07 | January | 2010 | New Economic Perspectives

Daily Archives: January 7, 2010

Helicopter Drops Are FISCAL Operations

Posted on January 7, 2010 by Scott Fullwiler | 24 comments

Given all the chatter in the blogosphere about “Helicopter Ben” Bernanke, it’s probably time to look more carefully at the actual accounting behind so-called “helicopter drops of money,” made famous years ago by Milton Friedman. As most everyone knows, the idea behind a hypothetical helicopter drop is that the central bank would essentially drop currency from a helicopter in an effort to stimulate aggregate spending. One could modernize the story and presume that the central bank credits X number of dollars to the bank (deposit) accounts of all (or even some) individuals. And while traditionally it’s been presumed that it would be the Fed that would be dropping money from the helicopter(s), it could just as easily be action taken by the Treasury – e.g. by requiring the Treasury to take an overdraft on its account at the central bank via mandate from Congress and the President.

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Tagged Federal Reserve, Fiscal Policy, Monetary policy, Scott Fullwiler

Timmy Geithner Must Go

Posted on January 7, 2010 by admin | 6 comments

SECRET EMAILS SHOW GEITHNER’S NYFED FORCED AIG TO HIDE DATA
By L. Randall Wray

Breaking News: As reported on Bloomberg here and in NYT here, secret emails show that the NYFed under Geithner’s command prohibited AIG from reporting that it was passing government bail-out funds directly to counterparties, including Goldman Sachs. AIG had been negotiating with the banks, asking them to take as little as 40 cents on the dollar against bad CDOs they held. AIG was the biggest insurer in the country and had provided $62 billion of credit default “insurance” to these banks. The CDOs went bad and AIG could not cover claims. It was forced into insolvency and the government came to the rescue, with $182 billion of bailout funds through last June. By all rights, its counterparties should have lost big on their bad bets. Apparently, Geithner arranged the bailout of AIG with full knowledge that it would pass the bailout funds directly to the banks. Whether or not some protection should have been provided to the banks, it clearly was not good public policy to provide dollar-for-dollar protection to them. If you are a favored Wall Street bank, no bet can go bad!

Note that Geithner worked with then Treasury Secretary Paulson to broker this deal. Paulson, of course, had been the CEO of Goldman. Geithner is the protégé of Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Rubin, also from Goldman.

According to Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, “It appears that the New York Fed deliberately pressured AIG to restrict and delay the disclosure of important information to the S.E.C.”. Not only did Geithner want to keep this information from the public, but also from fellow regulators. (Whoops, Geithner admitted he was never a regulator.) This smells fishy because it is. Geithner not only oversaw the operation but his office prohibited AIG from telling the truth about it. Remember, this is the same guy who “forgot” to pay his taxes (see here). He is ethically challenged. Should he be running the Treasury?

As Republican Congressman Brady of Texas put it, “Conservatives agree that, as point person, you’ve failed. Liberals are growing in that consensus as well. Poll after poll shows the public has lost confidence in this president’s ability to handle the economy. For the sake of our jobs, will you step down from your post?” (see here).