– Bundesbank’s Weidmann Likens Draghi’s OMT To “Devil’s Work” (ZeroHedge, Sep 18, 2012):
Ongoing grand plans to flood the economy market with money have reminded Bundesbank’s Jens Weidmann of the scene in the play Faust – when the devil (Mephistopheles) ‘disguised as a fool’, convinces an emperor to issue large amounts of paper money – which solves the kingdom’s financial problems in the short-term but ends rather badly in rampant inflation.
As The Telegraph notes, without specifically mentioning Mario Draghi’s bond-buying programme, he said: “If a central bank can potentially create unlimited money from nothing, how can it ensure that money is sufficiently scarce to retain its value?” He added: “Yes, this temptation certainly exists, and many in monetary history have succumbed to it,” Mr Weidmann warned.
Although the remarks were in context – Frankfurt is currently marking the 180th anniversary of the death of Goethe – they defy calls by leaders for Mr Weidmann to tone down his criticism of the ECB, particularly at a febrile moment in the crisis.
Don’t criticise the thieves:
Quantitative easing (QE) = printing money = creating money out of thin air = increasing the money supply = inflation = hidden tax on monetary assets = theft!
“When a country embarks on deficit financing and inflationism (Quantitative easing) you wipe out the middle class and wealth is transferred from the middle class and the poor to the rich. “
– Ron Paul“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation (QE). … This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.”
– Alan Greenspan“By a continuing process of inflation (QE), governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
– John Maynard Keynes
– Mario Draghi (Wikipedia):
Draghi was then vice chairman and managing director of Goldman Sachs International and a member of the firm-wide management committee (2002–2005). A controversy existed on his duties while employed at Goldman Sachs. Pascal Canfin (MEP) asserted Draghi was involved in swaps for European governments, namely Greece, trying to disguise their countries’ economic status.