Mr. Obvious Makes His Case For Gold

Bernanke Grilling May Weaken Case for Expanded Powers
June 26 (Bloomberg) -- Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s grilling by legislators over Federal Reserve conduct in Bank of America Corp.’s takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co. may reduce the odds the central bank will win new powers in a regulatory overhaul.

Bernanke failed to resolve some lawmakers’ questions on whether the Fed bullied executives and stepped over other regulators in the name of financial stability in a three-hour congressional hearing yesterday. Republicans asserted the Fed interfered with commercial decisions, and Democrats said it should have wrung more concessions in return for taxpayer aid.

Criticisms by members of both parties are likely to diminish support for the Obama administration’s plan to make the Fed the single agency responsible for the largest and most interconnected financial institutions. The proposal, part of a broad revamp of bank regulation, would give the Fed power to dictate standards on capital, liquidity and risk management.

“It may be more important for us to find another systemic risk regulator,” Representative Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat and member of the House Oversight Committee where Bernanke appeared, said in a Bloomberg Television interview after the hearing. Congress should “hesitate to put any more authority on the back of the Federal Reserve,” he said.

Representative Darrell Issa, the ranking Republican on the House panel, said the Fed’s actions “ought to be a note of caution to those who want to dramatically increase its power and authority.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a.iry_6hC88s

Lawmakers Attack Fed For Being Too Secretive
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- U.S. lawmakers, during a hearing Thursday on the central bank's role in Bank of America's acquisition of Merrill Lynch, attacked the Federal Reserve as a secret agency unworthy of new enhanced regulatory powers.

"It's time to yank the shroud off the Fed and shine some light on these events," said U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., who in an opening statement repeatedly described the Fed as being "shrouded in secrecy."

"I believe that before Congress acts on the president's financial services reform proposal, we need to have a thorough understanding of what caused the current financial crisis and how the federal government responded."

The heated congressional hearing got under way Thursday with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke defending the central bank's role in negotiations with Bank of America (BAC) and with members of the House Government Reform committee expressing skepticism of the Fed's decisions.

Usually, the Fed chief goes to Capitol Hill to take questions on monetary policy and the economy. But the economy was barely touched on at Thursday's hearing.

Instead, lawmakers criticized the Fed as an agency that has too much power and yet too little transparency and questioned whether the Fed should become the uber regulator of the financial system envisioned by the Obama administration.
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200906251720DOWJONESDJONLINE000958_FORTUNE5.htm

China Reiterates Call for New World Reserve Currency
June 26 (Bloomberg) -- China’s central bank renewed its call for a new global currency and said the International Monetary Fund should manage more of members’ foreign-exchange reserves, triggering a decline in the U.S. dollar.

“To avoid the inherent deficiencies of using sovereign currencies for reserves, there’s a need to create an international reserve currency that’s delinked from sovereign nations,” the People’s Bank of China said in its 2008 review released today. The IMF should expand the functions of its unit of account, Special Drawing Rights, the report said.

The restatement of Governor Zhou Xiaochuan’s proposal in March added to speculation that China will diversify its currency reserves, the world’s largest at more than $1.95 trillion. Chinese investors, the biggest foreign owners of U.S. Treasuries, reduced holdings by $4.4 billion in April to $763.5 billion after Premier Wen Jiabao expressed concern about the value of dollar assets. That reduction came a month after China boosted its holdings by $23.7 billion to a record.

“Zhou Xiaochuan sees the current international financial system is flawed, putting too much emphasis on the dollar as a reserve currency,” said Kevin Lai, an economist with Daiwa Institute of Research in Hong Kong.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aSQeGrhdwipU


Richard Russell: Competitive devaluations to spur on gold
“Every nation wants to export. The obsession to export has resulted in filling the world with products, things, and merchandise of every kind. There’s a world overflow of products, and the result is deflation. Just too much stuff being manufactured. Buyers from importing nations can’t handle it all. The result is asset deflation.

