Senin, 21 Maret 2011

Supreme Court Trumps Fed, China Importing Silver, George Colloway on Libya, and Steve Forbes Predicts Gold Standard?

From Bloomberg today:
The Federal Reserve will disclose details of emergency loans it made to banks in 2008, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an industry appeal that aimed to shield the records from public view.
The justices today left intact a court order that gives the Fed five days to release the records, sought by Bloomberg News’s parent company, Bloomberg LP. The Clearing House Association LLC, a group of the nation’s largest commercial banks, had asked the Supreme Court to intervene.
Like I always say, sunshine is the best disinfectant.  Information will always lead to the decentralization of power.  When it comes to the Fed, buying massive amounts of precious metal helps too.  China gets the idea:
(Bloomberg) -- China’s Silver Imports in February Were 245.6 TonsChina’s imports of silver in February were 245.6 metric tons, the customs agency said. Imports of platinum were 7.3 tons and palladium shipments were 3.3 tons, it said today.
That won't stop the coming inflation though.  While many are estimating inflation was 10% last year in China, some people just can't deal with inflation here:
Police say a San Antonio Taco Bell customer enraged that the seven burritos he ordered had gone up in price fired an air gun at an employee and later fired an assault rifle at officers before barricading himself into a hotel room.
Brian Tillerson, a manager at the Taco Bell/KFC restaurant, told the San Antonio Express-News that the man was angry the Beefy Crunch Burrito had gone from 99 cents to $1.49 each.
What a shame.  We have already seen what increasing food prices do in places such as Egypt.  How long will Krugman claim that deflation is still the problem?  Still on the Keynesian calls for more stimulus and QE,  it doesn't beat the kind of idiocy we are engaging in with Libya right now.  George Calloway gets it mostly right:
Disregard the pensioners comment. Calloway has entered a growing list of protesters to the Libyan intervention.  Russian Prime Minister Vladiminir Putin sums it up perfectly:
Putin, in the first major remarks from a Russian leader since a coalition of Western countries began air strikes in Libya, said that Muammar Gaddafi's government fell short of democracy but added that did not justify military intervention.

"The resolution is defective and flawed," Putin told workers at a Russian ballistic missile factory. "It allows everything. It resembles medieval calls for crusades."

Putin said that interference in other countries' internal affairs has become a trend in U.S. foreign policy and that the events in Libya indicated that Russia should strengthen its own defense capabilities. 
While my sympathy goes out to all the civilians yearning for freedom in Libya (Yemen and Bahrain included), I have no sympathy for these guys about to be bombarded with toxic securities.  MarketWatch reports:
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The Treasury Department said Monday that it will begin to sell its portfolio of $142 billion in agency-guaranteed mortgage-backed securities. A senior Treasury official said the department plans to sell up to $10 billion in MBS per month subject to market conditions. The sales could generate a profit for taxpayers of about $15-$20 billion as market conditions have improved, the official said. Congress gave Treasury the power to purchase the securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to provide stability to financial markets during the financial crisis of 2008. The official said the sales were not related to the looming debt ceiling.
I will end with a weird prediction from Steve Forbes from his column regarding housing today:
When the dollar is relinked to gold--which will happen within a few years--nominal long-term interest rates won't be much different from what they are today.
I highly doubt it, but stranger things have happened.  Kind of like when many on the left like Paul Krugman insist that government employment has not risen in the past few years when all the data says otherwise.

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