Ben Bernanke isn’t wasting any time cashing in on what might be the greatest transfer of wealth in history from 99.9% of the world’s population to a handful of connected oligarchs and their political minions. Cronyism does indeed pay well, even if bureaucrats have to wait until they leave office to collect.
The Bernank isn’t wasting any time ringing the register.
From Reuters:
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the U.S. central bank could have done more to fight the country’s financial crisis and that he struggled to find the right way to communicate with markets.
“We could have done some things on the margin to mitigate somewhat the crisis,” Bernanke, 60, said on Tuesday in his first public speaking engagement since he stepped down in January after eight years heading the Fed.
“Although we have been very aggressive, I think on the monetary policy front we could have been even more aggressive.”
“This is going to sound very obvious but the first thing we learned is that the U.S. is not invulnerable to financial crises,” Bernanke said.
Um, so you thought it was? Never forget that these are the clowns running the show.
Bernanke said he could now speak more freely about the crisis than he could while at the Fed – “I can say whatever I want” – and in remarks to over 1,000 bankers and financial professionals in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, he made clear that he had regrets.
Bernanke received at least $250,000 for his appearance at the financial conference staged by National Bank of Abu Dhabi NBAD.AD, the UAE’s largest bank, according to sources familiar the matter. NBAD did not announce the fee.
Bernanke’s speaking fee is similar to one received by his predecessor Alan Greenspan for an Abu Dhabi speaking engagement in 2008, the sources said.
Greenspan embarked on a series of lucrative speeches after he stepped down, and Bernanke now appears to be doing the same. He is scheduled to speak at an event in South Africa on Wednesday and in Houston on Friday.
Another former heavyweight in U.S. economic policy, ex-Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, spoke at the Abu Dhabi event and criticized some aspects of Fed policy under Bernanke, although he acknowledged that policy needed to be expansionary.
Of course Larry Summers has his hoofs all over this. Like pigs to a trough.
The Truman Show rolls on.
What. A. Fucking. Joke.
Full article here.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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I wondered what Ben was up to… looks like the S.O.S. Anyone ever wondered why the key people in charge (hahaha) of the US economy are all Jewish?
Bernanke, Yellen, Greenspan, Dimon, Blankfein, Geithner, etc.
Anyone wonder why the guy who created this website was raised Jewish?
Please, grow up with the commentary and don’t spew hate and ignorance on this site. I hope you are better than that, if not feel free to blame everything on Jewish people elsewhere.
Best,
Michael Krieger
In our centrally planned markets, it is certainly good to know that Yellen and the team are “thoroughly monitoring markets for excessive risk taking and valuation levels.” And to their findings “they don’t see any excessive risk taking except that farmland looks a little heated,” according to Yellen. I feel so warm and fuzzy to know that they are on top of it….just like Bernanke was just before the housing crises.
At any rate, so long as they think the S + P 500 is cheap it is going to keep going up. I can’t wait until they can no longer use their “tools” and markets begin to function on their own again. It seems like that is forever away. I’m thinking 2015/2016.
You are very smart to have moved on from market commentary and being involved on the investment front in this shit-show.
Talk freely in a land where there is no scope of free speech.
ROTFL.
When Bernanke is ashamed to show his face, THEN we’ll know we’ve ‘turned the corner’.
And you wonder why all the cries for reform go unanswered?
The board is covered…..with graft.
All these fees, books, consultancies, etc are laundered payoffs.
btw, did the bernank say gold was a tradition or did he mean gold manipulation was the tradition?
Barclays, Deutsche Bank Accused of Gold Fix Manipulation
Kevin Maher, a New York resident who says he bought and sold gold and gold futures and options, sued yesterday in Manhattan federal court claiming the five banks overseeing the century-old benchmark colluded to manipulate it.
Maher’s complaint cites press reports, including a Bloomberg News story last week on a draft paper by two researchers showing what they said were unusual pricing patterns connected to the gold fix. The paper was the first study to raise the possibility that the banks, which also include Bank of Nova Scotia, HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) and Societe Generale SA (GLE), may have been actively working together to manipulate the benchmark.
Maher is seeking to represent a class of all investors who, from 2004 to now, held or traded gold and gold derivatives that were priced based on the gold fix or who held or traded COMEX gold futures or options. He’s seeking unspecified damages on behalf of the class. Damages may be tripled under U.S. antitrust law.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-04/barclays-deutsche-bank-accused-of-gold-fix-manipulation.html
Fed Nominee Stanley Fischer Has a Citigroup Problem
By Pam Martens: March 4, 2014
There are surely some veteran lawyers at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) hoping the nomination of Fischer has been scuttled. The thought that Stanley Fischer, a former Vice Chairman of the serially corrupt Citigroup, could become Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, a regulator of mega banks like Citigroup, is not a source of comfort. Fischer was nominated for the post by President Obama, whose devotion to failing up on Wall Street regularly sets new heights.
As if as on cue, news broke just yesterday that Federal prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas to Citigroup in a money-laundering investigation, a topic with which the bank is intimately familiar.
During Fischer’s stint at Citigroup, from February 2002 through April 2005, he “amassed a personal fortune of between $14.6 million and $56.3 million” according to Bloomberg News. During that same period, Citigroup was repeatedly charged with fraud and embarked on its own exotic financial shenanigans that would end up collapsing the firm in 2008.
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2014/03/fed-nominee-stanley-fischer-has-a-citigroup-problem/