Tim Price: Viene la tormenta, part II
Comment of the Day

November 17 2010

Commentary by David Fuller

Tim Price: Viene la tormenta, part II

This erudite letter opens on a humorous note, with the Financial Times' Alphaville satirical note on behalf of Mr Bernanke:
"Dear Sir,

Good day and compliments. I am Dr (Mr) Benjamin Bernanke, Chairman of Federal Reserve of United States of America. This mail will surely come to you as a great surprise, since we never had any previous correspondence. My aim of contacting you is to crave your indulgence to assist us in securing some funds abroad to prosecute a transaction of great magnitude.

Due to poor banking system in America, many subprime borrowers are not paying back mortgages and banks have lost ONE TRILLION TWO HUNDRED BILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS ($1,200bn) so far. This calamity has caused much suffering in my country. To help remedy this situation, our president, Mr Barack Obama, has authorised to be spent a sum of EIGHT HUNDRED NINETY SEVEN BILLION DOLLARS ($897bn) on stimulus plus many other good deeds like cash for clunkers. Unfortunately, since that time, we are being molested and constantly harassed by bond vigilantes who do not care that their reckless and vicious behaviour could ruin our hopes and plans.

To this effect, last year I authorised the printing of ONE TRILLION TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY BILLION ($1,250bn) of United States currency to purchase government securities. To my great shock, this was not enough so I am now buying another SIX HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS ($600bn).

If you forward a modest sum to purchase Treasury notes then I can buy many more of them with my unlimited printing press and their price will rise. I am absolutely positive that this arrangement will be of mutual benefit to both of us. I can offer you generous interest rate of EIGHT TENTHS OF A PERCENT after taxes.

I want you to immediately inform me of your willingness in assisting and co-operating with us, so that I can send you full details of this transaction and let us make arrangement for a meeting and discuss at length on how to transfer this funds.

Yours Faithfully,

Dr (Mr) Benjamin Bernanke

N/B: Please contact Mr Timothy Geithner on this e-mail address for further briefing and modalities."

Or is it really a parody ?

David Fuller's view Two years ago, a large portion of the global community wanted the USA to inflate its way out of the credit crisis meltdown. Today, an increasing proportion of the global community wants the USA to deflate its way back to prosperity. The Federal Reserve under Mr Bernanke will not take this latter course.

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