“The Great Deformation: The Corruption Of Capitalism In America,”

[interestrateripoff]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-14/fed-is-the-villain-in-krugman-stockman-brawl.html

...Stockman, of course, is the former wunderkind congressman and budget director under Ronald Reagan, whose mammoth new book, “The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America,” is highly critical of the Fed’s role in managing our economy and has set Krugman off on a tear (and the book up the best-sellers’ list).

On the April 5 “Charlie Rose,” Stockman, who also was a partner at the Blackstone Group LP (BX) and had his own (unsuccessful) private equity firm, succinctly posited one aspect of his argument.

“The Federal Reserve has basically become a bubble machine,” he said. “There has been fabulous expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet since the crisis of 2008. And almost all of that new money created -- $1.7 trillion -- is simply circulated through the banking system, through the fingers of Wall Street, so to speak, and is back on the Fed’s balance sheet.”

Crushing Savers

Why is this so bad? “What it does is allow people to speculate and hit home runs,” he explained. “It doesn’t go to Main Street. It’s not helping the Main Street economy. And it’s crushing savers. Remember, if you are saving, if you saved your whole life and you have $100,000, you’re making $400 [a year] as a result of the Fed crushing short-term interest rates.”

Interesting that a person who worked for Reagan who started the ball rolling for all this in the 80's is now highlighting that "capitalism" has been corrupted.

[Eddie_George]

Capitalism is for the lower classes. Socialism for the elite so they can never lose their wealth in inclement economic conditions.

[zugzwang]

David Stockman has been there at the very acme both in govt and on the private side. No-one knows better than he does what a busted flush Reaganomics was, he got into trouble for being openly critical of supply side economics at the time. Correctly it transpired, as the so-called Reagan-Bush recovery caused deficits to balloon uncontrollably. Or how the Republican Party spent most of the last century working with the money printers and Wall Street coddlers at the Fed to bankrupt America; Nixon's deceit over the gold standard being a particularly low point. Nor is he turncoat partisan in his approach, he's as scathing of Obama and Krugman as he is about Greenspan and Bernanke.

The Great Deformation looks like a must-read.

[Executive Sadman]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-14/fed-is-the-villain-in-krugman-stockman-brawl.html

Interesting that a person who worked for Reagan who started the ball rolling for all this in the 80's is now highlighting that "capitalism" has been corrupted.

He's not alone. Friedman used to be a big cheerleader of the fed in the 80s. Shortly before his death he finally came out and condemned it and admittedly he was wrong.

I think a lot of these guys will say stupid things that sound nice just because the politicians like stupid things that sound nice. Maybe they sleep at night by telling themselves a seat at the government table is better than nothing, even if you can only say stupid things. Its the only explanation for Krugman, anyway.

[oracle]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-14/fed-is-the-villain-in-krugman-stockman-brawl.html

Interesting that a person who worked for Reagan who started the ball rolling for all this in the 80's is now highlighting that "capitalism" has been corrupted.

no she's quite right, capitalism has been corrupted with corporatism.

doesn't really matter that both corporatism and state communism are two cheeks on the same @rse.......either the board of directors gets the goodies or the state duma do.

corporatists are rather more honest about their desire to dominate

actually corps is quite a good analogy,most of them are soulless dead entities.

(but so many of these state communist entities use the finest orwellian doublespeak when they call themselves the democratic peoples republic of XXXXX.)

it's still the same heist.

but this is where things start to get serious/funny.

...there are a couple of people making claims to titles on this planet,that have not been fulfilling their responsibilities if they make the claims that they intend to....so in the finest of tradition....if they do not start keeping their end of the bargain they are about to be meted out some serious punishment.

they are being watched.

Edited April 15, 2013 by oracle