Well, unfortunately for us we don’t have any industries that can second as a bank.

Remember, our only export is debt. We print money, we don’t generate it. i.e. record high trade deficit.

The new goal seems to be about managing expectations. We seem to be turning Red.

Re: “what the hell happened to Robert Schiller..”

See: MEFO Bonds and the roots of The Fed:

An imaginary company

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mefo_bills

Hjalmar Schacht formed the limited liability company Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft, m.b.H., or “MEFO” for short. The company’s “mefo bills” served as bills of exchange, convertible into Reichsmark upon demand. MEFO had no actual existence or operations and was solely a balance sheet entity. The bills were mainly issued as payment to armaments manufacturers.
Mefo bills were issued to last for six months initially, but with the provision for indefinite three-month extensions. The total amount of mefo bills issued was kept secret.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjalmar_Schacht

Re: chacht negotiated several trade agreements with countries in South America, and South-East Europe, ensuring that Germany would continue to receive raw materials from those countries, but that they would be paid in Reichsmarks; thus ensuring that the deficit would not get any worse; whilst allowing the Nazis to deal with the gap which had already developed. Schacht also found an innovative solution to the problem of the government deficit by using mefo bills. He was appointed General Plenipotentiary for the War Economy in May 1934[6] and was awarded honorary membership of the Nazi Party and the Golden Swastika in January 1937.

Schacht had been president of the Reichsbank between 1923 and 1930, but had been dismissed. Now he would return in triumph. He felt vindicated. Within weeks, the ingenious solution to Germany’s pressing financial woes would burst forth from his inventive brain.

“It was necessary,” Schacht later explained, “to discover a method that would avoid inflating the investment holdings of the Reichsbank immoderately and consequently increasing the circulation of money excessively.”

“Therefore,” he went on, “I had to find some means of getting the sums that were lying idle in pockets and banks, without meaning for it to be long term and without having it undergo the risk of depreciation. That was the reasoning behind the Mefo bonds.”

What were these “Mefo” bonds? Mefo was a contraction of the Metallurgische Forschungs-GmbH (Metallurgic Research Company). With a startup capitalization of one billion marks – which Hitler and Schacht arranged to be provided by the four giant firms of Krupp, Siemens, Deutsche Werke and Rheinmetall — this company would eventually promote many billions of marks worth of investment.

They’re “stabilizing” the patient while the industrialists “deleverage” [read] get liquid and get the heck out of dodge before its to late.

Uncle Ben’s “big plan” is to maintain this charade long enough for our countries capital to be sucked up and flown away somewhere safe.

This is going to be the biggest “rip off” of all time. It seems that “globalization” means that the industrial parasites can canabalize their own country. Capital no longer has any boarders or loyalty.

We are now victims of our own foreign policy. Welcome to Third World status.

The only thing they have done for me is force my investments out of a dying currency, and rigged markets, There are simply better places to put ones money and it doesn’t have to be in dollars.

He has become Col. Kurtz. (Apocolypse now !) Oh, the horror !

They watched while Rome burned. Where is the accountability for what happened here? High officials at Fed/Treasury need to be fired. After all this, they are still admitting nothing and are still being fawned on by the media as our “saviours”.

The response to the crisis is yet more “deification of the Fed” and its “almighty powers”. Can our system get any dumber?

And Shiller wants to give _more_ authority to the inheritor of that office? . . . “Worked once, didn’t it? They’re stupid enough to smoke that ‘xplodin’ ceeegar twice, me thinks. And I get commission! *clacka-clacka-clacka-ping*”

“. . . [The]nature of financial institutions is changing . . . the traditional boundaries of banking have blurred . . . In the new financial order, in fact, we do not clearly know what is or is not a bank . . . .” Bob, you just stated _the problem_ not immovable parameters of our financial universe. We’ve allowed non-banks to lend and borrow, at high volume, to maximum recklessness, solely for personal gain, with zero oversight. That is something that can certainly be GREATLY RESTRICTED by regulation, and must be. Oh, sharpies will always find flash ways to gamble with the funds of others. Let’s have them follow some basic rules and cut them off before they can take the rest of us down with them. And while we’re at it, let’s tax them plenty for the privilege of doing business onshore.

“Two of the Feds important recent innovations are {the TAF and the TSLF}.” No, these weren’t ‘innovations,’ those inventive, risk-taking, heroic deeds seemingly implied by that term, Bob. These were acts of stone desperation to keep the present insolvency of the financial industry, commercial and speculative both, from killing the banking industry, economy, and currency simultaneously. We don’t face a “confidence” problem, we face a ‘confidence _man_’ problem which has created an involvency problem.

In addressing the drivers and structures of our present Subcrime Bubble, I am deeply opposed to concentrating yet more authority in the ever-hidden hands of Our Benevolent Chairman. The charge of the Fed has been to grow the banking system. The Fed bungled or stifled it’s regulatory tasks under Greenspan, so those tasks should be reassgined to a different super-agency insulated from direct pressure from the industry and charged with keeping the banks solvent and alive since they can’t seem to manage to to this unaided what with all their ‘heroic innovation’ WHICH THE REST OF US COULD WELL DO ENTIRELY WITHOUT! If there’s an us and them concerning the plutocrats, Bob, it’s clear you’re not with us. In the class war of the last generation, the rich have won big, long, and often, but now that it’s time to clink the cuffs you ask us to clink the guineas for them hey again?

We need two keys on the banking industry, as I’ve opined before; checks and balances. This means that if the Fed is the Moderator we need a _real_ Regulator. Not more smooth operators like Robert Shiller.