
People in 1929 believed that the power of FED can prevent the final big crash. So they closed their eyes with rate "regulation" whereas it is rather manipulation for the bankers. And it is the same thing today many people even usually naive know that the FED manipulate the rate but they think that they control the situation whereas they don't control anything: the fed follows the market and by market I don't mean the crowd I mean the organisers of the market that is to say the same bankers that control the FED. See also FOMC op. since many seem to ignore even how the rate are "regulated". Alan Greenspan isn't the "Maestro." He's Oz. by hussmanfunds http://www.hussmanfunds.com/html/fedirrel.htm
Instead of trying to understand what the FED is and what it's history is by reading slanted articles, here is a site that provides an education of the complete history and organization of the FED. Click on "The Fed 101 website" button. http://www.federalreserveeducation.org/