Word: feds
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...pivotal election, a few hundred supporters have gathered to hear their nominee speak. For many in the excited crowd, it's their first political event. "This one feels big because the whole country is paying attention to it because it's a change in the attitude: people are fed up with Washington," says Lisa Manser, 42, a Leesburg, Va., teacher who had knocked on doors as a campaign volunteer for the first time in her life earlier that...
...hear constant political debate about these other stimulus efforts? Presumably because they were the result of bipartisan legislation or were the doing of the nonpartisan Fed. That is to say, the Obama Administration can't take full credit for the bulk of the stimulus, and the Republicans can't disown it. So neither side talks much about it. Over the coming year these other forms of stimulus will - one hopes - be ratcheted back, while stimulus-bill spending will peak. At that point the great stimulus debate might actually start to matter. Until then, there's better football to be watched...
...real bailout wasn't TARP. It was lending and guarantee programs from the Fed and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The Fed had a mere three borrowing programs before the crisis started in the summer of 2007, when two Bear Stearns hedge funds failed. At the height of the bailout, there were no fewer than 13 programs. The New York Fed had to post them on its website sideways, using teensy-weensy type, so they would print out on a single sheet of paper...
Main Street has paid a price for the ultra-low interest rates the Fed has kept in place to encourage banks to lend and to keep commerce flowing. Cheap money is nice for lenders and borrowers - but it's devastating for savers, especially for retirees who use interest income to supplement Social Security. If you had $500,000 stashed away - not a bad nest egg - you could earn a no-risk $20,000 to $25,000 annually (before taxes) two years ago buying bank CDs or short-term Treasury securities. Now you earn less than $5,000 in an average...
...your faith in the Fed or Uncle Sam. During the 1982-2000 stock-market boom and the long economic expansion, people foolishly began to think that government officials like former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan (formerly the "Maestro" and the man who helped save the world, now Alan Who?) - were looking after their interests. They weren't. Greenspan's job was to protect the world financial system and the economy, not you. Ben Bernanke's job is the same as Greenspan...