Bernanke--Probably won't raise rates at the Fed to 2016

Central Bank Not 'That Close' to Winding Down Stimulus, Fed's Bullard Says

Thursday, 23 May 2013 09:51 AM

More ways to share...

A senior U.S. central banker sought to give reassurance on Thursday that the Fed is in no hurry to start winding down its economic stimulus after comments by Chairman Ben Bernanke sent stock markets tumbling.

James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said on Thursday he did not think the Fed was "that close" to starting the process of winding down its support although it was the likely next step if the economy continued to improve and inflation picks up.

Share prices around the world fell sharply after Bernanke said on Wednesday that the Federal Reserve may start to trim its bond purchases at one of its next policy meetings.

Bernanke also said the Fed needed to see more signs of recovery in the U.S. economy before scaling back its stimulus, but investors focused less on those comments.

Bullard, speaking in London, said the U.S. economy was improving but he would like to be sure inflation was heading back towards target before the Fed started winding down its support program.

"I think the chairman, as he always does, said the right thing which is it depends on the data," Bullard, a current Fed voting member, said.

"Even if we do taper it would still be a very aggressive pace of purchases because we would only be moderating the rate by a small amount ... I don't think we are actually that close at this point to talking about an exit."

A European policymaker also said on Thursday it was not yet time for either the Fed or the European Central Bank to consider reining in support for their economies.

"I think the policy followed by the ECB as well as, for instance, the Fed in the United States is appropriate for the current economic situation, but of course always with the perspective that one has to adjust to further developments," ECB Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny said in Vienna.

GENTLE PROCESS

Many financial markets have hit record or long-term highs in recent months as the constant drip feed of central bank stimulus has driven investors into a frenzy.

Bullard told reporters after his speech that as long he was sure inflation was again heading in the right direction he would be happy with reducing the buying by $15 billion-$20 billion a month.

"What I would like the committee to do is to think about relatively small moves that more-or-less correspond to a 25 basis point Federal Funds rate move in normal times, so we are not in a position where we are having to make decisions about cutting the whole program in half or bringing the program to a halt in a short period of time."

He also laid out the step-by-step sequence he would like to see the Fed adopt beyond that.

"I think the basic structure of the exit strategy will stay about the same; which is first allow a run down of the balance sheet, later increase the interest payment on reserves and only after that consider selling assets."

He added: "And it is a little unclear at the moment if the committee wants to push out the dates for that (selling of assets)."

How Currently Money is Created and Why That's Not a Good Thing

11 Reasons Why The Federal Reserve Should Be Abolished

Michael Snyder
Economic Collapse
May 7, 2013
If the American people truly understood how the Federal Reserve system works and what it has done to us, they would be screaming for it to be abolished immediately. It is a system that was designed by international bankers for the benefit of international bankers, and it is systematically impoverishing the American people. The Federal Reserve system is the primary reason why our currency has declined in value by well over 95 percent and our national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger over the past 100 years. The Fed creates our “booms” and our “busts”, and they have done an absolutely miserable job of managing our economy. But why do we need a bunch of unelected private bankers to manage our economy and print our money for us in the first place?
Wouldn’t our economy function much more efficiently if we allowed the free market to set interest rates? And according to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Congress is the one that is supposed to have the authority to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”. So why is the Federal Reserve doing it? Sadly, this is the way it works all over the globe today. In fact, all 187 nationsthat belong to the IMF have a central bank. But the truth is that there are much better alternatives. We just need to get people educated.
The following are 11 reasons why the Federal Reserve should be abolished…
#1 The Greatest Period Of Economic Growth In The History Of The United States Happened When There Was No Central Bank
Did you know that the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was between the Civil War and 1913? And guess what? That was a period when there was no central bank in the United States at all. The following is from Wikipedia…

The Gilded Age saw the greatest period of economic growth in American history. After the short-lived panic of 1873, the economy recovered with the advent of hard money policies and industrialization. From 1869 to 1879, the US economy grew at a rate of 6.8% for real GDP and 4.5% for real GDP per capita, despite the panic of 1873. The economy repeated this period of growth in the 1880s, in which the wealth of the nation grew at an annual rate of 3.8%, while the GDP was also doubled.

