How to Justify a Flailing Fed
Anthony Wile

Warren Buffett has just come out with the statement, about which I tweeted earlier today when I first stumbled on it, that the "Fed Is [the] Greatest Hedge Fund in History." According to Bloomberg, he elaborated with the statement that the Fed's "generating '$80 billion or $90 billion a year probably' in revenue for the U.S. government." Here's more:

Buffett compared the U.S. Federal Reserve to a hedge fund because of the central bank's ability to profit from bond purchases while accumulating a balance sheet of more than $3 trillion.

The central bank has been buying $85 billion of bonds a month to help the U.S. recover as it emerges from the deepest slump since the Great Depression. Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and other Fed policy makers unexpectedly opted this week to sustain that pace of asset purchases instead of tapering it, saying they need to see more signs of lasting improvement in the economy.

... The Fed "is under no pressure, none whatsoever to have to deleverage," Buffett said. "So it can pick its time, and if you have somebody wise there – and I think Bernanke is wise, and I certainly expect his successor to be – it can be handled. But it is something that's never quite been done on this scale. It will be interesting to watch."

For Buffett it will be "interesting to watch," but not for many others. The Fed may not be under pressure to deleverage but only 62 percent of US citizens are working currently, according to some estimates, and up to 50 million or more may be using food stamps. The impoverishment of US Inc. is well underway and it's not an academic exercise but a kind of central banking end game. Europe's pan-central bank has done no better.

Central banking, as the name implies, is a centralizing force. In its operative history over the past 100 years or so it has centralized wealth in the hands of a few financial controllers while consolidating even the largest industries. Even entrepreneurs need to work within the "system" if they wish to have any chance at a profit.

It thrives on bigness and fixing the price and volume of money. As a result, it is gradually organizing the entire world around mercantilism. The current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, like all the others, has supported this process via inflationary policies that have sapped the savings and investments of hundreds of millions while propping up large, but technically bankrupt, financial enterprises.

Buffett sees the cup as half full. He wants us to believe that the Fed is doing a good job because it is generating income for the US taxpayer. This avoids any discussion of how Fed policies have devastated both savers and investors – not just in the past five years but over the past century.

It is not in Buffett's self-interest to have this larger conversation. Nor is it, apparently, in the controlled mainstream media's. Buffet wants to focus on the Fed's hedge-fund-like attributes. The media generally wants to focus on the issue of "leadership." The article quoting Buffett then goes on to mention the following regarding the current situation of the Fed:

Fed Vice Chairman Janet Yellen is Obama's leading candidate to replace Bernanke after former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers withdrew his name from consideration, people familiar with the matter said this week. The president has also said that he's weighing former Fed Vice Chairman Donald Kohn for the post.

This meme is available all over the Internet, and is surely a good example of how a dominant social theme can be used to distract people from larger issues when it comes to their collective pocketbook.

A recent article appearing over at MSNBC, entitled "How Larry Summers opened the door to a woman," provides us with another example. The article dwells on the differences between Larry Summers and Janet Yellen regarding who would make a better Federal Reserve chairman. Summers, we are informed, comes up short – not just because of his personality but because of his ... maleness. Here's a crux excerpt from the article:

[Some have been] furious that President Obama would favor a man with so many liabilities over a woman with so many measurable and vouched-for credentials. "This is something that women have observed and experienced over and over again in our lives and in our work and it makes us cross-eyed with frustration," NOW president Terry O'Neill told Buzzfeed. "You don't slam the glass ceiling down on the head of a better qualified woman so that you can appoint some man who's less qualified."

Summers' gender problem wasn't just that he wasn't a woman or that he had offended many women, but also that his more alienating qualities were so closely associated with male socialization: His lack of interest or awareness in others' responses to him, his cold-eyed, hyper-empirical approach, his unflinching belief in his own rightness. (There are women who fit this description. But women are more often expected and taught to put others' feelings before their own, to be collaborative, and to be likable.) That hurt his ability to do his job well.

All the tropes of modern feminism are on display in these brief paragraphs, including the most damning of all, "male socialization." This apparently includes "hyper empiricism" and a sense of "unflinching rightness."

Like some sort of 20th century anachronism – reminding us that elites have put various dominant social themes into play for a reason – the idea that men are inferior to women when it comes to cooperation is presented to us as if it were brand new again. The Internet and its alternative media are boiling with denunciations of central banking but you would never guess the virulence of these attacks from mainstream coverage.

Every part of the central banking meme is illogical and economically ruinous. In fact, I would suggest that the seeds of the next great monetary bubble are being laid right now. It is critically important that people understand what is really going on, because when this bubble begins to inflate in earnest, human nature will make us most susceptible to its allure.

All of us who wish to preserve our wealth and ensure our prosperity will have to grapple with what is on its way. I truly believe that the top men who have organized our current economic environment now "get it." They know that the game cannot be extended much further and are preparing for one last "party."

This is one of the reasons we've reorganized this website, to focus closely on coming developments and try to help our readers capitalize from what is about to occur – and to then protect themselves from the inevitable disaster that will follow.

Critical Understanding Provided by Upcoming Conference

The kickoff for our new Daily Bell is going to take place at our first annual High Alert Investment Conference, hosted by High Alert Capital Partners, publisher of The Daily Bell, in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where we will be discussing these issues in depth. We have secured a beautiful resort in an exclusive setting from October 16th through 20th and are opening the doors to an absolute maximum of 100 people.

