Crash the train to stop it

[nailer]

Originally Posted by finnbow

In other words, it's a perfect time to default on the debt and thoroughly trash the economy.

Pretty sure there are enough votes in the GOP to prevent this. When our stock market bubble bursts will do the trick though. There's also inflation, relatively high interests rates and declining consumer confidence to consider.

[Dondilion]

Originally Posted by whell

https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...-debt-00057606



It was the Fed’s own experiments that helped create all this national debt in the first place. The Fed did so through an experimental program called quantitative easing, or QE. The importance of QE can’t be overstated. Under this program, the Fed created about 9 trillion new dollars between 2008 and today. (To put that in perspective, the Fed created only about $1 trillion in its first 95 years of existence. So it has printed 900 years’ worth of money in a little over 10 years, when measured against its historic rate.) All that money was injected straight into the Wall Street banking system, pumping up the very markets, like stocks and bonds, that are now threatened by the Fed’s tightening.[/I]

Years of QE and voracious spending, from Reagan to Bush to Clinton to Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden, all fueled by debt. And that debt sounds like its going to get a LOT more expensive.

More illumination on this bubble created by the Atlanticists' Central Banks.

Too much Fed liquidity has led to a whack-a-mole world of problems.
https://ft.com/content/af8c4d77-cb58...7-d7bf0f365cbb

[nailer]

Originally Posted by Dondilion

More illumination on this bubble created by the Atlanticists' Central Banks.

Too much Fed liquidity has led to a whack-a-mole world of problems.
https://ft.com/content/af8c4d77-cb58...7-d7bf0f365cbb

Maybe, maybe not. The perspective of these articles is very short term, i.e. what's happening right now. What would our financial state be like right now if The Fed had not increased liquidity back during The Great Recession. Would the few banks that are failing now, mostly due to their own actions, have been around to fail? How many others would currently exist? Would the S&P 500 even be above 20,000? I think not. The primary reason The Great Depression hit the US so hard was that The Fed tightened instead of loosening liquidity, directly causing all those banks to fail causing great hardships for many.

[finnbow]

Meanwhile, while demanding a cut in spending, House Republicans lead the way in supporting earmarks. The top 6, 10 of the top 12, and 15 of the top 20 who requested earmarks are Republican. Fucking hypocrites.

Earmarking federal funds for their home districts continues to grow in popularity among House Republicans, with 152 GOP members and two nonvoting delegates participating in the process this year, a CQ Roll Call analysis found.

Nearly 70 percent of House Republicans are seeking earmarks this year, based on member request data compiled by the House Appropriations Committee. That's up from almost 60 percent of the conference last year and just over half the year before.

Overall, House members asked for 5,067 earmarks, a nearly 7 percent increase over last year, for a total of $19.4 billion, a more substantial increase of over 56 percent from last year's total amount requested of $12.4 billion.

https://rollcall.com/2023/04/28/hous...er-new-regime/

[nailer]

And the post covid recovery would pretty much the same if Trump had been reelected. Presidents in and of themselves don't have much impact, but the Fed and Congress sure can.

[whell]

Originally Posted by finnbow

Meanwhile, while demanding a cut in spending, House Republicans lead the way in supporting earmarks. The top 6, 10 of the top 12, and 15 of the top 20 who requested earmarks are Republican. Fucking hypocrites.

Earmarking federal funds for their home districts continues to grow in popularity among House Republicans, with 152 GOP members and two nonvoting delegates participating in the process this year, a CQ Roll Call analysis found.

Nearly 70 percent of House Republicans are seeking earmarks this year, based on member request data compiled by the House Appropriations Committee. That's up from almost 60 percent of the conference last year and just over half the year before.

Overall, House members asked for 5,067 earmarks, a nearly 7 percent increase over last year, for a total of $19.4 billion, a more substantial increase of over 56 percent from last year's total amount requested of $12.4 billion.

https://rollcall.com/2023/04/28/hous...er-new-regime/

From your article:

The bulk of Weber’s requests were in the Energy-Water measure, the largest of which is a $260 million request for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project to improve floodgates along the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. Weber said 30 million tons of cargo, valued at $117 billion, pass through the waterway each year.

Michigan GOP Reps. Jack Bergman and freshman John James were second and third on the list, with Bergman asking for $465.8 million and James asking for $430.5 million.

However, those totals are inflated as the two shared a $394.1 million request for an Army Corps of Engineers project for a new lock at the Soo Locks, which connects Lake Superior and the lower Great Lakes.

The top Democratic requester, California’s Zoe Lofgren, was seventh overall, at $265.6 million. Lofgren’s leading request was $200 million for a risk management project for the Pajaro River in the Energy-Water measure.


These are requests to fund improvements in infrastructure, for which I believe funding has been approved under the bipartisan infrastructure spending bill. So, what's your beef?

[whell]

Back to the Fed's actions: another week, another bank failure. The Fed bought First Republic Bank over the weekend and sold it to JP Morgan Chase. Treasury and the Fed has been telling us for weeks now that bank failures were an isolated issue, and that the banking system is stable.

Here's an interesting contrarian article on that:

The fact is that regulators — including the Fed — have failed to keep the banking system safe. Banks depend on trust: depositors need to be confident that they can withdraw their money whenever they want. That has always been true. What has changed is the ease with which billions of dollars can be withdrawn in a nano-second online.

And this:

As the head of the government agency responsible for supervising SVB, Powell bears responsibility for the oversight failures that precipitated its collapse. Unlike the massive mortgage-lending fraud that caused the 2008 financial crisis (the extent of which became clear only years later, following numerous lawsuits and other legal actions), SVB’s lending seemed sound.

To be sure, even good lending can turn sour in the midst of a significant downturn, and suspicions of dubious activity inevitably arise when so much money is being held in uninsured low-interest accounts. But SVB’s problems were more prosaic, and any banking regulator worth their salt should have acted, especially when the regulator was the one creating the risk.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by whell

So, what's your beef?

Because the House FreeDumb Caucus has been adamantly opposed to earmarks.

The conservative House Freedom Caucus has come out swinging against the idea, voting to formally oppose any form of congressionally directed spending, “whether in the 117th Congress or any future Congress.” Caucus members argued that the practice is ripe for abuse and would only lead to “pork-barrel” spending.

“They’re a bad idea. I’m opposed to them,” said Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), a member of the Freedom Caucus. “They’ve been described as a gateway drug toward corruption.”

“I am totally against it,” added Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a co-founder of the group. “I don’t think Republicans should be supportive of earmarks.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/0...armarks-471344

[nailer]

Originally Posted by finnbow

Because the House FreeDumb Caucus has been adamantly opposed to earmarks.

The conservative House Freedom Caucus has come out swinging against the idea, voting to formally oppose any form of congressionally directed spending, “whether in the 117th Congress or any future Congress.” Caucus members argued that the practice is ripe for abuse and would only lead to “pork-barrel” spending.

“They’re a bad idea. I’m opposed to them,” said Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), a member of the Freedom Caucus. “They’ve been described as a gateway drug toward corruption.”

“I am totally against it,” added Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a co-founder of the group. “I don’t think Republicans should be supportive of earmarks.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/0...armarks-471344

Which caucus members are asking for earmarks?

[Dondilion]

Quantitative Easing was employed for too long. The near-zero interest rate regime created a business matrix of easy money, overvalued enterprises, and a class of very government-dependent hustlers. Overtime distortions grew

the system is unwinding itself organically despite the late efforts of the Fed.