So if our greatest period of economic prosperity was during a time when there was no Federal Reserve, then why shouldn’t we try such a system again?
#2 The Federal Reserve Is Systematically Destroying The Value Of The U.S. Dollar
The United States never had a persistent, ongoing problem with inflation until the Federal Reserve was created in 1913.
If you do not believe this, just check out the inflation chart in this article.
The Federal Reserve systematically penalizes those that try to save their money. Inflation is a tax, and the value of each one of our dollars goes down a little bit more every single day.
But over time, it really adds up. In fact, the value of the U.S. dollar has fallen by 83 percent since 1970.
Anyone that goes to the grocery store on a regular basis knows how painful inflation can be. The following is a list that shows how prices for many of the things that we buy on a regular basis absolutely skyrocketed between 2002 and 2012…
Eggs: 73%
Coffee: 90%
Peanut Butter: 40%
Milk: 26%
A Loaf Of White Bread: 39%
Spaghetti And Macaroni: 44%
Orange Juice: 46%
Red Delicious Apples: 43%
Beer: 25%
Wine: 60%
Electricity: 42%
Margarine: 143%
Tomatoes: 22%
Turkey: 56%
Ground Beef: 61%
Chocolate Chip Cookies: 39%
Gasoline: 158%
Even the price of water has absolutely soared in recent years. According to USA Today, water bills have actually tripled over the past 12 years in some areas of the country.
So how can the Federal Reserve get away with claiming that we are in a “low inflation” environment?
Well, what Ben Bernanke never tells you is that the way that the government calculates inflation has changed more than 20 times since 1978.
The truth is that the real rate of inflation is somewhere between five and ten percent right now, but you will never hear about this on the mainstream news.
#3 The Federal Reserve Is A Perpetual Debt Machine
The Federal Reserve system was designed to be a trap. The intent of the bankers was to trap the U.S. government in an endless debt spiral from which it could never possibly escape.
But most Americans don’t understand this. In fact, most Americans don’t even understand where money comes from.
If you don’t believe this, just go out on the street and ask regular people where money comes from. The responses will be something like this…
“Duh – I don’t know. I’ve got to get home to watch American Idol.”
This is why it is so important to get people educated. I think that most Americans would be horrified to learn that the creation of more money in our system also involves the creation of more debt.
The following is a summary of money creation that comes from one of my previous articles…

When the U.S. government decides that it wants to spend another billion dollars that it does not have, it does not print up a billion dollars.
Rather, the U.S. government creates a bunch of U.S. Treasury bonds (debt) and takes them over to the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve creates a billion dollars out of thin air and exchanges them for the U.S. Treasury bonds.

So what does the Federal Reserve do with those Treasury bonds? I went on to explain what happens…

The U.S. Treasury bonds that the Federal Reserve receives in exchange for the money it has created out of nothing are auctioned off through the Federal Reserve system.
But wait.
There is a problem.
Because the U.S. government must pay interest on the Treasury bonds, the amount of debt that has been created by this transaction is greater than the amount of money that has been created.
So where will the U.S. government get the money to pay that debt?
Well, the theory is that we can get money to circulate through the economy really, really fast and tax it at a high enough rate that the government will be able to collect enough taxes to pay the debt.
But that never actually happens, does it?
And the creators of the Federal Reserve understood this as well. They understood that the U.S. government would not have enough money to both run the government and service the national debt. They knew that the U.S. government would have to keep borrowing even more money in an attempt to keep up with the game.

Men like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford could not understand why we would adopt such a foolish system. For example, Thomas Edison was once quoted in the New York Times as saying the following…

That is to say, under the old way any time we wish to add to the national wealth we are compelled to add to the national debt.
Now, that is what Henry Ford wants to prevent. He thinks it is stupid, and so do I, that for the loan of $30,000,000 of their own money the people of the United States should be compelled to pay $66,000,000 — that is what it amounts to, with interest. People who will not turn a shovelful of dirt nor contribute a pound of material will collect more money from the United States than will the people who supply the material and do the work. That is the terrible thing about interest. In all our great bond issues the interest is always greater than the principal. All of the great public works cost more than twice the actual cost, on that account. Under the present system of doing business we simply add 120 to 150 per cent, to the stated cost.
But here is the point: If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good.

