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Showing posts from October, 2019

Collins and Woodall, Egg on Faces

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It’s votes like the one last week, in which House Republicans sided overwhelmingly with Nancy Pelosi, rebuking President Trump for pulling out of Syria, that make me wonder who is really pulling the strings of our elected representatives.  I like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.  But sometimes something so inexplicable happens, such as the vote last week, that leads to the impression something is going on behind the scenes, causing congressmen like Forsyth County’s own Doug Collins and Rob Woodall to suddenly abandon reason, abandon their constituents, abandon the leader of their party, the leader of their country and for that matter the free world, and side with politically-insane Nancy Pelosi in condemning our President. In poll after poll, the American people, on all sides, overwhelmingly agree with Trump’s decision to pull American forces out of Syria.   The American people want their troops out of harm’s way, and home from foreign deployments unrelated to U.S. national

Federal Reserve on Life Support

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Last week, Chairman Jerome Powell announced the Federal Reserve’s decision to reverse a policy in place since President Trump’s election and begin once again enlarging the central bank’s balance sheet, programming the regular purchase of U.S. Treasury bonds and holding them until further notice.  My, my, that sounds like a dry topic for a Friday, doesn’t it?  And the manner in which financial journals and talking heads speak of Fed policy decisions such as this one is so outrageously dull that it’s almost like they want you to stop reading or turn the channel.  But you owe it to yourself to stay with me here.  When you understand what the Fed Chairman is doing and why, I venture to say it will catch your attention.  Consider the term, “quantitative easing.”  The Fed uses it to create an impression in public mind that all this high finance stuff is beyond normal abilities to understand.  Once that task is complete, they can do anything they want to do and no one will question them.  Now

Ukraine, What Really Happened

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I learned some time ago that geopolitical events always seem to stem from two primary concerns, the control of money and the control of resources.  So let’s just say that there is some struggling country out there.  It has natural resources, but lacks the money and technology to extract them and use them for the good of its people.  Accordingly, if such a country received the right kind of help, then perhaps it could use those resources to make life within its borders a little better for its citizens.  And let’s just say that country’s government sends out an appeal for assistance in extracting and managing untapped natural wealth for the good of its people.  Let’s say that government makes it a national goal to become energy independent, no longer requiring fuels from questionably-friendly neighbors.  That would be an appropriate goal for any national government, would it not?  Well, in 2013, that is exactly what the democratically-elected Ukrainian government decided to do, att

Fed Handing Billions to Wall Street?

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Two weeks ago, the Fed announced lowering interest rates…again.  Soon afterward, articles began surfacing alleging that Wall Street banks were struggling with liquidity, on the verge of default, and that the New York Fed had stepped in with massive bailouts, dropping billions into accounts of desperate banks, just to keep them alive.  Is that really what was happening?  Not really.  It’s just the process of manipulating interest rates. Remember, the Fed payments to Wall Street began simultaneously with the interest rate announcement.  But the Fed’s Board cannot raise or lower interest rates with a simple announcement.  They can only establish a “target” interest rate, in this case, between 1.75% and 2%, down a quarter percent from where it was.  To execute that new policy, since any market rate of interest would be well above the rates we are talking about, the Fed must actually go into the market with dollars and buy prevailing rates down.  So, to accomplish that the Fed creates a