Tuesday, May 12, 2009

The $9.7 Trillion Commitment

Bloomberg in February posted a story which stated:

"Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages.

The Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have lent or spent almost $3 trillion over the past two years and pledged up to $5.7 trillion more. The Senate is to vote this week on an economic-stimulus measure of at least $780 billion. It would need to be reconciled with an $819 billion plan the House approved last month"

Bloomberg went on to state that they were litigating under FOIA to obtain the details:

"Fed Sue: Bloomberg requested details of Fed lending under the Freedom of Information Act and filed a federal lawsuit against the central bank Nov. 7 seeking to force disclosure of borrower banks and their collateral. Arguments in the suit may be heard as soon as this month, according to the court docket. Bloomberg asked the Treasury in an FOIA request Jan. 28 for a detailed list of the securities it planned to guarantee for Citigroup and Bank of America. Bloomberg hasn’t received a response to the request..The Bloomberg lawsuit is Bloomberg LP v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 08-CV-9595, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan)."

The in a Congressional hearing Representative Alan Grayson questioned the Inspector General of the FED, depicted in detail on YouTube, which demonstrated the near absolute incoherence of Federal employees, especially political appointees. We have shown the FED balance sheet a few days ago and how it has grown almost $2 trillion since then end of last year. The question is where are the commitments on the balance sheet, and the answer is they are "off balance sheet" but they are just as firm as if they were on balance sheet.

This clearly raises major concerns regarding inflation, yet M2 is still low.