Baby Boomers exceed all other generations in wealth

Where are you in distribution of wealth--born before 1946, or baby boomer, or gen-x, or millennials? The Boomers after 2005 began pulling ahead of the "silents" in wealth accumulation, and never looked back. Even with a little back sliding by boomers during the recession, I see no way the millennials will ever catch up--have they been given too much or just taken on too much debt.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/?fbclid=IwAR3xXjxcnVsekzvw3DtdeeJeDKhOXFec1sCugV2kGGbdGMu6cjoBcY0jpGE#quarter:
119;series:Net worth;demographic:generation;population:all;units:levels

The “fat cats” will love Obama’s choice

The wealthiest should love Obama's choice of Janet Yellen to head the fed. She will continue the easy money policy. And predictably, Obama will continue to demonize the "fat cats" because it plays well among his supporters. http://www.mrt.com/business/article_60e80d86-57b4-11e3-8100-0019bb2963f4.html

To the extent they pay any attention to the Fed, most Americans think the Federal Reserve system is part of our government.  It isn't.  Although the president appoints the Chair and members of the board, it is a private institution owned by private member banks (a non-profit!). Yes, indeed, it  controls our lives, but it's not part of our three branches of government, it is not part of the civil service system, you'll never see a budget or an audit (although it has been called for) and no one in government monitors it. Confusing?  Yes.

If the Fed doesn't know, who does?

The Inspector General of the Federal Reserve in this video (HT Taxmanblog) acknowledges that trillions of dollars of our money cannot be accounted for. The five-minute video is taken from a Congressional hearing on May 6 where Federal Reserve Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman is questioned by Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida about huge amounts of money for which the Federal Reserve is responsible. Really, this is quite alarming.



The original Bloomberg reportreferred to in the video.

I used to wonder why Congress called upon Hollywood stars to testify on weighty problems--like oceans and apples. Now I know. They are apparently better prepared as concerned actors than the OIG of the Fed whose task is described on their website but who doesn‘t seem to know or do anything:

Ms. Coleman joined the Board's OIG in 1989 as a senior auditor. She was promoted to program manager in 1999 and to senior program manager in 2001. She was appointed to the official staff in 2004, as the Assistant Inspector General for Communications and Quality Assurance. Over the last eight years, Ms. Coleman has worked closely with the Executive Council on Integrity and Efficiency, a professional organization of about thirty statutory Inspectors General who are appointed by their agency heads in certain designated federal entities, including the Board.

Prior to joining the Board's staff, she was employed by the Government Accountability Office. Ms. Coleman has a BBA from James Madison University and is a graduate of the Stonier Graduate School of Banking, Georgetown University. She also attended the Federal Reserve System's Trailblazers Leadership Conference. Ms. Coleman is a Certified Information Systems Auditor.

The OIG is tasked with the responsibility to prevent and detect fraud, waste, and abuse, and to promote economy and efficiency in the programs and operations of the Board, keeping the Chairman and Congress fully and currently informed of problems.

An Inspector General may be removed from office by the President, and must communicate the reasons for any such removal to both Houses of Congress, as outlined in Section 3(b) of the Inspector General Act of 1978.

If you ever need to draft a mission statement, be sure to read theirs. But only after you watch her testimony. It's good for a laugh.

A tax cheat and a cheating liar

That Timothy Geithner. What a guy. People desperately want to believe Obama knew what he was doing in appointing him chief tax cheat.

It's Over ... or Not. The deepest recession in modern memory is coming to an end, said Department of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner during a May 18 briefing. Geithner pointed to improvements in credit and financial markets, among other indicators, as signs that the economy was starting to come back. However, the Federal Reserve Board's Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)—the body that sets the federal funds rate, or the interest rate banks charge each other for loans—downgraded its economic forecast for 2009 in the recently released minutes of its late April meeting. Almost all FOMC members downgraded their projections from the ones they made in January, and the group as a whole is now projecting the U.S.'s real gross domestic product in 2009 to decrease by 2 percentage points from 2008, to 1.3 percent. The FOMC also predicts U.S. unemployment to continue rising and increased its projection for unemployment in 2009 to be between 9.2 and 9.6 percent, up from 8.4 to 8.8 percent in earlier prognostications. The FOMC projects nationwide unemployment to remain near 8 percent through 2011, before trending back to between 4.8 and 5 percent over the longer run. The FOMC did agree with Geithner in one respect, though, saying it expects a recovery in sales and production to begin in the second half of the year."

Weekly Federal Update, May 18-22, by Ethan Butterfield, Architect Magazine On-line edition. I'm always amazed at people who can count how many years FDR drug out the Depression, and yet believe following his example will somehow not cause the same disaster.