Fed Is Keeping Stimulus Intact (Demo)

The Fed’s decision to hold the line on its monthly $85-billion bond-buying stimulus appears on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. (Richard Drew, Associated Press / October 30, 2013)

The Federal Reserve kept intact its large-scale campaign to stimulate the economy, saying it was awaiting more evidence of sustainable progress in the recovery.

They did not downgrade their view of the recovery, repeating the September characterization of economic activity as “moderate.” The Fed did not directly mention the effect of the government shutdown this month, although it said fiscal policy was “restraining economic growth.”

Nor did the Fed lower its assessment of the labor market, despite the disappointing hiring in September and fresh signs Wednesday that business hiring weakened this month.

Fed officials, for their part, have stressed that any policy change would depend on the economic data, particularly the numbers on employment and inflation — the two primary concerns of the central bank. The bond purchases “are not on a preset course,” the Fed reiterated Wednesday.

Instead of a focus on “full employment” we need to focus on “full production,” by optimizing both human labor and non-human productive capital inputs that are the means of production for the products and services needed and wanted by society. But most important is that we finance FUTURE economic growth so that simultaneously we create new individual owners of the FUTURE productive capital assets that will be formed, and ensure that these individuals benefit from full voting rights in the private property stock shares they acquire using interest-free capital credit loans and receive the full dividend profit earnings generated by their stock holdings. In this way, we achieve both “full employment” (at least in the short-term as we build a FUTURE economy that supports general affluence for EVERY citizen), and broadened, private, individual ownership of FUTURE productive capital assets, preventing the further concentrated ownership that has been our history.

Without a policy shift to broaden productive capital ownership simultaneously with economic growth, further development of technology and globalization will undermine the American middle class and make it impossible for more than a minority of citizens to achieve middle-class status.

Unfortunately, pursuing democratic ownership of productive capital has been frustrated by the systemic concentration of economic power and exclusionary access to future capital credit to the advantage of the wealthiest Americans. The so-called 1 percent rulers of corporations have rigged the financial system to enable this already rich ownership class to systematically further enrich themselves as capital formation occurs and technological industrialization spreads throughout the world, leaving behind the 99 percent to depend on income redistribution through make work “full employment” policies, government boondoggles, excessive military build-up and dependence on arms production and sales, and social welfare programs due to the lack of an alternative to full employment and the growing economic helplessness and dependency. The unsatisfied needs and wants of society are not in that 1 percent or for that matter the 5 percent; those people are not the ones who are hurting.

Once the national economic policy bases policy decisions on two-factor binary economics1, productive capital acquisition would take place through commercially insured interest-free capital credit, resulting in a quiet revolution in which economic plutocracy will transform to economic democracy. As for redistribution, there should be a substitute for inheritance and gift taxes––a transfer tax imposed on the recipients whose holdings exceeded $1 million, thus encouraging the super-rich to spread out their monopoly-sized estates to all members of their family, friends, servants and workers who helped create their fortunes, teachers, health workers, police, other public servants, military veterans, artists, the poor and the disabled.

The Federal Reserve needs to stop monetizing unproductive debt, and begin creating an asset-backed currency that could enable every man, woman and child to establish a Capital Homestead Account or “CHA” (a super-IRA or asset tax-shelter for citizens) at their local bank to acquire a growing dividend-bearing stock portfolio to supplement their incomes from work and all other sources of income.

The CHA would process an equal allocation of productive credit to every citizen exclusively for purchasing full-dividend payout shares in companies needing funds for growing the economy and private sector jobs for local, national and global markets,

The shares would be purchased on credit wholly backed by projected “future savings” in the form of new productive capital assets as well as the future marketable goods and services produced by the newly added technology, renewable energy systems, plant, rentable space and infrastructure added to the economy.

Risk of default on each stock acquisition loan would be covered by private sector capital credit risk insurance and reinsurance, but would not require citizens to reduce their funds for consumption to purchase shares.

The end result is that citizens would become empowered as owners to meet their own consumption needs and government would become more dependent on economically independent citizens, thus reversing current global trends where all citizens will eventually become dependent for their economic well-being on our only legitimate monopoly –– the State –– and whatever elite controls the coercive powers of government.

See “Financing Economic Growth With ‘FUTURE SAVINGS’: Solutions To Protect America From Economic Decline” at NationOfChange.org http://www.nationofchange.org/financing-future-economic-growth-future-savings-solutions-protect-america-economic-decline-137450624

Support the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm and http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-fed-meeting-20131031,0,7820506.story#axzz2jKJvEsyx