Fed : Monetary Or Moral Policy ?

Forget the unemployment or the inflation.

5 years of QE and these are the headlines.

  • While the rest of America pulls back on mortgages, the wealthy are going on a borrowing binge http://www.cnbc.com/id/101022158 And it is cheaper for them too.

It is not just America, it is happening for the rest of the world too, such as India.

“India has added more ultra high net worth individuals in the past 12 months than any other BRIC nation.” https://tradehaven.net/views_commentaries/for-richer-or-poorer-the-problem-with-india-is-ours-too/

This is as the rest of the country cannot afford their basic curry staple of onions. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-05/india-s-middle-class-hit-hard-as-rupee-pushes-up-prices.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/saritharai/2013/08/27/the-mysterious-case-of-levitating-onion-prices-in-india/

The Fed argues that it is not their problem.

“You have to remember that we are a legal creature of
Congress and that we only have a mandate to concern ourselves
with the interest of the United States,” Dennis Lockhart,
president of the Atlanta Fed, told Bloomberg Television’s
Michael McKee. “Other countries simply have to take that as a
reality and adjust to us if that’s something important for their
economies.”  https://tradehaven.net/market/fed-up-of-the-fed/

But the reality is this.

“After the global financial crisis erupted in 2008, interest rates plummeted, fueling private-sector credit booms in many of the largest emerging markets, including Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Turkey.

Although these booms were initially financed by domestic capital, they soon became dependent on foreign capital, which flowed into their economies as advanced-country central banks pumped huge amounts of liquidity into financial markets. Now, just as the US Federal Reserve contemplates an exit from its unconventional monetary policies, emerging economies’ current-account positions are weakening, making their reliance on capital inflows increasingly apparent – and increasingly dangerous.

Ironically, today’s pain stems from one of the great successes that emerging economies have achieved: the reduction of foreign-currency funding in favor of local-currency debt. As emerging-market central banks leaned against heavy capital inflows in order to mitigate exchange-rate appreciation, their currencies became less volatile. The resulting perception that currency risk was declining bolstered capital inflows further.” http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/insuring-emering-economies-against-rising-credit-risks-by-gene-frieda

So the more we invested in them, the more we made on their currency strength and asset appreciation, and the richer a few of them grew and the more they depended on us to make the fairytale last.

No wonder Bernanke is running as fast as he can. The writing is in plain english in the media now. People finally understand where they stand after the effects of monetary policy.

Meet America’s Growing Lower Class http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-17/meet-americas-growing-lower-class

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-lower-class-20130916,0,5616335.story