We haven’t seen inflation on the whole during the financial rescue efforts, despite the Federal Reserve’s easy money policies. If you wanted to cherry pick certain assets, the argument could be made that $140/barrel oil, during a recession, coinciding with a dump of liquidity on the economy, could be related. Global oil transactions are denominated in US dollars. It is hard to imagine any other factor being solely responsible for such a historic, and counterintuitive, rise in petroleum during a recession.

If you didn’t think there was a wink and a nod relationship between large banks and the feds, the “Volcker Rule” should serve as an acknowledgment. Because lending and credit is so crucial to the economy, financial institutions know the government will backstop them during crisis mode in the industry.

Ron Paul and Paul Kanjorski have a good debate on Ben Bernanke’s reappointment hearings, H.R. 1207 (auditing the Fed) and the Federal Reserve in general. It is a very good debate and definitely worth watching:

Will the massive increase in money cause hyperinflation? I certainly think that high inflation will come when velocity picks up, however, YouTube user ramzpaul makes a good case that given the way our economy is set up, one thing we won’t have to worry about is hyperinflation. For the Austrians out there, it’s worth taking a listen to:

Last seen discussing the 10 principles of economics, stand-up economist Yourman Bauman takes on the financial crisis:

Nassim Taleb, author of the Black Swan, discusses the sort of reverse Darwinism at place in the Obama (and Bush) administrations. Those who did the right thing are punished with higher taxes, banks that did the wrong thing get bailed out, those who didn’t see the financial crisis coming (Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, etc.) get high level jobs and those who did (Peter Schiff, Niall Ferguson, Dean Baker) are ignored. It’s all the government doing what they do best: punishing success and rewarding failure.

This a bit old, but is simply classic. A poorly drawn slide show illustrating the absurdities of the mortgage meltdown. Warning: Much foul language ensues. Enjoy.

Here is an excerpt from a longer debate, where Tom Woods lays out the case against the Federal Reserve.

Barney Frank, despite playing a significant roll in the financial crisis himself, has given me some cause for hope. Recently, he was asked about H.R. 1207, Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Federal Reserve. He praised the bill and predicted that “the House will pass it probably in October.” Given we have no idea what the Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve is doing with countless trillions of dollars, let’s hope he’s right.

Here’s a very interesting article in the New York Times from 1999. Steven Holmes discusses how Fannie Mae was reducing its lending standards and increasing the issuance of subprime loans. This was a big cause in our current financial crisis, however, back then, everyone thought it was just dandy: