Alternative Visions - Are Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes?-Part 1 - 06.01.17

Dr. Rasmus begins a four part series examining the role and function of central banks in the global capitalist system, and how that role evolved through the 20th century and is changing again in the 21st.  In Part 1 of a proposed four part presentation, Rasmus explains how central banks have been the primary source of runaway money and liquidity generation that is the root cause of accelerating global debt.  Debt is but the reflection of the more fundamental problem of excess liquidity creation by central banks since the 1970s. It is liquidity that enables debt accumulation, which then leads to financial asset bubbles, busts, deflation, defaults, which then transmits the crisis to the real side of the economy producing ‘great recessions’ and eventually depressions. Central banks then bail out the banks—injecting still more liquidity again—leading to a renewed cycle of debt, bubbles, and crisis. Rasmus asks why the Fed, which bailed out US banks by 2010  has nonetheless continued for 7 more years providing free money to the banks to the tune of more than $10 trillion?  Their ole of central banks has expanded beyond its primary task of bank bailouts this century, Rasmus argues. Continued injection of trillions of free money has become their new 21st century primary function—i.e. to continue to subsidize the financial sector and financial markets (stocks, bonds, derivatives, forex, etc.) . Central banks are evolving, Rasmus argues, along with the rest of the capitalist State toward an ever growing subsidization of Capital in general. Can global capital survive without expanding State subsidization of profits—central banks subsidizing financial markets and finance capital and other sectors of the State other non-financial forms of capital. (Next week Part 2: The origins of the US central bank, its 20th century performance, and why in the 21st it is failing as it evolves toward its new subsidization role).