Big Ben's Dangerous Bluff

Ben Bernanke, Trader-in-Chief for the US Banking Cartel, is pulling a very tricky bluff.

You see, his Trading Outfit: The Federal Reserve Bank, has a dual trading mandate:

A) He has to keep printing unlimited dollars to feed to his hungry member banks, so that they can keep gambling and pulling in huge salaries and trading bonuses.

B) He has to convince the US public that the economy is mending so that they keep pouring their hard earned dollars back into the economy, so the bankers have healthy markets in which to gamble..

A is easy.  He has a printing press. But to justify running it full throttle, he needs an ongoing crisis.

But to fulfill mandate B he has to convince the public the crisis is ending.  How do you pull off mandate A and B together?  Not so easy.

In Europe, the central bank's Trader-In-Chief only has to fulfill  a single mandate: keep the banks afloat.  There is no mandate B.  They're willing to go through a recession, or even a depression, figuring it will come anyway, so why not try to manage the economy realistically.  After all, their bankers don't need those bonuses.  They're happy with those big salaries.

But here in the US, it's unthinkable that bankers should forgo one cent of their bonuses, even though they've managed their banks into bankruptcy.   This is why in 2008, completely bankrupt institutions like AIG and Goldman Sachs not only survived with enormous Federal Reserve printed money infusions, but they got to keep all their bonus money.

But that was easy.  It was a crisis.  So everything is permissible.

But now, Big Ben, Trader-in-Chief has to pull off the most amazing bluff of his career.  He has to convince the public that the economy is mending, so they keep spending, while keeping the printing presses roaring so that the banks can keep trading the markets, and filling their pockets, so they don't miss any bonus money.

So how's he doing it?  Well, through talk.  He's got to bluff.  He can release "Fed Minutes" where they talk up the economy, he goes on speaking tours.  He has an army of schills that light up the airwaves talking up the economy.  But it's a dangerous bluff, because everybody knows the second Big Ben stops printing, the economy collapses.

So all the while, he has to make sure everybody understands that the second "Another Crisis" appears, he'll be there with all that fresh printed money.  At the same time he has to pretend the economy can survive without it.  It's a dangerous bluff.

Imagine you could go into any poker game in the world armed with unlimited chips.  I bet you think you could win big.  But here's the trick: how do you keep other players coming into the game to gamble against you, knowing you have unlimited chips?

Not so easy right?  You'd have to convince the other gamblers that even though you have all those chips, you'll only use them if the entire game is in danger of collapsing.  You promise not to use them just to rape the game. 

Personally, I wouldn't believe a guy who told me that.  But so far, a lot of people are willing to buy in.  So far, Big Ben, Trader-in-Chief, seems to be pulling it off.  But it's a very dangerous bluff.