Unfortunately, today most Americans don’t even understand how the system works. They just assume that we have the best system in the entire world.
Sadly, the reality is that the system is working just as the international bankers that designed it had hoped. The United States has the largest national debt in the history of the world, and we are stealing more than 100 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day in a desperate attempt to keep the debt spiral going.
#4 The Federal Reserve Is A Centrally-Planned Financial System That Is The Antithesis Of What A Free Market System Should Be
Why do we need someone to centrally-plan our financial system?
Isn’t that the kind of thing they do in communist China?
Why do we need someone to tell us what interest rates are going to be?
Why do we need someone to determine what “the target rate of inflation” should be?
If we actually had a free market system, the free market would be the one “managing” our economy.
But instead, we have become so accustomed to central planning that any alternatives seem to be absolutely unthinkable.
For example, CNBC cannot possibly imagine a world where the Fed (or some similar institution) was not running things…

But suppose the law were taken off the books? The Fed’s job—in simple terms—is to manage the nation’s money supply and achieve the sometimes-conflicting tasks of full employment, stable prices while fighting inflation or deflation.
How would the U.S. economy then function? Something has to take its place, right?
Global markets would also need some sort of economic direction from the U.S. The Fed manages the dollar — and as the world’s leading currency, a void left by a Fed-less America could throw those markets into chaos with uncertainty about who’s managing U.S. interest rates and the American economy.

I’ve got an idea – let’s let the free market “manage” U.S. interest rates and the American economy.
I know, it’s a crazy idea, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it just might work beautifully.
#5 The Federal Reserve Creates Bubbles And Busts
Do you remember the Dotcom bubble?
Or what about the housing bubble?
By dramatically distorting interest rates and financial behavior, the Federal Reserve creates economic bubbles and the corresponding economic busts.
And guess what?
Now it is happening again.
When will the American people decide that they have had enough?
If you can believe it, there have been 10 different economic recessions since 1950. And of course the Federal Reserve even admits that it helped create the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Perhaps it is time to try something different.
#6 The Federal Reserve Is Privately Owned
It has been said that the Federal Reserve is about as “federal” as Federal Express is.
Most Americans still believe that the Federal Reserve is a “federal agency”, but that is simply not true. The following comes from factcheck.org…

The stockholders in the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks are the privately owned banks that fall under the Federal Reserve System. These include all national banks (chartered by the federal government) and those state-chartered banks that wish to join and meet certain requirements. About 38 percent of the nation’s more than 8,000 banks are members of the system, and thus own the Fed banks.

