Scientists say that we have much smaller brains than our ancestors had 20,000 years ago … and we might have gotten stupider since agriculture became widespread.

Indeed, Huffington Post reports that we’ve probably gotten dumber than even our Victorian ancestors:

A provocative new study suggests human intelligence is on the decline. In fact, it indicates that Westerners have lost 14 I.Q. points on average since the Victorian Era.

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As for Dr. te Nijenhuis and colleagues, they analyzed the results of 14 intelligence studies conducted between 1884 to 2004, including one by Sir Francis Galton, an English anthropologist and a cousin of Charles Darwin. Each study gauged participants’ so-called visual reaction times — how long it took them to press a button in response to seeing a stimulus. Reaction time reflects a person’s mental processing speed, and so is considered an indication of general intelligence.

***

In the late 19th Century, visual reaction times averaged around 194 milliseconds, the analysis showed. In 2004 that time had grown to 275 milliseconds. Even though the machine gauging reaction time in the late 19th Century was less sophisticated than that used in recent years, Dr. te Nijenhuis told The Huffington Post that the old data is directly comparable to modern data.

Other research has suggested an apparent rise in I.Q. scores since the 1940s, a phenomenon known as the Flynn Effect. But Dr. te Nijenhuis suggested the Flynn Effect reflects the influence of environmental factors — such as better education, hygiene and nutrition — and may mask the true decline in genetically inherited intelligence in the Western world.

This new research was published in the April 13 issue of Intelligence.

There are several theories for why we are getting dumber, including the following (the first 2 come from the HuffPost article):

(1) Dr. Jan te Nijenhuis points to the fact that women of high intelligence tend to have fewer children than do women of lower intelligence. This negative association between I.Q. and fertility has been demonstrated time and again in research over the last century.

(2) “The reduction in human intelligence … would have begun at the time that genetic selection became more relaxed,” Dr. Gerald Crabtree, professor of pathology and developmental biology at Stanford University, told The Huffington Post in an email. “I projected this occurred as our ancestors began to live in more supportive high density societies (cities) and had access to a steady supply of food. Both of these might have resulted from the invention of agriculture, which occurred about 5,000 to 12,000 years ago.”

(3)  Humans evolved to eat a lot of Omega 3s:

Wild game animals have much higher levels of essential Omega 3 fatty acids than domesticated animals. Indeed, leading nutritionists say that humans evolved to consume a lot of Omega 3 fatty acids in the wild game and fish which they ate (more), and that a low Omega 3 diet is a very new trend within the last 100 years or so.

In other words, while omega 3s have just now been discovered by modern science, we evolved to get a lot of omega 3s … and if we just eat a modern, fast food diet without getting enough omega 3s, it can cause all sorts of health problems.

So something just discovered by science can be a central fuel which our bodies evolved to use.

Omega 3s – in turn – boosts intelligence and help prevent cognitive decline.

(4)  Exercise boosts intelligence … and our ancestors got a lot more exercise than we do!

In addition, high levels of cortisol – the chemical released by the body when one is under continuous, unrelenting stress – and poverty can physically impair the brain and people’s ability to learn.

On the other hand, relaxing activities like meditation and prayer have been shown to increase brain mass and connectivity in certain areas of the brain.

Hunter-gatherers had more leisure time – and a more playful attitude – than we do today.

(5) Toxic chemicals in the environment can reduce intelligence.  Examples include flame retardant, lead (found in many lipsticks), certain pesticides (and see this and this), and fluoride.

We noted even before the TARP bailout law was signed into law that bailout moneys could flow to foreign banks.

We were right. A large percentage of the bailouts went to foreign banks (and see this). And so did a huge portion of the money from quantitative easing. More here and here.

Ron Paul noted in 2011 that essentially 100% of New York Federal Reserve Bank loans went to foreign banks.

A former high-level Federal Reserve official said that the Fed is secretly bailing out Europe.

The Fed has bailed out Gaddafi’s Libyan bank, the Arab Banking Corporation of Bahrain, and the banks of Bavaria, Korea and Mexico … but has shafted normal Americans.

The Financial Times reported in February:

Foreign banks also have a striking amount of cash at the Fed, potentially aggravating the Fed’s PR problem. Analysts at Stone & McCarthy noted recently that there had been a steep increase in foreign banks placing reserves at the Fed and suggested that “US banks may have distaste for the opportunistic arbitrage”, between lower market rates and the interest on reserves, whereas overseas institutions “might not feel encumbered in the same fashion”.

Canada’s TD Bank, Germany’s Deutsche Bank and Switzerland’s UBS each have more than $12bn at the Fed.

Yesterday, Zero Hedge provided an update to this story.  ZH reports that the Fed’s quantitative easing program has injected huge sums into foreign banks:

The latest H.8 report demonstrates, as of the most recently weekly data, the Fed’s policies have led to foreign banks operating in the US holding an all time high amount of reserves, surpassing $1 trillion for the first time, or $1,033 billion to be precise.

