You have to understand the relationship between the banks and the Fed. The Fed was created in 1913 by the banks to police the banks. That's like a group of inmates choosing another group of inmates to be the guards of the prison. Greenspan and Clinton created the recent mess and Goldman and Co were good and long Oil when they announced the possibility of a super spike to $200. The reason they announced that is so they could exit their long position and get short against the general public. If you want a detailed answer to your question read "Web of Debt," by Ellen Brown or "The Creature from Jekyll Island," by Edward Griffin. Both books are heavily biased but they are excellent reads for anyone who is interested in the formation and operations of the Fed.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/0...edium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheBigPicture+(The+Big+Picture) There is a lot of it there... IMO, next Fed meeting (after the election), I think they will notice that many commodities are at all time highs, and then magically they will all crash.
The gov't nor the FED didn't pull off the greatest ripoff of main street and biggest bank robbery in the last century via subprime fraud CDO and sold overpriced worthless stocks of citigroup...it's still 90% of $50/share and dilution of 75%.. billions of investor capital vanished. all the stolen money is now in foreign secret banks now. as for develeraging,,the money was fake...there was no money in the shell game..the assets were worthless. so buying power of the hedge funds went down..it was all paper wealth. on paper; it wasn't that long ago citigroup and goldman sachs risk bankruptcy an GM going into receivership. it was OVERLEVERAGED AND FRAUD that bankrupted the banks. why did the bank pull credit..the banks were insolvent. loan defaults. by 2007 the writing was already in wall but the FED didn't want to admit it in public...the banks were insolvent from subprime fraud. they open the box and they saw sh###t balance sheets. worthless assets. now the risk is US defaulting on it's debt...gov't debt is unsustainable...or force to slash the gov't beaucracy of end teh war it cannot afford...empires fall from bankruptcy.soldiers adn bullets and bombs cost money.