The New American – by William F. Jasper
The annual meeting of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, this past week (August 22-24), sponsored by the Federal Reserve, elicited a collective yawn from the establishment media. Since Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke had announced earlier that he would not be attending — the first time in 24 years a Fed chairman has missed the annual confab — most media reports downplayed the significance of the conference and focused on speculation over how soon the Fed might begin its announced “tapering” program (Will it be in September, December, or January?), and by how much (Will it be a reduction of $10 billion/month, or $15 billion, or $20 billion?). An even bigger diversion was the speculation over the anticipated departure of Bernanke from the Fed and who his replacement is likely to be — with Fed Vice Chairman Janet Yellen and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers leading the short list of candidates.
No Watchdogs Allowed; Only Fed-friendly Media Lapdogs Admitted
However, with the global economy teetering on the brink and the world’s central bankers engaged, along with their commercial bank partners, in vastly expanding their powers and robbing their customers and taxpayers of trillions of dollars, it is easy to see why they would welcome the diversionary coverage provided by the dozen selected reporters (from Fox, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, AP, New York Times, Bloomberg, et al) who were admitted to the conference.
The Fed conference roster lists these privileged lapdogs as official “Media Attendees”:
Binyamin Appelbaum, correspondent, the New York Times
Peter Barnes, senior Washington correspondent, Fox Business Network
Steven K. Beckner, senior correspondent, Market News International
Martin Crutsinger, correspondent, the Associated Press
Pedro da Costa, correspondent, Reuters
Robin B. Harding, U.S. economics editor, Financial Times
Nell Henderson, correspondent, the Wall Street Journal
Steve Liesman, senior economics reporter, CNBC
Victoria McGrane, correspondent, Dow Jones Newswires
Michael McKee, economics editor, Bloomberg TV
Neil Irwin, columnist, the Washington Post
Josh Zumbrun, reporter, Bloomberg News
“They’re going to take money wherever they can”
Famed investor/author and commodities tycoon Jim Rogers, however, sounded a very different tune from the “nothing new happening, don’t worry, all is well” theme that underscored the MSM treatment of the secretive banker huddle in Wyoming, at the ranch/conference center developed by John D. Rockefeller early in the last century.
According to Rogers, the “be happy” message is camouflaging the fact that “They’re going to take money wherever they can. … They’re going to take our bank accounts and retirement accounts.”
The “they” he refers to are the central bankers and their Insider commercial banker colleagues — and national governments, which serve as the collection agencies for the bankers. “This is the first time in recorded history all the banks are printing money at the same time. … This is the first time we’ve had massive debasement, and it’s going to end very badly no matter what they say,” Rogers said in a remote video interview with Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com.
“Whether they keep printing or stop printing money globally, it is going to end badly,” Rogers continued. “Banks are not going to be lending. Financial markets are going to go down. Currency markets are going to be in great turmoil. It’s not going to be any fun.” And if the money printing continues, Rogers says, “You’ve got bubble in some sectors, you have inflation, and then you have interest rates going up… and it’s a mess because printing money is artificial. It’s never worked.” As the economy slows down, Rogers predicts, “They’re going to take money wherever they can. … They’re going to take our bank accounts and retirement accounts.” Rogers concludes by saying, “We’ve had perilous times, and it’s going to get worse. … It’s coming, be worried, be careful.”
Again, the “they” that Rogers is warning about taking your savings account, your pension, and your 401K are the very same members of the global theft cartel — banking and government Insiders — that the MSM lapdogs are holding up as the saviors of the global economic system.
IMF’s Lagarde: Central Banks are “Heroes” of Financial Crisis
A condition of a journalist’s admission to the Fed’s highly prized soiree, it seems, is that he/she agree to function as a Fed propagandist, dutifully retailing the official narrative that central bankers are engaged in a great heroic effort to “stabilize” the faltering world economy, and that they deserve our unalloyed gratitude.
This was a major theme of International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde, who told the assembled notables:
In many respects, central banks have been the heroes of the global financial crisis. Compared with conventional monetary policy, the unconventional monetary policies of the past few years have been bolder in ambition and larger in scale. These exceptional actions helped the world pull back from the precipice of another Great Depression.
