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Marc Faber: The Federal Reserve is

Marc Faber: The Federal Reserve is "murdering" the middle class

2011-04-07
Source: Money News


Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is "murdering" the middle class by excessively printing money, which only ultimately fuels inflation and hurts most Americans, says economist Marc Faber, publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report.

Faber says Bernanke is excessively printing money but it isn't going into a market that could help most Americans, like housing, but rather into commodities, which can only hurt by sparking inflation.

The Federal Reserve is keeping monetary policy loose in an effort to spur economic growth, including a $600 billion bond-buyback program known as quantitative easing, which pumps banks full of money in hopes they will lend.

It's not working, at least for most people, Faber tells King World News.

"Money printing doesn't go into housing because we have an oversupply of housing, but it goes into equities and for Mr. Bernanke, unfortunately into commodities. And this is lifting the cost of living of the median household, of the typical household in the U.S.," Faber says. "Mr. Bernanke is a murderer, he’s a murderer of the middle class and the working class."

Rising prices of commodities such as oil can chip away household purchasing power, although the Federal Reserve says overall inflation rates don't appear set to merit action as of yet.

Commodities prices spiked in the 1970s as well, though the financial health of the economy then was better than it is today, says Faber.

"Of course the financial position of the U.S. is much worse than what we had in the seventies. In the seventies, total credit as a percent of the economy was just at 140 percent, we're now at 379 percent and we have the unfunded liabilities which we didn’t have at that time," Faber says.

"So I would say the financial position of the U.S. has continuously worsened over the last 30 years."





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