“One reason why every nation wants to export is to lift employment. Nothing scares politicians like unemployment. Why? Because unemployed workers VOTE just the way employed workers do. The lesson - if you want high employment, learn to export. Exporting creates jobs. China and Asia learned that lesson, and they captured world export markets with the help of one valuable item - low wages - that along with no Social Security, no medical, no pensions, no anything, just plain low wages with none of the extras.

“Ooops, I left something out. What I left out was the big second advantage - cheap currency. Every nation, particularly the exporters, wants a cheap, competitive currency. The US is no exception. Obama tells the world that the dollar is a strong, hard currency, but the dollar has been weak. The administration’s policy is to talk a “hard dollar” but hope for a soft dollar.

“The result of all this is competitive devaluations. Nations no longer devalue their currencies against gold, they simply print oceans of their own currencies, and with that paper they buy dollars, hoping to raise the price of dollars against their own currencies. The result is a growing sea of fiat junk paper.

“The greater the world ocean of fiat paper, the higher gold goes. You see, gold is the secret, unstated world standard of money. Gold can’t be devalued or multiplied out of thin air. So as the various currencies of the world decline in relation to each other, gold stands alone. It can’t be cheapened or devalued or bankrupted. While the currencies of the world decline in purchasing power in relation to each other, they all decline in purchasing power against gold. In other words, as time passes, it requires more of each currency to purchase one ounce of gold.

“In the meantime, the US continues to spend outrageously, not only running up debts for the present but also for the children of the future. The US deficits and national debt will run into the multi-trillions in coming years.

“How will these monster debts ever be paid off? They’ll be paid off by devalued dollars, they’ll be paid off by additional borrowing, they’ll be paid off by inflation, they’ll be paid off with higher taxes and probably a VAT tax, they’ll be handled by projecting them into the future for other administrations to struggle with.

“As they say in New York, ‘all right already, so what do we do about it?’.
“Short and medium term, you want dollars, as many of them as you can save. Long-term you want gold. Somewhere ahead gold will come into its own. I can’t time gold, but I can identify the time when gold is ready to ‘take off’. When gold climbs above 1,004 it will be the signal for the beginning of the third phase gold rush. What I’m saying is forget quick profits in gold, forget timing gold, just own some.

“The way the world is going, ‘gold will be the last man standing’. Gold will be wanted because unlike everything else, gold can not go bankrupt. Gold has no debt against it, gold is not the product of some nation’s central bank. Gold is pure intrinsic wealth. It needs no nation to guarantee it. Gold is outside the paper system.”
http://www.investmentpostcards.com/2009/06/27/richard-russell-competitive-devaluations-to-spur-on-gold/

What Really Backs the U.S. Dollar?
What does a dollar or Federal Reserve note represent now that gold and silver no longer back any of the currency printed in the U.S.?

A dollar bill used to say “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private, and is redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury or at any Federal Reserve Bank.” Look at a dollar bill today. It simply says; “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” In other words, you can’t redeem it for “lawful money.”

Guess what folks? A dollar bill is not lawful money, but rather “legal tender.”

From the Treasury;

“Federal Reserve notes are not redeemable in gold, silver or any other commodity, and receive no backing by anything. Redeemable notes into gold ended in 1933 and silver in 1968. The notes have no value for themselves, but for what they will buy. In another sense, because they are legal tender, Federal Reserve notes are “backed” by all the goods and services in the economy.”

What the government, via the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, really did in 1971 was coerce
you to accept something (Federal Reserve notes) that used to be redeemable for gold and/or silver but now aren’t redeemable at all.

What the Treasury would have you believe is that GDP backs the dollar. GDP is defined as “The monetary value of all finished goods and services within a country’s borders in a specific time period It includes all of private and public consumption, government outlays, investments and exports less imports that occur within a defined territory.”
http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/424410-doug-digger-eberhardt/10183-what-really-backs-the-u-s-dollar