First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out....

I know you will hate this post. But respond to what I actually write, if you want.

It served a diversionary purpose, because it has gotten too many people to buy into the populist nonsense that puts people's eyes on the wrong target (creating a boogeyman -- in this case the "1 percent") to distract them from the fact that the very people that populism originated with are their real problem.

Janet Yellen is giving her first Humphrey Hawkins testimony right now. The Federal Reserve has created a $4.5 trillion balance sheet in its attempt to hold us off from having to pay for the mess our government and the Fed as its enabler have already created -- what caused the financial collapse in the first place. If the Fed was a hedge fund, it would be insolvent. Marked to market, the long-term treasuries and mortgage-backed securities it has bought to rig those markets are sitting at huge losses (not that the Fed should be choosing winners and losers anyhow to boost certain markets at the expense of others) -- that are just going to increase. The Fed is leveraged something like 100 to 1. Even in the aftermath of the misery our government and central bank caused in the first place, they are having one last party. And that party has served wealthy people, in practice, not everyday people. Anyone who can afford stocks (you didn't even need to be a stock picker last year) or artwork or vintage bottles of wine or any of the other paper assets that have been the beneficiary of that monetary inflation have gotten richer -- and this has been going on through Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and now with Janet Yellen in the unprecedented way we see it today (through asset purchases we never saw before and blatantly pick winners and losers).

It is going to collapse under its own weight. And we are probably closer than a lot of people realize. Then, a lot of nouveau rich are going to realize that their new-found wealth was a mirage all along.

But the Occupy Wall Street people have seen that increasing wealth that was only being funneled toward those high-risk assets that benefit only those who can afford them. And they mistakenly buy into the class warfare nonsense that is thrown around to distract everyone, rather than trying to understand the real causes for the effects.

Tying this post back into the thread, the Federal Reserve is just doing the bidding of our government. When we spend beyond our means, we can either drown in interest payments and get to the point where we either cut back dramatically or default. ... or the central bank can rig interest rates (in every way possible) to make the spending possible a little longer.

Right now, we are in the waning days of the latter. Which means that as noble as some people on here think SNAP (or any of the other $3.6 trillion in spending) is, it will eventually be a moot discussion.

 

Not without plunging the economy into a depression that WILL be causing rioting in the streets. You don't want to get anywhere near the point that politicians -- who will find any way they can to put off dealing with reality -- are actually CONSIDERING that.

EDIT: Although in the long-run, it is (would be) the right thing to do.