And even the Federal Reserve itself has argued that it is “not an agency” of the federal government in court.
So why is there still so much confusion about this?
We should not be allowing a private entity that is owned and dominated by the banks to make decisions that dramatically affect the daily lives of all the rest of us.
#7 The Federal Reserve Greatly Favors The “Too Big To Fail” Banks
Since the Federal Reserve is owned by the banks, should we be surprised that it serves the interests of the banks?
In particular, the Fed has been extremely good to the “too big to fail” banks.
Over the past several decades, those banks have grown tremendously in both size and power.
Back in 1970, the five largest U.S. banks held 17 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets.
Today, the five largest U.S. banks hold 52 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets.
#8 The Federal Reserve Gives Secret Bailouts To Their Friends
The Federal Reserve is the only institution in America that can print money out of thin air and loan it to their friends any time they want to.
For example, did you know that the Federal Reserve made 16 trillion dollars in secret loans to their friends during the last financial crisis?
The following list is taken directly from page 131 of a GAO audit report, and it shows which banks received secret loans from the Fed…
Citigroup – $2.513 trillion
Morgan Stanley – $2.041 trillion
Merrill Lynch – $1.949 trillion
Bank of America – $1.344 trillion
Barclays PLC – $868 billion
Bear Sterns – $853 billion
Goldman Sachs – $814 billion
Royal Bank of Scotland – $541 billion
JP Morgan Chase – $391 billion
Deutsche Bank – $354 billion
UBS – $287 billion
Credit Suisse – $262 billion
Lehman Brothers – $183 billion
Bank of Scotland – $181 billion
BNP Paribas – $175 billion
Wells Fargo – $159 billion
Dexia – $159 billion
Wachovia – $142 billion
Dresdner Bank – $135 billion
Societe Generale – $124 billion
“All Other Borrowers” – $2.639 trillion
If you will notice, a number of the banks listed above are foreign banks.
Why is the Fed allowed to print money out of thin air and lend it to foreign banks?
#9 The Federal Reserve Is Paying Banks Not To Lend Money
Did you know that the Federal Reserve is actually paying U.S. banks not to lend money?
That doesn’t make sense. Our economy is based on credit, andsmall businesses desperately need loans in order to operate.
But the Fed has decided to pay banks not to risk their money. Section 128 of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 allows the Federal Reserve to pay interest on “excess reserves” that U.S. banks park at the Fed.
So the big banks can just send their cash to the Fed and watch the money come rolling in risk-free.
As the chart below demonstrates, the banks have taken great advantage of this tremendous deal…

#10 The Federal Reserve Has An Astounding Track Record Of Failure
Over the past ten years, the Federal Reserve has been an abysmal failure when it comes to running the economy.
But despite a track record of failure that would make the Chicago Cubs look like a roaring success, Barack Obama actually decided to nominate Ben Bernanke for a second term as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
What a mistake.
Just check out some of the things that Bernanke said prior to the last financial crisis. The following is an extended excerpt from an article that I published previously…
*****
In 2005, Bernanke said that we shouldn’t worry because housing prices had never declined on a nationwide basis before and he said that he believed that the U.S. would continue to experience close to “full employment”….

“We’ve never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis. So, what I think what is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilize, might slow consumption spending a bit. I don’t think it’s gonna drive the economy too far from its full employment path, though.”

In 2005, Bernanke also said that he believed that derivatives were perfectly safe and posed no danger to financial markets….

“With respect to their safety, derivatives, for the most part, are traded among very sophisticated financial institutions and individuals who have considerable incentive to understand them and to use them properly.”

In 2006, Bernanke said that housing prices would probably keep rising….

“Housing markets are cooling a bit. Our expectation is that the decline in activity or the slowing in activity will be moderate, that house prices will probably continue to rise.”

In 2007, Bernanke insisted that there was not a problem with subprime mortgages….

“At this juncture, however, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained. In particular, mortgages to prime borrowers and fixed-rate mortgages to all classes of borrowers continue to perform well, with low rates of delinquency.”

In 2008, Bernanke said that a recession was not coming….

“The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession.”

A few months before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed, Bernanke insisted that they were totally secure….

“The GSEs are adequately capitalized. They are in no danger of failing.”

*****
There are many, many more examples that could be listed, but hopefully you get the point.
And now it is happening again. Bernanke is telling the American people that everything is going to be just fine and that no major problems are ahead.
Do you believe him this time?
#11 The Federal Reserve Is Unaccountable To The American People
What is the most important political issue to most Americans?
Survey after survey has shown that the American people care about the economy more than anything else.
So why do we allow an unelected, unaccountable entity that is privately-owned to make our economic decisions for us?
The Federal Reserve has become so powerful that it has been called “the fourth branch of government”. Every four years, presidential candidates argue about who will be best at managing the economy, but the truth is that it is the Fed that manages our economy.
We are told that the “independence” of the Federal Reserve is absolutely critical, but don’t the American people deserve to have a say in the running of the economy?
Our system is broken. It is a system that will continue to create more bubbles and more debt until the entire thing finally collapses for good.
Thomas Jefferson once stated that if he could add just one more amendment to the U.S. Constitution it would be a ban on all government borrowing….

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.

