Start the conversation
Comment on This Story
Or to contact Money Morning Customer Service, click here.
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump
When Trump attacks Yellen, he's defending the average American against the harmful policies of the U.S. Federal Reserve.
It all started back on Sept. 16, 2013. That's the first time GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump attacked soon-to-be Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen. He predicted Yellen would be the next in charge of the Fed.
He was right. She replaced Ben Bernanke on Oct. 9, 2013.
Trump also speculated then that Yellen would print lots of money, reported Politico that same day. He said that would be a good thing for him as a real estate developer - but not good for the U.S. economy.
He was right there too. You see, the Fed began purchasing bank loans (quantitative easing, or QE) in 2008. This pumped money back into the big banks and saved them from insolvency - but at the expense of the American economy. By October 2014, after three rounds of QE, the Fed's balance sheet had ballooned from $750 billion in 2007 to more than $4.25 trillion dollars, and big banks were making record profits again.
Now, two years later, Trump's ire for Yellen and the Fed's practices have only grown in fervor.
Last week, "The Donald" issued his most cutting - and perhaps most prescient - attack on Yellen yet...
Trump Attacks Yellen for Sacrificing the American Dream
Earlier this year on Aug. 4, 2015, the real estate mogul stepped up his anti-Yellen rhetoric in an interview on Bloomberg's "With All Due Respect." There, he accused the Fed chairwoman of willfully creating a bubble. By keeping rates low, Trump asserted, the central bank made it too easy for corporations to borrow money, which they have used to buy other companies and repurchase their own stock, artificially inflating stock prices.
Then last week on Oct. 14, in an exclusive interview with The Hill, Donald Trump threw even more blame on recent Fed policies. Not only is it Yellen's fault that corporations are running amok with their money-borrowing, she's also responsible for destroying the American Dream with her reckless policies. Because these loans, Trump argued, would have created jobs.
"Under Dodd-Frank, the regulators are running the banks," the GOP presidential hopeful said. "The bankers are petrified of the regulators. And the problem is that the banks aren't loaning money to people who will create jobs."
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was signed into law in 2010 by the Obama administration in reaction to the Great Recession. It holds banks and other large investment institutions accountable for more transaction transparency. But that level of transparency, Trump stated, has only served to leave the investing institutions shaking in their boots. "We have Dodd-Frank and we're in a bubble right now anyway," he said.
He added, "[Yellen] is keeping the economy going, barely. The reason they're keeping the interest rate down is Obama doesn't want to have a recession-slash-depression during his administration."
This massive political favor, Trump concluded, was at the expense of everyday folks like you and me.
"You know who gets hurt the most? People who practice the American dream and did what should have been the right way - the people that went through 40 years of their life and saved a hundred dollars every week [in the bank]," he said. "They worked all their lives to save and now what happens is they're being forced into an inflated stock market and at some point they'll get wiped out."
Stay tuned to Money Morning for more on the 2016 presidential election. You can follow us on Twitter @moneymorning or like us on Facebook.
Amazon's Five Dollar Lawsuit: Retail giant Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) has filed a major lawsuit just six days ahead of Q3 earnings. On Oct. 16, the online retail giant sued 1,114 defendants for providing false product reviews on its site. This is bad for that large handful of individuals; Amazon has a history of beating the little guys when it comes to litigation...
Related Articles:
- The Hill: Trump: Economic Bubble About to Burst
Once again Trump is right on. The only Republicans that want him out of the Presidential Race are those who are not true Republicans and when a conservative like Cruz goes against a RINO like Bush, they proceed to take him down! Well, It's time for the Repubodems to shut up and stop destroying America to feather their own nests. We need Trump, Carson, Cruz, Gowdy, and all of the rest that are looking out for us. The House needs to pass all bills they can and the Senate needs to do the same and send them to the Imposter and let him VETO everything that is good for "we the people" and let him shut down the government and we all need to point the finger. Convervatives need to start speaking out like the Communist Party in charge do. Political correctness is BS and used for control. No more PC! I'm obviously fed up and if the RINOS mess it all up again it will be on purpose!
Amen. Trump speaking out against the Fed is another reason why true conservatives are standing out in this campaign. The Federal Reserve is incompetent. They play God with our money & economy, but they are clueless. They create bubble after bubble, each one worse than the last. When it comes to Ponzi schemes, the Fed is the ultimate scammer. As they used to say in the Old West, " Hangin's to good fer'em".