Have We Reached Peak Wall Street?

Though the mainstream financial media and the blogosphere differ radically on their forecasts - the MFM sees near-zero systemic risk while the alternative media sees a critical confluence of it - they agree on one thing: the Federal Reserve and the “too big to fail” (TBTF) Wall Street banks have their hands on the political and financial tiller of the nation, and nothing will dislodge their dominance.

Given how easily the bankers bamboozled the Washington establishment into bailing them out in 2008 to the tune of tens of trillions of dollars in backstops, guarantees, subsidies and zero-interest loans, this is a reasonable assumption. Especially when coupled with the free hand the Fed has to reward the banks with zero-interest loans and limitless liquidity.

Add in the unsurpassed political power of the banks’ lobbying and campaign contributions and the hog-tying of regulatory agencies, and it’s no wonder few see any threat to the Fed/financial sector’s dominance.

There’s also a compelling narrative that supports the Fed’s policies of keeping interest rates near-zero by printing money to buy mortgages and Treasury bonds: were the Fed to allow interest rates to normalize back up to the historically average range, credit-based consumption and housing sales would dry up, pushing the nation into a recession or even a depression.

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