But instead of banning government borrowing, we have allowed ourselves to become enslaved to a system where government borrowing actually creates our money.
We do not need to have a central bank. There are much better alternatives. We just need to get people educated.
Please share this article with as many people as you possibly can. These are things that every American should know about the Fed, and we need to educate the American people about the Federal Reserve while there is still time.

Grover Norquist Joins Banks Opposing Online Sales-Revenue Grab

Tuesday, 23 Apr 2013 12:32 PM

More ways to share...

A loose coalition of anti-tax activists, direct marketers and financial industry trade groups has a tough task this week in overcoming bipartisan support for letting states impose sales taxes on out-of-state sellers.
Big-box retailers and state governments showed last month that they command wide backing for the levy. Now, opponents are emphasizing the potential flaws in the legislation as they try to peel away that support.
“This bill is bad for business and bad for jobs,” said Senator Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, who said the measure wasn’t ready to debate yet. “It is full of unintended consequences.”
The dispute playing out on the Senate floor this week is a clash between business interests that falls outside the usual partisan lines of fiscal policy. The result could end tax-free Internet shopping and provide states with about $23 billion a year in additional revenue.
The Senate voted 74-20 Monday to advance the legislation. That’s similar to a 75-24 non-binding vote last month. Five senators, all Republicans, voted differently than they did in March. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Mark Kirk of Illinois voted no Monday after voting yes in March. John Barrasso of Wyoming, Dan Coats of Indiana and Jeff Flake of Arizona moved in the opposite direction.
Opponents’ Warnings
The bill’s opponents, including Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, are warning lawmakers about the risk of financial transaction taxes, dozens of simultaneous audits and the expanding reach of state officials.
The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association said states could have an incentive to impose transaction taxes. EBay Inc. blasted an e-mail to its users, maintaining that the small-business exemption in the bill wasn’t significant enough and would lead to job losses. Retailers with less than $1 million in remote sales would be exempt.
In a letter to lawmakers, Norquist described the bill as a “massive expansion of tax authority.”
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., shopping center owners and state governments have been joined in their campaign in favor of the bill by the largest Internet-based retailer, Amazon.com Inc.
Amazon, which currently collects taxes on purchases in nine states, is expanding its national distribution network into more states. The company supports the bill because it provides an “even-handed nationwide framework,” Paul Misener, the company’s vice president for global public policy, testified at a congressional hearing last year.
Mail-Order Era
The measure would effectively reverse a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision from the mail-order catalog era. The court prevented states from applying sales taxes to transactions with sellers that lacked a physical presence in their states.
The growth of Internet shopping turned the ruling into a competitive disadvantage for brick-and-mortar retailers such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy Co. Inc.
For example, a New Jersey resident thinking about buying a $1,000 television could look at models in showrooms and then save $70 in tax by ordering the same product online -- even, as senators said, by using a smartphone to make the purchase while still inside the store.
“It’s shifting more sales onto the Internet and away from the local store,” said Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat. “I don’t think that’s fair. We’re asking for a level playing field.”
‘Long Way’
The Senate could pass the bill as early as this week. The measure would then be taken up by the House of Representatives, where Representative Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has said it has “a long way to go” before he can support it.
The lack of tax revenue from online sales has made it tougher for states to provide “police and fire protection, access to affordable health care and funding for roads and bridges,” the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement detailing the administration’s support for the bill.
“This bill would eliminate the unfair advantage currently enjoyed by big out-of-state online companies over local neighborhood-based small businesses,” according to the statement.
The retailers’ victory on the non-binding vote last month showed the difficulty for the diffuse coalition opposing the bill. Their strategy relies on differentiating that vote on the concept from a vote on the bill.
‘Single Sentence’
“It wasn’t the bill,” Jerry Cerasale, senior vice president for government affairs at the Direct Marketing Association. “It was a single sentence.”
For example, the bill wouldn’t prevent each state from auditing the same online retailer.
“There are some simplifications in the bill, but we don’t think they are enough,” Cerasale said. “Why don’t you have one nationwide audit?”
Baucus said the bill doesn’t provide rules for resolving disputes, doesn’t set standards for electronic filing and wouldn’t help businesses that he said would be forced to hire expensive accountants. He said his committee should get a chance to debate and amend the bill, a step that Monday’s vote rejected.
The base of legislative opposition to the bill starts with two groups: lawmakers from the five states lacking sales taxes, including Oregon and New Hampshire, and anti-tax Republicans who say the bill represents government overreach.
Michael Mazerov, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, said many of those arguments fall short.
Dating Services
Realistically, he said, states would work together to combine audits. Some online services could be subject to new taxes, such as dating services, though the taxes would have to apply equally to intrastate transactions.
“There aren’t that many services that are pure online services,” said Mazerov, whose Washington-based group supports policies that benefit low-income Americans.
The securities industry group and the Financial Services Roundtable said the issue of potential state-level financial transaction taxes deserves more study.
“It’s important for Congress to explore all the possible outcomes and costs of the proposal,” Scott Talbott, senior vice president of public policy at the Financial Services Roundtable, said in a statement.
Mazerov said the combination of states’ fiscal struggles and retailers’ experience with having customers come into their showrooms and purchase online has led to the bipartisan consensus in favor of the bill.
“It’s sort of gotten to the point where I think the proponents have kind of won the debate on the merits,” he said. “The only kind of major resistance and major question is coming from people who are looking to prevent any level of government from having any more revenue, in any way.”
The bills are S. 743 and H.R. 684.

