"We sometimes forget that central banking as we know it today is, in fact, largely an invention of the past hundred years or so, even though a few central banks can trace their ancestry back to the early nineteenth century or before.It is a sobering fact that the prominence of central banks in this century has coincided with a general tendency towards more inflation, not less. If the overriding objective is price stability, we did better with the nineteenth-century gold standard and passive central banks, with currency boards, or even with `free banking.'The truly unique power of a central bank, after all, is the power to create money, and ultimately the power to create is the power to destroy."Paul Volcker, foreword to The Central Banks, 1995
Price stability is not, of course, the only priority of a central bank, depending on how narrowly or broadly one wishes to define it. But I think that the record of the Federal Reserve over the past twenty to thirty years is abysmal enough to cast doubt on their competency and objectivity by almost any other range of metrics, considering the prolonged stagnant real wage, growing wealth inequality, massively fraudulent banking system, and serial asset bubbles interspersed with systemic crises.
Austerity and financial repression for the people, and quantitative easing and subsidized money for the Banks and financiers that caused the crises. In what rational universe does this make sense?
What has gone wrong with our great experiment in central banking and fiat money is a good question, but for another day. But history does suggest that no class or organization is worthy of holding such power, without even more powerful safeguards against its abuse.
Gold and silver were capped around the round numbers for the better part of the day, and took a little cheap shot in the after hours as they did in the early open in New York.
Bubbe Yellen spoke at the San Francisco Fed near the close, basically stirring the verbal pot for the Fed's intended escape from the zero interest rate bound while hedging their bets broadly. See Janet Yellen's Pat Paulsen Speech.
That the program has been a failure to stimulate the economy, instead fostering bubbles, speculation, and much greater wealth inequality while failing to encourage organic growth in wages and livable jobs is besides the point.
The wealthy and the Banks are doing great, and look forward to doing even better as they continue to consolidate production and acquiring income producing assets on the cheap and paying for them with inflated paper like stock and bonds.
I have included the economic calendar for next week below, because it is likely to be more of an influence on the metals. Especially so in light of Bubbe's remarks about data dependency and the categories of data which she is setting her eyes upon.
The problem is much more than the Fed. The trade deals being negotiated, TTIP and TTP, are designed to continue to erode the power of people to make choices for their nation in terms of standards of living, social justice, child labor, environment, and so forth.
The bigger picture, which so few really understand, is the ongoing currency war, and the changes that are taking place to progress the post-Bretton Woods status quo. They cannot understand it because they have really known nothing else in their lifetimes, and their knowledge of history is highly selective and often wanting. They grasp on to often self-serving, crackpot theories to reassure themselves that change is not coming, and their pampered places are secure.
Change is coming. It may be entering modestly seated on the colt of an ass, but depending on how it is received, it may be bringing redemption for those who receive it, and a stinging rebuke for the den of thieves that have distorted the courtyards of the markets.
The choice is of course ours, but all things considered, we seem to be a people generally inclined to making very bad choices and building desolate places, and painting the bones of our folly contained therein with a thin coating of whitewash and rationalization. Those who rule those foul places were better off if they had never been born.
"And when he drew near and saw the City, he wept over it, saying, 'Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace and prosperity! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come when your enemies will set up barriers around you, and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your judgement and redemption.'”
Have a pleasant weekend.
