Quantitative Easing- such a positive sounding name

It amazes me when the government uses terms like quantitative easing to manipulate the minds of the american people. You see these candidates debate talking about when they predict social security to collapse and they use numbers like 2037 or 2041. The answer is 2010, the answer was 2005. They worry about the amount of money people counting on to survive their "golden years" NOW except with what they are doing, they are taking that check that barely covers bare essentials and devaluing it to a point where it is worthless. Internationally they use it to devalue our debt to help prevent further economic collapse while simultaneously taking our American's paychecks and making them completely unsatisfactory meanwhile the standard middle-class American has no idea they are being robbed. The decreasing dollar gets backed by an increasing gold price seemingly making up for our losses but in reality, it only costs more money to buy gold because the dollar is worth less money. It really doesn't seem that we had too much of a choice with where we were heading but it was the sheer lack of fiscal responsibility of our president, who i voted for, that led it get to where we are. We saw what happened when they did this with the subprimes. Expect no different

Agreed Kyle, I think its disgusting how everyone sits around and just watches it happen (and continually ask myself what its going to take to get action from the people, which in reality wont happen until they have no $ and rebel).

From what I understand the term "Quantitative Easing" is basically printing money to either pay off debts or purchase more financial assets. Which yes, devalues the dollar. My bigger question is how is China going to react when we pay them back approximately $.50 on the dollar of the debt we owe them since we continue to devalue our dollar rather than letting the economy take its natural course. Whether or not a massive war breaks out over this is yet to be seen...but if I were a nation loaning $ to the U.S. I would be PISSED and ready to fight!!!

It's a hidden tax, plain and simple. If the government prints $600 billion, that means the rest of the U.S. money pool just lost $600 billion in value. The government has taken $600 billion from everyone who holds a U.S. dollar and put it in their pocket. It's just another of many ways that this administration can tax us without actually "taxing" us. Good to see Obama keeping those promises!

Is there a reason they did this on election day? Was it so that we wouldn't notice?

From what I understand the term "Quantitative Easing" is basically printing money to either pay off debts or purchase more financial assets.

You understand it correctly.. They are monetizing the debt. Inflation, anyone?

http://econompicdata.blogspot.com/20...uratively.html

You guys don't seriously believe that it could happen any other way do you? Don't you realize that Americans are exporting 1/2 trillion dollars of our economy each year as a result of the trade deficit alone. How will China react? They will grin and bear it because it's the only acceptable way to continue to do business. How would China like it if Americans were smart enough to realize that they need to suck it up and take the painful steps needed to address the trade deficit directly.

Infaltion is not a concern for you, John?

Sorry for the typo--Inflation is not a concern. . . ?

Inflation is just over 1%. Its not a concern as of now. What we need to look out for is when banks stop hoarding money and start putting it back into the market. That will drive inflation more than anything because it will create a huge increase to the money supply. Watch inflation, when it starts to tick up, you can be the Fed will start increasing the target rate so things don't spiral upward to fast.

Inflation is inevitible. I'm more concerned that the American public can't understand that 1+1=2.

I wrote this on 10/18....

Or we can just keep blaming the party in power and fooling ourselves. But this economy isn't going to recover unless something the govt does something that counters this affect. And that may just mean the fed injects more money into the economy. Countries dependant on our exporting dollars may prefer that to drying up the well or protectionism.

We need an economy that supports jobs at all levels of skill. We cannot depend on a small segment of the economy like tech to carry us. And the service sector does nothing to counter the trade deficit. The world doesn't depend on China as an monetary standard because China consumes money, while we export money. Printing money and devaluing saving is the only way we can continue to export money. We are just staving off economic disaster with economic decline.

The only reason I voted in this election was to vote against have a crook for Gov. We got the crook but at least I can say that I voted against him. I'm all for giving the Republicans another chance to show that their economic principles are just as big a failure as the ones that came before.

@ Psudy- If Helicopter Ben has a target inflation rate of around 2% those yields don't look so good. Am I missing something?

Some interesting numbers and questions-
Wealthiest 1% hold 83% of risk assets.
20% of US population owns all risk assets.

So you have to ask yourself, who is getting the most from pumping up the markets?

Why has silver surged in the last two days? (Hint - JP Morgan Chase RICO price fixing lawsuit filed this week)

Initial jobless claims continue to hover around 450k a month (no mention of that on the news) and 151k non farm payroll increase last month. Private sector was up as well. OK, I'll play along, the jobless rate stays the same. But what about the bump in folks on food stamps to 48.4m, pushing an almost 60% increase over 2 years? Which all points to the larger issue- 3.5 million people have left the workforce and stayed out. Care to guess what unemployment would be if these folks were still looking?

The greatest transfer of wealth continues unabated.

Hey, did you guys catch who got eliminated from Dancing ? I forgot to set my dvr...

Are you looking at the yields on the treasuries mentioned in the article? The yields on the MBS are where they are making the money. They bought and are buying them in a depressed market. Good MBS's are trading in the 102-108 price range today.

Investors all over the world--not just the US--put money into commodities, such as gold and silver, when the dollar is on a downward spiral. What concerns me is 4 dollar a gallon gasoline by the end of summer. That'll definitely kill any chance of recovery. Here's one area, though, the Republicans may be able to do something about http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Fannie...&asset=&ccode=