FREE eBook reveals why the Fed is powerless to change the economic course May 21, 2010
By Elliott Wave International
As the world’s leading stock markets continue to play stomach-hockey with investors via one triple-digit turn after another, the mainstream community takes solace in this core belief: No matter how uncertain things become, the Federal Reserve can at any moment swoop in to set the economy right.
In reality — the Fed has no such power. This is the revelation of Elliott Wave International’s newest complimentary resource from Club EWI: the 35-page eBook titled “Understanding the Fed.” Including excerpts from the selected works of EWI President Robert Prechter — including his 2002 book “Conquer the Crash” and several past “Elliott Wave Theorist” publications — this riveting report exposes once and for all the most dangerous myths about the Federal Reserve.
Chapter 3 (of the 8-chapter anthology) attends to the “Potent Directors Fallacy” — i.e., the false notion that the central bank is in control of the U.S.’s money, market, and economy — and offers this “Conquer the Crash” insight:
“For recent examples of the failure of the idea of efficacious economic directors, just look around. Since Japan’s boom ended, its regulators have been using every presumed macroeconomic ‘tool’ to get the Land of the Sinking Sun rising again, as yet to no avail. The World Bank, the IMF, local central banks, and government officials were ‘wisely managing’ South East Asia’s boom until it collapsed spectacularly in 1997. In America, the Federal Reserve has lowered its discount rate from 6% to 1.25%, an unprecedented amount in such a short time… What will it do if the economy resumes its contraction; lower rates to zero?“
Note: The underlined sentence above was written in 2002. Today, that forecast has come to fruition after the Fed’s rate-slashing campaign since September 2008 has brought rates to the zero level.