Because of the extremely confidential nature of this opportunity, we have reserved the entire Keltic Lodge resort to ensure utmost privacy, and most of the 100 seats are already spoken for. Many are filled by financial money managers, bankers, asset managers, leading free-market thinkers and senior executives who understand the importance of what is now occurring.

The rest of the audience includes accredited investors who have acted quickly to secure remaining seats – and as indicated, most are already gone, given the importance of the event. On arrival, participants will receive a very special report shedding light on the grand, elite promotion now being planned. It will explain the structured mechanism we've built to take advantage of this moment and the ways we are leveraging this opportunity.

During our time together, you'll learn through insightful presentations and materials – and perhaps most importantly, one-on-one and small group conversations in sessions, over meals and perhaps during a round of golf – how you can participate with us in riding this wave. Those who take advantage of the remaining space for this incredible four-day opportunity will quickly realize that participation at this event could be life changing, as generational wealth-building could be created through this process.

If you have the time and resources to attend, I would truly urge you to make a reservation while there is still space. No one else is approaching these issues in this manner, and no other group has our record when it comes to accuracy and forecasting using our models. What is now occurring is predictable, discouraging and ultimately ruinous but you can make it work in your favor if you are willing to do so. Hope to see you there, if you act soon. Click here for more information: High Alert Investment Conference. 

Anthony Wile is an author, political analyst, financial markets commentator, entrepreneur and founder of several successful free-market oriented Internet sites including Free-Market News Network (FMNN) and The Daily Bell. In founding these sites, Anthony brought a perspective based on more than 20 years of financial and business experience working with growth-oriented companies in a variety of sectors. In aggregate, these free-market educational websites have reached millions of viewers and have remained on the cutting edge of alternative news publishing.

In 2004, while running FMNN, Wile was among the early adopters of video-Internet news programs. The programs included: This Week in Liberty with Harry Browne and Weekly World Report. In that same year, Wile secured the exclusive Internet broadcast rights for the third-party debates for the presidency of the United States. The debates, covered by the FMNN team of broadcasters including former two-time Libertarian candidate for US president, Harry Browne, were an enormous success, with more than 500,000 people logging on.

In 2008, Wile founded a Swiss-based publishing firm and started publishing The Daily Bell. Today, Wile continues to be the publication's Chief Editor. In 2009, Wile launched a non-profit foundation – The Foundation for the Advancement of Free-Market Thinking (FAFMT). Wile serves as FAFMT's Executive Director and has established an experienced advisory board consisting of some of today's leading free-market thinkers.

In 2003, Wile published his first book as Yang, entitled The Liberation of Flockhead. Wile's second book, High Alert, published under his own name in the summer of 2007, has been well received by the hard-money community and alternative media in general. In fact, Congressman Ron Paul says, "High Alert should be read by everyone who wishes to educate themselves about the dangers fiat money poses to American liberty and prosperity. I wish I could get every member of Congress to read this book."

High Alert is currently in its third edition and in addition to its native English edition, is available in German and Chinese as well. Wile has assisted with the completion of over a dozen additional free-market oriented books, working as a collaborative editor to several leading free-market thinkers.

Anthony Wile invented a term – dominant social theme – to encapsulate the process by which a powerful money elite deceives citizens into giving up their liberties. The process usually invokes the use of fear-based messaging that targets the bottom two levels of Maslow's heirarchy of needs, where the larger percentage of citizenry is trapped. Those are the people that Wile and FAFMT are focused on educating about the importance of accepting personal responsibility for their own lives and not selling their freedoms to elite peddlers of baseless economic and social dreams.

Wile also invented the term Internet Reformation, which describes the process by which the Internet, paralleling the impact of the Gutenberg Press before it, is challenging the modern structures erected and under the control of a power elite intent on implementing global governance.

Background: Anthony Wile was born in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1968. Wile graduated from Saint Mary's University (SMU) with a degree in business in 1991. Wile worked in the Canadian investment industry with Scotia McLeod (Bank of Nova Scotia) and Nesbitt Burns (Bank of Montreal). In 1994 Anthony Wile was made a Fellow of the Canadian Securities Institute, which is a designation awarded to financial services professionals who attain advanced education and experience in the Canadian securities industry. Following his career in the mainstream Canadian securities industry, Wile co-founded a Bahamian-based offshore brokerage firm specializing in private asset management. The firm launched several funds, including a venture capital fund of which Wile was the manager. The firm was sold in 1999.

In 2000, Wile experienced a brief role as the CEO of a start-up junior mining company that became the subject of a civil attack by the SEC. Wile and others fought for more than seven years at great personal and financial expense before eventually settling the case without admitting any wrongdoing. The assets of the company in question were subsequently purchased by a New York Stock Exchange listed company and the properties have now produced more gold than was initially suggested. Hundreds of investors lost literally tens of millions in deserved future profits because the SEC accused the company of over-promising a merger that was actually taking place. Perhaps this experience adds to Wile's fervor to expose the power elite and their societal manipulations.

Anthony has visited every state in the US and every province and territory in Canada. Additionally, he has lived in several countries in several continents over the past three decades and has visited or done business in more than 60 countries. He currently resides in Toronto, Canada with his wife, Hillary, and their three children, Gabrielle, Jesse and Julian.

www.thedailybell.com