Quantitative Easing is the latest step in the counterfeiting of the American currency and society. Ben Bernanke admitted as much with his appearance on Sixty Minutes. The idea of taking troubled paper, and backing it with American dollars at face value basically counterfeits both that paper, and the backing dollars themselves.
It proceeded earlier, with the securitization of the housing boom. Banks created packages of loans that HAD previously been reasonably safe, except that the underwriting was so sloppy that many of the loans in question were "dead on arrival." They then applied historical default rates to the new pool of bad loans, and secured them to the old level, a practice Warren Buffett would have likened to taking the fatality rate of Cool-Aid without taking into account the variety served at Jonestown.
Mnay on Wall Street feel that the way out of our problems is getting other countries to take our counterfeit assets. That can happen--once in the lifetime of any given country. But when others catch on, "once bitten, twice shy." Or "fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." After that, we will have created major problems for our children, because no one will trust American "paper" for a long, long time to come.
The Counterfeiting of America
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