Inflating the money supply (aka creating massive inflation) during a crisis and going into massive debt is like trying to dig your way over a mountain. History should be our guide, not Keynesian vudu.
Actual transcript from Powell during his interview on 60 Minures below:
Scott Pelley: Where does it come from? Do you just print it?
Jerome Powell: We print it digitally. So we– you know, we– as a central bank, we have the ability to create money digitally and we do that by buying Treasury Bills or bonds or other government guaranteed securities. And that actually increases the money supply. We also print actual currency and we distribute that through the Federal Reserve banks.
But, by law, Chairman Powell’s Federal Reserve can only lend money that must be paid back. Congress, he believes, should spend money to expand its historic bailout.
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Our collective enemy Jerome Powell’s complete lack of fear about inflation and creating massive asset bubbles is eerily similar to Bernanke’s ignorance of and/or outright refusal to admit there was a housing bubble in 2007 and 2008.
Seeing him the other day live in his hearing to congress reminded me of this other string of moments in history we have conveniently chosen to forget/ignore. That the fed chairman outright lies to the American people or is willfully ignorant of what is right in front of their face.
