12/20/2015 - America’s Star Wars Economy: Financial Repression On Savers, Pension Funds, Insurers, Retirees
Making the analogy of the U.S. economy to Star Wars, Charles Hugh Smith* sees the Federal Reserve as the Dark Side, inflicting fatal wounds on the economy through financial repression of massive floods of money .. it has not boosted real economic productivity, rather it has fueled speculation which in turn has brought widening wealth/income inequality & devastating boom/bust business cycles .. “By slashing rates to zero, the Fed ruthlessly eliminating safe returns for savers, pension funds, insurers and the millions of people with 401K retirement nesteggs. In effect, the Fed-Farce has pushed everyone into risk assets–and then played another Dark Side mind-trick by masking the true dangers of these risky assets. As oil-sector debt blows up, as junk bonds blow up, and emerging markets blow up, we are finally starting to see the real costs of going over to the Dark Side of endless credit expansion and throwing the gasoline of near-zero interest rates on the speculative fires of financialization .. The Fed’s hubris has led it to the Dark Side, and now its Death Star of impaired debt, phantom collateral, speculative frenzy and bogus mind-tricks is about to blow up.”
