Why I think this will be worse than the Great Depression

You have got to be fucking kidding. You need a serious education in economics. Yes, the Fed can print money into infinity but in doing so the price or real assets such as gold will soar leaving worthless pieces of paper in its wake. The more the Fed prints the more <B>WORTHLESS</B> paper FIAT money becomes. Take your butt straight to the library and start reading about the histories of Fiat Currencies. Throughout history they have all ended the same way and the US dollar will eventually collapse. When? Who knows, but it will collapse when the international community begins to say, "no thanks."

 

And...if you study history you'll quickly realize the reason we are in this mess is because the Federal Reserve recklessly expanded the money supply from 1995 forward and they are trying to fix this problem by creating even more of it. That's like you and I trying to fix our swelling credit card accounts by transfering balances to more credit cards. You can I can get away with that for a while but eventually that house of cards will collapse when we can't get another credit card. The Federal Reserve will collapse when people begin refusing dollars backed by the Fed. You simply cannot print money into eternity and expect it to retain it's value. The Federal Reserve will eventually run out of credit cards.

 

http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse Here is a crash course on economics

 

Oh please... this compared to the Great Depression is like a pin prick compared to a gunshot wound.

 

Thanks for that link ammo.

 

I think I probably worded by post very poorly.

I absolutely agree with you that the Fed printing money helped cause this mess and would cause massive inflation. By keeping interest rates under equilibrium for so long, this caused an imbalance in savings and investment which always causes a greater frequency of bubbles (and thus panics) which destabilize resource allocation and put the economy at great risk.

My main point was to say the Fed could and is in the process of doing this, and I agree it is a terrible thing.

 

After much consideration I'm placing blame with Greenspan.

When housing prices began to rise stupidly he should have started raising rates to cool off the market. Instead he lowered rates to historically low levels and the thing ran away like Chernobyl. He had his hand on the throttle. It was his watch.

At the time I remember wondering wtf he was thinking when my house doubled in 2004-2005. Why didn't Greenspan act?

 

Starting from the very general, what are the current macroeconomic objectives, if you listen to the bobble-heads and hot air coming out of Washington at the moment?

First: growth, of course! Getting the economy going. That calls for economic stimulus. Let’s see how high the prices go up this time. Maybe this time around we can achieve hyperinflation.

Second: Stabilizing financial institutions: getting banks lending – that’s important too. You see, we are just not in enough debt yet, that’s our problem. We need more debt, and quickly!

Third: jobs! We need to create jobs. Low-wage jobs, of course, to replace all the high-wage manufacturing jobs we’ve been shedding for decades now, and replacing them with low-wage service sector jobs, mainly ones without any job security or benefits. We need much more of that, and quickly!

So that’s what we have now.

If you thought that the previous episode of uncontrolled debt expansion, globalized Ponzi schemes, and economic hollowing-out was silly, then I predict that you will find this next episode of feckless grasping at macroeconomic straws even sillier. Except that it won’t be funny. I don’t recommend passively standing around and watching the show.

Right now the Washington economic stimulus team is putting on their Scuba gear and diving down to the engine room to try to invent a way to get a diesel engine to run on seawater. They speak of change, but in reality they are terrified of change and want to cling with all their might to the status quo. But this game will soon be over, and they don’t have any idea what to do next.

So, what is there for them to do? What should their realistic new objectives be?

Forget “growth,” forget “jobs,” forget “financial stability.”

That ship has sailed...

This ship is on the rocks, water is rising, and the captain is shouting “Full steam ahead! So do you listen to guy on the bridge, or do you desert your post in the engine room and go help don the lifejackets... deploy the lifeboats?

 

25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1878509,00.html

 

For one who claims to be educated, you're a real dumbass... it's way more complicated than that.