Former Maestro of Misery Don’t Worry, Be Happy Spin on Soaring Inflation

Serving Wall Street at the expense of Main Street, former wrecking ball Fed chairman Bernanke from 2006 – 2014 never went away.

After artificially elevating stock prices, engineering runaway commodities, giving new life to zombie banks, destroying homes and evicting families, along with waging currency wars, he’s been ensconced at Brookings.

The elitist think tank one-sidedly supports wealth, power, privilege and forever wars at the expense of the general welfare.

On Bernanke’s watch, future Fed head, Main Street wrecker Yellen, now Biden regime Treasury secretary, apprenticed as Fed vice chairman under Wall Street’s Big Ben.

Before taking over as the Street’s main man, likeminded maestro of misery Greenspan wrecked things by money printing madness — what’s been standard operating procedure for decades to benefit privileged interests at the expense of most others.

Noted investment analyst Jeremy Grantham once said the following:

If he ran the Fed, he’d limit its “activities to making sure that the economy had a suitable amount of liquidity to function normally – a Goldilocks formula, not too hot, not too cold, just right.” 

He’d “force it to swear off manipulating asset prices through artificially low rates and asymmetric promises of help in tough times” – the so-called Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, Powell put.

Free market economist Milton Friedman called for abolishing the Fed, saying:

It has a “very poor record, and it’s done more harm than good” by creating financial crises.

“We don’t need the Fed,” he said, adding:

“I have for many years been in favor of replacing the Fed with a computer (that) would print out a specified number of paper dollars” to augment the money supply — the “same number, month after month, week after week, year after year.”

“The Fed has had very few periods of relatively good performance.” 

“For most of its history, it’s been a loose cannon on the deck, and not a source of stability.”

“I do not believe the Fed ought to let its monetary policy be determined by the stock market.” 

“The Fed ought to devote its attention solely to keeping a relatively stable price level of goods and services,” along with working to achieve full employment.

GDP growth doesn’t depend on elevating the national debt.

Artificially low interest rates encourage excess debt and speculation.

By producing investment bubbles for Wall Street, maestros of misery Greenspan, Big Ben, Yellen and Powell — the monetary equivalent of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse — showed indifference toward Main Street.

Along with third-worldizing America beyond where their predecessors went, they handed Wall Street and other privileged interests trillions of dollars of easy money.

They facilitated the largest-scale wealth transfer in world history, along with protracted Main Street Depression conditions for most US households — what’s on the cusp of deepening.

Fed chairmen serve monied interests exclusively. 

Interest rates artificially kept at near-zero for years benefitted speculators at the expense of savers, retirees and ordinary people overall.

In 2002, Bernanke was nicknamed Helicopter Ben for the following remarks, saying:

The Fed “has a technology called a printing press.”

It “allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”

Money is created out of thin air when banks extend loans.

When old ones are repaid faster than new ones, the money supply contracts. 

Quantitative easing (QE) reverses things.

Key is where Fed money goes. Dropping it on Main Street stimulates economic growth.

Handing it to Wall Street parks it in their reserve accounts — what David Stockman called “high grade monetary heroin.”

It’s “kill(ing) the patient (by) legalized bank robbery,” he once said.

Multiple unsustainable asset bubbles were inflated.

They all burst. No exceptions. This time isn’t different.

Years of money printing madness and bailouts reflect “the single most shameful chapter in American financial history,” he stressed.

Bernanke, his predecessor and successors operated by Abraham Maslow’s maxim. 

“(I)f the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail,” he said.

QE works when used constructively. Money injected responsibly into the economy creates growth. 

It creates jobs. When people have money they spend it.

A virtuous cycle of prosperity follows. 

America once was sustainably prosperous. 

Kleptocratically run today, it’s in decline and third-worldized for most households.

Ignoring the highest US inflation since 1947 at 16.8% — not the officially reported 8.6% figure cited by Bernanke, he asked the following:

“Are we in danger of repeating…inflation of the 1960s and 70s?”

Dismissive of perfect storm conditions not experienced earlier in our collective lifetime, he defied reality by falsely claiming “absolutely not (sic).”

Things are far worse today than any previous time in modern memory.

The worst financial crisis of the past century will likely keep inflation high, create economic chaos, bankrupt thousands of businesses and impoverish millions more Americans than already.

Hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones stressed the following:

“The depth and magnitude of the economic drop-off took Modern Monetary Theory – or the direct monetization of massive fiscal spending – from the theoretical to practice without any debate.” 

“It happened globally with such speed that even a market veteran like myself was left speechless.”

Bernanke knows what’s going on.

He shares responsibility for engineering hard times for most Americans to benefit the privileged few.

He knows the mess he was involved in creating has no easy solutions.

That when viewed in hindsight years from now, the 70s may be remembered as mild compared to the gathering storm now underway — what’s likely to be deep, protracted and destructive to the lives and well-being of most Americans.

Claiming that lessons learned a half century ago “make a repeat of that experience highly unlikely” amounts to whistling past the graveyard by Bernanke.

Since becoming Fed chairman in February 2018, Powell made the mess he inherited much worse by greater money printing madness than all his predecessors combined.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, he’s damned no matter what course he follows.

As always, ordinary people will suffer most from wrongheaded policies.

In its early stage, a punishing bull market in inflation likely has a long way to go before easing — because of years of monetary madness.

As explained in a previous article, the Powell Fed printed more money than what was created previously throughout US history.

What kickstarted accelerated inflation is now out of control.

Likely to persist for some time, perhaps years, there’s little the Fed can do to reverse the colossal mess it made.

As long as money is controlled by Wall Street to benefit the nation’s ruling class over the general welfare — instead of in public hands where it belongs — privileged interests alone will prosper at the expense of most others.

What Bernanke called Fed “independence” is nonexistent.

The same reality applies to its long ago lost “credibility.”

Instead of stabilizing the economy, smoothing out the business cycle, managing healthy, sustainable growth, and maintaining price stability, the Wall Street controlled Fed failed on all counts by serving monied interests exclusively.