The Despicable War on Savers

Well, that didn’t take long!

After just three days of market turmoil the monetary politburo swung into action. This time they sent out B-Dud to promise still another monetary sweetener. Said the head of the New York Fed,

“From my perspective, at this moment, the decision to begin the normalization process at the September FOMC meeting seems less compelling to me than it was a few weeks ago.”.

Needless to say, “B-Dud” is a moniker implying extreme disrespect, and  Bill Dudley deserves every bit of it. He is a crony capitalist fool and one of the Fed ring-leaders prosecuting a relentless, savage war on savers. Its only purpose is to keep carry trade speculators gorged with free funding in the money markets and to bloat the profits of Wall Street strip-mining operations, like that of his former employer, Goldman Sachs.

The fact is, any one who doesn’t imbibe in the Keynesian Kool-Aid dispensed by the central banking cartel can see in an instant that 80 months of ZIRP has done exactly nothing for the main street economy. Notwithtanding the Fed’s gussied-up theories about monetary “accommodation” and closing the “output gap” the litmus test is real simple.

What these unspeakably dangerous fools argued was that cash should be abolished so that the central banks could get on with their job of stimulating “depressed” economies by setting interest at negative nominal rates.

In other words, it is apparently not enough that someone who saved $150,000 over a lifetime of work and foregone consumption should earn just $1 per day of interest on liquid savings deposits or treasury bills. No, the central bankers’ posse now wants to actually expropriate these savings by extracting a monthly levy, and by throwing anyone in jail who attempts to hide their wealth outside the controlled banking system by keeping it in private script or unconfiscated greenbacks.

Since this very idea amounts to a frontal assault on civil liberties and economic justice, it is best to let the FT condemn itself with its own words:

……. But even as individuals have taken recent crises as reasons to stock up on banknotes, authorities would do well to consider the arguments for phasing out their use as another “barbarous relic”, the moniker Keynes gave to gold.

Already, by far the largest amount of money exists and is transacted in electronic form — as bank deposits and central bank reserves. But even a little physical currency can cause a lot of distortion to the economic system.

The existence of cash — a bearer instrument with a zero interest rate — limits central banks’ ability to stimulate a depressed economy. The worry is that people will change their deposits for cash if a central bank moves rates into negative territory. The Swiss, Danish and Swedish central banks have pushed rates lower than many thought possible; but most policymakers still believe in an “effective” lower band not far below zero.

With a recovery under way in most rich countries this may seem academic. The talk is now of when to raise rates. But the fear of the lower band is still causing damage. The dominant argument for beginning the tightening cycle is to have enough “ammunition” for a new stimulus when the next downturn comes. Removing the lower band would leave central banks well equipped to deal with a slowdown even from near-zero starting points.

There you have it. The private economy and its millions of savers exist for the convenience of the apparatchiks who run the central bank.

And this view is not limited to the editorial scribblers at the FT. Their reasoning was identical to that offered by Kenneth Rogoff, the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, who recently advocated abolishing high-denomination banknotes such as the €100 and €500 notes.

So B-Dud was sent out to save the day for Wall Street, but it had nothing to do with the “in-coming data”. He was acting for a small posse of destructive monetary rulers who have hostaged themselves to the furies of the casino.

In their palpable fear and unrelieved arrogance, would they now throw millions of already ruined retirees and savers completely under the bus?

Yes they would.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.