Thank you Mrs. Thatcher

Thatcher, Freedom and Free Markets

Monday, 08 Apr 2013 12:36 PM

By Larry Kudlow

More ways to share...

Many profound and detailed admiration pieces will be written about the late Margaret Thatcher, and they’ll be much deeper than this one. But I want to get on record with my own esteem for Mrs. Thatcher, whose character, philosophy and achievements made her one of Britain’s greatest prime ministers.

Way back in the early 1990s, at a National Review conference on the eastern shore of Maryland, I had the great honor to serve on an economics panel that Mrs. Thatcher moderated. (Craig Roberts was also on that panel, although I can’t remember the name of the third panelist.) The topic was free markets and freedom, areas in which Margaret Thatcher made huge contributions, so I had a lot to live up to. And how did it go? Well, following the discussion, I got to sit next to Mrs. Thatcher during the luncheon. And she told me, “You know, Kudlow, you did rather well in that talk.” Naturally, I was thrilled.

Margaret Thatcher fought socialism in England and unyieldingly promoted the free-market views of Nobelists Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. She stopped the destructive British labor unions dead in their tracks. With every bone in her body she attempted to limit government by lowering spending and taxation. She opted for big-bang financial deregulation. And she put London back on the map as a world banking center.

“Freedom” was always her watchword.

She also adored Ronald Reagan. And the two of them formed an extraordinary partnership for freedom and free markets. Working together they helped bring down the Soviet communist system. And it was a peaceful bring-down at that.

Thatcher saw Mikhail Gorbachev first, and she reported to Reagan, “We can do business with him.” Reagan did, although he refused to back down on the Strategic Defense Initiative. And as the American economy roared in response to Reagan’s own free-market supply-side policies, the Soviets were out-produced and eventually folded.

Mrs. Thatcher famously said, “The trouble with socialists is that they always run out of other people’s money.” That dictum really stands the test of time, doesn’t it? Running out of other people’s money? Today?

The age of big government has once again, at least temporarily, reared its ugly head. It’s a great battle for all the economies around the world. That’s one of many reasons why we will miss Margaret Thatcher. She did not go wobbly.

Happy Birthday, Milton!

One of my favorite heroes of all time is Milton Friedman.  He was not only a great economist but he was an ambassador of common sense.  He changed not only the University of Chicago but also the way the world viewed money, work, and the lie of socialism.  He was about 'freedom'.  If you ever get a chance to read one of his books, mentioned in the article down below, or see any of his on line snippets on economics--especially the one on 'the pencil', again, I highly recommend taking some time to view or read.  He was about a free market place and part of the incredible probelms we are facing in the mortgage and real estate fields and the greater market in general, is the intrusion of government and how not only is it destroying the 'free market' but 'Freedom' in the greater sense of the word.