This means that, as we expected several months ago, the only recipient of ongoing Fed money printing are not US banks, but foreign banks operating in the US. For those confused about the big picture, here is a chart showing the breakdown of cash held by big and small US banks as well as foreign banks, superimposed to total reserves created by the Fed since the start of the Great Financial Crisis. The correlation is 100%.

And just to prove that ALL the unsterilized cash from both QE2 and QEternity has essentially gone to support offshore banks, here is the conclusive chart showing the change in Fed reserves and cash held by foreign banks:

Finally, tying it all together, here is chart showing cash at US banks vs cash at foreign banks operating in the US. At $1.03 trillion in foreign cash, the Fed’s policies have once again led to more cash being held by foreign banks than all cash held by domestic banks.

We are confident that we speak for all when we say: “Thank you Ben – insolvent foreign banks appreciate your ongoing QE2 and QEternity-funded generosity“

In a separate report, ZH notes that Bank of Korea Governor Kim Choong-soo said:

World may face rate risk if U.S. exits from QE

Too bad that quantitative easing doesn’t help Main Street or the average American. It only helps big banks, giant corporations, and big investors. And by causing food and gas prices skyrocket, it takes a bigger bite out of the little guy’s paycheck, and thus makes the poor even poorer.

And it’s a shame that a study of 124 banking crises by the International Monetary Fund foundthat bailing out banks which are only pretending to be solvent  – like most of the big banks – harms the economy.

And what a farce that:

The bailout money is just going to line the pockets of the wealthy, instead of helping to stabilize the economy or even the companies receiving the bailouts:

• Bailout money is being used to subsidize companies run by horrible business men, allowing the bankers to receive fat bonuses, to redecorate their offices, and to buy gold toilets and prostitutes

• A lot of the bailout money is going to the failing companies’ shareholders

• Indeed, a leading progressive economist says that the true purpose of the bank rescue plans is “a massive redistribution of wealth to the bank shareholders and their top executives”

• The Treasury Department encouraged banks to use the bailout money to buy their competitors, and pushed through an amendment to the tax laws which rewards mergers in the banking industry (this has caused a lot of companies to bite off more than they can chew, destabilizing the acquiring companies)

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak today at the Japan Society.¹   Our countries have very close relations and this is particularly true at the central banker level.  I just got back from the BIS last week where I had a chance to spend some time with Governor Kuroda.

Today, I will discuss the challenge that we both have been working to solve—how best to conduct monetary policy when short-term interest rates are already pinned close to zero, but the economy is still operating well below its potential.   This has required considerable learning.  After all, until Japan’s experience began in the 1990s, no major country had actually faced this problem since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

As the first nation to experience the zero bound in modern times, Japan was an early pioneer in developing unconventional tools and strategies.  Its experiences, both good and bad, along with lessons from other periods such as the Great Depression, have helped to inform the policies adopted by the United States (U.S.) and other nations in recent years.  The evolution of policy in Japan, in turn, has been informed, in part, by the experience of the U.S. and other nations.

So what have we learned to date?  Let me highlight six key points.

First, and most importantly, managing expectations is critical in the execution of monetary policy at the zero bound.  This includes expectations about the central bank’s objectives for inflation and the economy, and expectations about how the central bank will use its tools in the future to achieve these goals.

Second, in managing expectations, good communication is essential.  Expectations will not be well anchored when communications are muddled or inconsistent, or when a central bank acts in ways that are not consistent with its guidance.

Third, actions speak louder than words alone.  Thus, there is an important role for asset purchases that ease financial conditions to support growth and keep inflation expectations well anchored.

Fourth, the policy instruments interact so that policy as a whole exceeds the sum of its parts.

Fifth, at the zero lower bound, risk management becomes extremely important.  In particular, because the costs of getting stuck in a liquidity trap with chronic deflation are high, a central bank should put substantial weight on avoiding this outcome.

Sixth, the constraints imposed by the zero bound limit what monetary policy can accomplish by itself.  This increases the importance of complementary fiscal, financial, and structural policy actions.  Credible fiscal policies, actions to ensure a healthy financial system, and structural reforms that lift the potential for growth are very important.

As always, what I will say here today represents my own views and not necessarily those of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC, Committee) or the Federal Reserve System.

Review of the experience in Japan and the United States

Let me start by briefly reviewing the experience of Japan and the United States.  As you all know, Japan’s rapid economic ascent and investment boom came to an abrupt halt in the early 1990s with the bursting of a gigantic bubble in equities and real estate.

Asset price deflation resulted in a huge decline in wealth.  This led to a sharp fall in demand, a balance sheet squeeze for both businesses and households, and a large increase in problem loans for Japanese financial intermediaries.  By some measures—such as the loss of wealth relative to the size of the economy—this was a bigger shock than the U.S. experienced in 2008.  Growth slowed sharply and inflation fell.

The Bank of Japan (BoJ) responded by reducing overnight interest rates from a peak of more than 8 percent in early 1991 to ½ a percent by the fall of 1995.²   Most studies of this period suggest that policy was generally appropriate given economic forecasts at the time, but too tight relative to the actual outcomes.³  Economic forecasts for Japan—both by the official community and by private sector agents—were consistently more optimistic than the actual outturns.   It is noteworthy that as late as January 1995—on the eve of deflation—10-year Japanese Government Bond (JGB) yields were still at 4.7 percent.

