“Our totally unbacked, printed money, controlled by the central planners at the Federal Reserve, is the absolute cause.”
Why isn’t the Congress, who approves these never ending budget deficits, the ‘absolute cause’? If the Feds balanced the budget (or close to it), there would be no need to print, correct?
The Congress didn’t have to listen to Henry Paulson’s BS in 2008 about the need to bail out the banks, foreign and domestic, did they?
The Federal Reserve is not an independent entity. Hasn’t been since the Martin days (with the possible exception of Volker). They take their marching orders from the Treasury, and the Treasury takes it’s direction from the President.
The President should be subject to the Constitution, and thereby the Congress and We the People.
The blame lies squarely with the Congress.
Its like asking a heroin addict to control himself in a drug den. Basically half our congress is progressive-left. Their path to power and control is passing out government benefits and favors, which they control. Over the past decades in fact, with our ability to support massive government debt, they have simply grown this system of patronage and power to where there is no other choice. Even so-called "conservatives" can't resist this.
Let's look at our recent mortgage crisis as an example. Starting with Jimmy Carter, and ramping up under Clinton/Cuomo, for purely ideological and political reasons, they pushed banks to lower lending standards (the CRA) and even created an apparatus to incentivize and permit Wall Street to sell the government crap mortgages (Fannie/Freddie). Even private insurers bought into this system and were guaranteeing such bonds (AIG, etc..). When this crashed in 2008, what happened? One 2nd tier bank was sacrificed (Lehman) while the others were bailed out by TARP - and especially the Federal Reserve, with pure fiat money. The Federal Reserve bought, and now sits on, something like $1.8 Trillion of MBS. They simply preserved the existing system in amber. No reform, no lessons learned. A Clinton is still running for President. Andrew Cuomo still sits as a popular governor of NY State. Fannie and Freddie still exist. Under that same model, Obama has even had Fed.gov take over all student loans as well. Government has simply used that crisis to grow in its scope and power and we have simply taught Americans that "yes, there is a free lunch after all."