Even if you believe him - which I don't, it wasn't doled out, it was loaned - at apparently normal rates for the fed, and to large central banks (i.e. creditworthy). Near zero rates? Baloney. 0.25% interest is the normal market rate for such banks - but of course he doesn't actually say 0.25 he says "near zero".<p>12.3 trillion? What is this an Austin Powers movie?<p>There's around 10 trillion dollars of money in the <i>entire</i> US! (M2 and lower money supply.) And around 50 trillion in total assets.
It appears he's adding up all the overnight and very short term loans together to get his crazy high figures. If I borrow and repay a billion dollars ten times, I haven't risked $10b. Not to mention that these programs worked... The money that the Fed created and loaned has been returned. No tax dollars were lost and the inflationary risk has lapsed.
Why should a group of banks in collusion with the government have the right to get very wealthy by creating money and forcing me to accept it and use it?<p>To get an idea of the wealth involved, consider that most homes are purchased with borrowed money. Over the course of thirty years, the interest payments on the loans are two to three times greater than the cost of the homes themselves. Now consider that it cost the banks almost nothing to make the loan. They literally created most of the money at the time of the loan.<p>Thomas Edison said: People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt on the project (Muscle Shoals Dam) nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more money from the United States than will the People who supply all the material and do all the work. This is the terrible thing about interest.
Sometimes I wonder if all of this government doom-and-gloom stuff seems to be popping up more lately because it's really happening and all of this government incompetence is just now being uncovered or if I'm just paying more attention to it lately.<p>Kind of like the guy who trained himself to find golf balls everywhere.
Right. Except the Federal Reserve has zero impact on tax or fiscal policy. These are not "tax dollars".<p>The means by which the Fed extracts wealth from US citizens is not by taxation, but by inflation, since they effectively control the monetary base on which the money supply rests.<p>Some would argue that inflation is worse than taxation, since it disproportionately affects the lower class who pay the leading inflation "tax" in higher food and energy prices.<p>But that's an argument for another day. The fact is that journalists habitually get it wrong when they refer to the Federal Reserve as using "tax dollars", which is a blatant lie.<p>Also, as ars pointed out, these are currency swaps and loans, not handouts.
the subtitle asks if the crimes at hand are too big to comprehend -- this seems like an ultimate challenge to the mind of a hacker. complexity? bring it on.
This could be a good opportunity for a new international credit and currency system. I think an open standard, private sector based currency has a better chance than the G20 agreeing on a new reserve currency (nobody wants to anoint the next US).<p>Only startup I know working on this is bitcoin, any other alternative currencies?