Business

It‘s Famed Economist Milton Friedman’s Birthday! Here are His Top 6 Quotes

•   Becket Adams

For today’s “top whatever” list, we’re going to commemorate the 100th birthday of Nobel Prize-winning conservative economist Milton Friedman. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Friedman, here’s what you need to know: he rescued the U.S. economy from the clutches of President Carter’s stagflation [i.e. rising inflation and unemployment] and, as the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore puts it, he “saved capitalism.”
“Next to Ronald Reagan, in the second half of the 20th century there was no more influential voice for economic freedom world-wide than Milton Friedman,” writes Moore.
“Small in stature but a giant intellect, he was the economist who saved capitalism by dismembering the ideas of central planning when most of academia was mesmerized by the creed of government as savior,” he adds.
And like most towering intellects, Friedman was a font of pithy and brilliant one-liners. In honor of his birthday, here are our favorite quotes from Milton Friedman with accompanying words from Stephen Moore:

“Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.”

Friedman was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for 1976 — at a time when almost all the previous prizes had gone to socialists. This marked the first sign of the intellectual comeback of free-market economics since the 1930s, when John Maynard Keynes hijacked the profession.
Friedman’s 1971 book “A Monetary History of the United States,” written with Anna Schwartz (who died on June 21), was a masterpiece and changed the way we think about the role of money.

“Governments never learn. Only people learn.”

In the early 1990s, Friedman visited poverty-stricken Mexico City for a Cato Institute forum. I remember the swirling controversy ginned up by the media and Mexico’s intelligentsia: How dare this apostle of free-market economics be given a public forum to speak to Mexican citizens about his “outdated” ideas? Yet when Milton arrived in Mexico he received a hero’s welcome as thousands of business owners, students and citizen activists hungry for his message encircled him everywhere he went, much like crowds for a modern rock star.
Once in the early 1960s, Friedman wrote the then-U.S. ambassador to New Delhi, John Kenneth Galbraith, that he would be lecturing in India. By all means come, the witty but often wrong Galbraith replied: “I can think of nowhere your free-market ideas can do less harm than in India.” As fate would have it, India did begin to embrace Friedmanism in the 1990s, and the economy began to soar. China finally caught on too.

“Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.”

More influential than Friedman’s scholarly writings was his singular talent for communicating the virtues of the free market to a mass audience. His two best-selling books, “Capitalism and Freedom” (1962) and “Free to Choose” (1980), are still wildly popular.
[...]
Friedman stood unfailingly and heroically with the little guy against the state. He used to marvel that the intellectual left, which claims to espouse “power to the people,” so often cheers as states suppress individual rights.

“I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it’s possible.”

I remember asking Milton, a year or so before his death, during one of our semiannual dinners in downtown San Francisco: What can we do to make America more prosperous? “Three things,” he replied instantly. “Promote free trade, school choice for all children, and cut government spending.”
How much should we cut? “As much as possible.”

“If you put the Federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.”

While he questioned almost every statist orthodoxy, he fearlessly gored sacred cows of both political parties. He was the first scholar to sound the alarm on the rotten deal of Social Security for young workers — forced to pay into a system that will never give back as much as they could have accumulated on their own. He questioned the need for occupational licenses — which he lambasted as barriers to entry — for everything from driving a cab to passing the bar to be an attorney, or getting an M.D. to practice medicine.
He loved turning the intellectual tables on liberals by making the case that regulation often does more harm than good. His favorite example was the Food and Drug Administration, whose regulations routinely delay the introduction of lifesaving drugs. “When the FDA boasts a new drug will save 10,000 lives a year,” he would ask, “how many lives were lost because it didn’t let the drug on the market last year?”

“Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.”