“The challenge for today’s generation of policymakers is to rethink and reimagine how to get our economies back to work,” said Lagarde. “One of the most striking aspects of that has been the willingness of central banks in advanced economies to ‘dive into the deep end’ of the policymaking pool.”
Even more striking has been the supine servility with which the U.S. Congress and other national legislative bodies and executives have accepted these criminal usurpations of power by the central banks.
As Lagarde, Bernanke and their ilk “rethink and reimagine” the world, it is one in which they are totally unencumbered by constitutional, legal, and moral limits; they are at complete liberty to ‘dive into the deep end’ of the policymaking pool and craft whatever world they wish. Thus, Bernanke and his Fed colleagues simply decide on their own to begin “buying” $85 billion Treasury securities and mortgage backed securities (MBS) a month — with counterfeit money they’ve spun out of thin air. And, together with their global banking confreres, they shift hundreds of billions and even trillions of dollars into bailouts for European and U.S. banks.
Madame Lagarde, of course, is at the center of the ongoing global effort to “supersize” the IMF, that is, transforming it into a global Federal Reserve, but with even greater powers and completely unaccountable to Congress or any national government (seehere, and here). As we reported last year, in a January 23, 2012 speech to the German Council on Foreign Relations, Lagarde called for the major member nations to pony up a trillion-dollar “firewall” slush fund for the IMF.
In addition to the many Federal Reserve officials and central bankers, this year’s Jackson Hole affair included the usual complement of insider economists and academics. Among those in attendance were:
Fahad Abdullah Almubarak, governor, Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency
Erdem Basçi, governor, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey
Charles R. Bean, deputy governor, Bank of England
Marek Belka, president, National Bank of Poland
Alan S. Blinder, professor, Princeton University
Josef Bonnici, governor, Central Bank of Malta
Claudio Borio, deputy head of Monetary and Economic Department, Bank for International Settlements
Lael Brainard, under secretary for International Affairs, U.S. Department of the Treasury
James B. Bullard, president and chief executive officer, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Marco Buti, director general, European Commission
Agustín Carstens, governor, Bank of Mexico
Stephen Cecchetti, economic adviser, Bank for International Settlements
Norman Chan, chief executive, Hong Kong Monetary Authority
Terrence J. Checki, executive vice president, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Luc Coene, governor, National Bank of Belgium
Susan M. Collins, dean and professor, University of Michigan Ford School of Public Policy
Carlos da Silva Costa, governor, Bank of Portugal
Panicos O. Demetriades, governor, Central Bank of Cyprus
John Duca, vice president and senior policy advisor, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
William C. Dudley, president, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Barry Eichengreen, professor, University of California, Berkeley
Martin Feldstein, professor of economics, Harvard University
Stanley Fischer, former governor, Bank of Israel
Donald L. Kohn, senior fellow, Brookings Institution
Arvind Krishnamurthy, professor, Northwestern University
Randall Kroszner, professor, University of Chicago
Alan Krueger, professor, Princeton University
Haruhiko Kuroda, governor, Bank of Japan
Christine Lagarde, managing director, International Monetary Fund
Sabine Lautenschlaeger, deputy president, Deutsche Bundesbank
John Taylor, professor, Stanford University
Linda Tesar, professor, University of Michigan
Christian Thimann, counsel to the Executive Board, European Central Bank
Prasarn Trairatvorakul, governor, Bank of Thailand
José Darío Uribe Escobar, governor, Central Bank of Colombia
Rodrigo Vergara, governor, Central Bank of Chile
Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, professor, University of California, Berkeley
Christopher J. Waller, senior vice president and director of research, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Meredith Whitney, chief executive officer, Meredith Whitney Advisory Group, LLC
Janet Yellen, vice chairman, board of governors, Federal Reserve System
Kei-Mu Yi, senior vice president and director of research, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
Shenghui Zhang, chief representative, U.S. Office of the Peoples Bank of China
(For a complete official list of the conference attendees see here.)