Posts Tagged ‘free market’

Did you know that an average of 23 manufacturing facilities were shut down every single day in the United States last year? As World War II ended, the United States emerged as the greatest industrial power that the world has ever seen. But now America’s industrial might is being gutted like a fish and both political parties seem totally unconcerned. Yes, we will always need trading relationships that are fair and balanced with other countries that have economic systems that are similar to our own. However, the truth is that most of our trading relationships are neither “fair” nor balanced. For example, China manipulates currency rates so that Chinese products are much cheaper than they should be, they brazenly steal our technology and we let them get away with it, they deeply subsidize their most important industries and they exploit their citizens by allowing them to be paid slave labor wages. How in the world does that resemble the “free market” at work? Predatory nations such as China do everything that they can to distort the free market. So why in the world would any rational economist ever recommend that we should keep trading with other countries that are cheating us blind? After you read the facts in this article about the gutting of America’s industrial might, hopefully you will get very angry. We need the American people to start getting very upset about these very important issues.

Read more at The Economic Collapse Blog

If you were watching capital markets closely yesterday, you saw a phenomenon that has rarely been seen before. I certain never have. And it was linked to the Federal Reserve’s policy statement, released about 2:15pm Eastern time.

This was an extraordinary statement, containing several rarely-seen features. The first one, of course, was the commitment by the Fed to keep policy interest rates at or near zero until the middle of 2013. Never before to my knowledge has the Fed put a specific schedule on its interest-rate guidance. The expectation by market participants has been that the Fed would start raising rates as soon as economic conditions (notably unemployment) improved, and they could argue over the timing. Yesterday, that changed.

by Francis Cianfrocca, 8/10/2011

Read more at http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2011/08/10/the-fed-gooses-the-capital-markets/

More market manipulation by the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve pledged for the first time to keep its benchmark interest rate at a record low at least through mid-2013 in a bid to revive the flagging recovery after a worldwide stock rout.

The Federal Open Market Committee discussed a range of policy tools to bolster the economy and said it is “prepared to employ these tools as appropriate,” it said in a statement today in Washington. Three members of the FOMC dissented, preferring to maintain the pledge to keep rates low for an “extended period.”

by Jeannine Aversa and Scott Lanman, Yahoo Finance, 8/09/2011

Read more at http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Fed-to-Keep-Rates-at-Record-bloomberg-304643584.html

Free market? There they go again . . . penalizing savings.

Fed holds rates on inflation concerns

By Robin Harding in Washington, ft.com, 6/22/2011

The US Federal Reserve gave a downbeat assessment of the world’s largest economy on Wednesday as it pointed to slower than expected growth and higher inflation.

In the most significant change to its policy statement, it stripped out all reference to “subdued” measures of underlying inflation and said that the economy is growing “somewhat more slowly than the Committee had expected”.

–SNIP– The Fed said that interest rates will remain on hold at 0 to 0.25 per cent for an “extended period”

Read more at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9f913490-9cea-11e0-8678-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1Q38gDVSm

by Cong. Ron Paul, (R-TX)

Recent economic data show that U.S. job growth in May was negligible, while the official unemployment figure– at least the figure the Labor Department admits to– rose to 9.1%. The real unemployment figure, however, as compiled by economist John Williams, may well be higher than 20%. It is clear the U.S. economy is in terrible shape, and that no amount of government spending or Federal Reserve quantitative easing can reduce unemployment, increase real productivity, or address our debt fiasco.U.S. jobs and productivity are dependent on the accumulation of private capital to finance existing businesses or fund new entrepreneurial activity. Private capital– whether accumulated by profitable U.S. businesses, invested by private equity and venture capital firms, or attracted from abroad– is the key to economic growth and new jobs. But we cannot create jobs if we demonize profits, punish risk-taking capitalists, and stay hostile to foreign investment.

The steps to encouraging capital investment and creating new jobs in America are simple, though not easy:

Read more at http://paul.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1876&Itemid=69