In a recent tribute to Friedman in the Journal of Economic Literature, Harvard’s Andrei Shleifer describes 1980-2005 as “The Age of Milton Friedman,“ an era that ”witnessed remarkable progress of mankind. As the world embraced free-market policies, living standards rose sharply while life expectancy, educational attainment, and democracy improved and absolute poverty declined.”
Well over 200 million were liberated from poverty thanks to the rediscovery of the free market.
Final thought: Although he witnessed the economic mess brought about by Carter’s policies, we can’t help but wonder how shocked Friedman would be with the policies of the current administration.
“It’s a tragedy that Milton Friedman … did not live long enough to combat the big-government ideas that have formed the core of Obamanomics,” Moore writes.
“It’s perhaps more tragic that our current president, who attended the University of Chicago where Friedman taught for decades, never fell under the influence of the world’s greatest champion of the free market. Imagine how much better things would have turned out, for Mr. Obama and the country,” he adds.

Some good and Mixed Mortgage News

Mortgage Rates Remain Stable, Bigger Threats in Week Ahead Apr 18 2012, 2:49PM
Mortgages Rates were flat to slightly improved today. Most lenders improved pricing by very small amounts while a few were slightly worse than yesterday. On average, rate offerings are in line with those seen yesterday and on Thursday of last week.
Rates have been in great territory all week with the Best-Execution rate for 30yr Fixed Conventional remaining split between 3.875% and 4.0%. That means that lenders were widely able to offer 4.0% rates with no closing costs for well-qualified borrowers and some of the more aggressive lenders can offer 3.875% for ideal scenarios.
The view that market movements might be subdued this week in favor of the next continues to bear out. Each time bond markets approach one side of their recent range, they've found an excuse to head back to the other side.
The recent stability suggests markets remain very interested in the European debt situation, which will get a healthy dose of information tonight in the form of a Spanish 10yr government bond auction. If it's stronger than expected, the level of "risk-tolerance" in markets would improve, causing upwards pressure on domestic interest rates.
But even if the reaction to overnight events causes the biggest rate movements of the week, it likely wouldn't be enough to nudge rates out of their current Best-Execution ranges. We're still of the mind that markets may be hesitant to move too far in either direction ahead of next week's FOMC Announcement (The periodic official statement from the Fed).

In the Field of (no, not poppies) Real Estate

Shattered Dreams: Realtors ride out tough housing market
By Shannon Bream

Realtor Beverly Langley, who's been selling homes for nearly three decades, says the business isn't what it used to be. "You can't just wait for the phone to ring," she warns, adding, "It just doesn't work that way anymore." Langley estimates that 40 percent of realtors in the Washington, D.C., region have left the business since 2006.
Paul Bishop, vice president of research for the National Association of Realtors, says it's true there are fewer realtors in the business. For those who have hung on, Bishop says, "They are working just as hard as they did before and not earning as much." Statistics show employment numbers and wages for realtors peaked in 2007, and since then there's been a steady rate of attrition.
Along with instability in the mortgage markets, Langley says government regulation is making her job tougher as well. She points to the Dodd-Frank legislation aimed at reforming Wall Street. "The appraisal process changed drastically as a result of that bill," Langley laments. She says that -- and other provisions -- have made it difficult for prospective buyers to get the financing they need. In 2011, the National Association of Realtors spent more than $22 million lobbying the government for changes on issues ranging from mortgage industry regulation to foreclosures.
While kinks in the housing market are worked out, Langley isn't wasting time. She says she's found ways to succeed during the housing bust, and it's mostly pegged to good old-fashioned hard work. Langley says the workweek is at least 60 hours long, and successful realtors must be willing to take on any client. Langley cold calls homes listed as for sale by owner, works on foreclosure listings, and is trying to leverage social media as well. "We're doing everything we know to do."
Brian Summerfield, online editor for REALTOR magazine, also suggests capitalizing on technology. His online tips include getting away from the traditional office setting. Because so many buyers are using the Internet to search for a home, Summerfield suggests conducting meetings virtually -- or at a neighborhood coffee shop with Wi-Fi. He says realtors can operate anywhere as long as they've got "a good Web presence."
Bishop says profits are there for realtors who are willing to ride out the market's fluctuations.
"They really are small business people who face a lot of the difficulties that many small business people face, but at the same time they can gain the rewards a lot of small business people see."
Bishop adds it's that opportunity for self-made success that attracts so many to the business.