With the benefit of hindsight, we now understand that the disinflationary consequences of the asset price bust and financial stress where vastly more powerful than was widely realized at the time.  As we later saw in the U.S., the forces of contraction and disinflation operated through many different channels—not just directly on household wealth, for example, but also through the impact of the asset price bust on the health of financial intermediaries and the supply of credit to households and businesses.

Over time, the Japanese banking system came under mounting stress.  This was a slow-motion crisis, as the assets were mainly loans that were not marked-to-market.   Accounting practices and regulatory forbearance allowed banks to delay charging off bad loans and recapitalizing at the cost of impairing the availability of credit to new potential borrowers.   A full-blown banking crisis finally materialized in 1997.  Although some banks were recapitalized in 1999, the full regulatory response took several more years.

The monetary and fiscal stimulus that was provided helped Japan avoid a deep recession.  But expectations about future nominal income growth for both households and businesses ground lower over time.  With inflation expectations sinking, inflation-adjusted real interest rates rose, and Japan became mired in deflation.

While deflation is ultimately a monetary phenomenon, structural elements were also important.  Long-term demographic factors added to the deflationary pressures and structural rigidities, and credit supply problems constrained the reallocation of resources to growth sectors.  These structural factors made it substantially more difficult to escape the deflation trap.

The Bank of Japan was active during this period.   From the late 1990s onwards, it pioneered an extremely broad array of innovative tools—many of which were later adopted, in amended form, by the Fed and other major central banks.  These included forward guidance on the future path of the policy rate, quantitative easing through purchases of government securities and private assets including asset-backed securities, equities and real estate investment trusts (REITs), a more quantitative inflation objective, and funding for bank lending.

From my perspective, Japan’s experience with forward guidance for the policy rate, asset purchases  and a more formal inflation goal are particularly instructive, as this helped inform the later use of such tools in the United States.

In early 1999, the Bank of Japan said it would maintain its zero interest rate policy until “deflationary concerns” were “dispelled.”   This commitment was lifted in August 2000, and the BoJ raised the policy rate by a quarter-point.   However, the BoJ was subsequently obliged to reverse course, and reintroduced forward guidance in March 2001.  This guidance was tied to the realization of a new inflation objective.

With deflation intensifying, the Bank of Japan embarked on a quantitative easing (QE) program in 2001 designed to increase the size of the monetary base.  The Bank of Japan engaged in purchases of JGBs that were large in scale, but confined to short-dated maturities.  This reflected a view that such purchases primarily acted through the liabilities side of the central bank’s balance sheet—pushing up the amount of reserves in the banking system.  Because the growth of the monetary base was deemed the goal of policy, it was logical to purchase short-dated assets, which could be allowed to run off once a sustainable recovery was in place.

The downside of this approach was that the purchases did not change the composition of the private sector’s balance sheet very much because the policy essentially resulted in the exchange of one short-term risk-free asset for another.  As a consequence, the purchases had only modest direct effects on financial conditions.⁴

Starting in 2006, when the initial wave of QE ended, the BoJ began to formalize its inflation goal in numerical terms. This was initially expressed as an “understanding of medium- to long-term price stability” based on individual policymakers’ views. The inflation objective went through several iterations before being defined in 2012 as a Committee “goal” of a positive range of 2 percent or lower, with a lower interim goal of 1 percent.

Following the onset of the global financial crisis in 2007-2008, Japan resumed QE, and gradually tightened the link between its policy actions and its objectives.  By January 2012, the BoJ had committed to keep rates at the zero bound and to continue purchasing assets until the 1 percent goal was “in sight.”

Several prominent Japanese experts have argued that there was a “start-stop” aspect to monetary policy during the 1990s and 2000s with reversals in policy beginning before deflationary expectations were eliminated.⁵   Fiscal policy also reversed abruptly on several occasions before economic recovery was firmly established.  While Japan did enjoy a period of respectable real per capita growth in the mid-2000s, escape from deflation proved elusive.

More than a decade after Japan’s bubble burst, the U.S. housing bubble burst.  This exposed extensive vulnerabilities in our financial system and triggered a global financial crisis.⁶ Unlike Japan, we had the advantage of being able to learn from another nation’s recent experience.  We applied what we understood to be the lessons from Japan, though with hindsight, perhaps not in every respect as completely as we could have.

In particular, Japan’s experience reinforced the lessons of the Great Depression here in the U.S. and made us sensitive to the disinflationary force of an asset price bust and financial crisis. We recognized that we had to be very aggressive to prevent deflation and deflation expectations from becoming well entrenched.

The Federal Reserve reduced short-term interest rates to nearly zero by late 2008—a little over a year and a half after the initial shock hit in August 2007.   Immediately upon reaching the zero bound, we provided additional stimulus by expanding our balance sheet and deploying forward guidance on the policy rate. These actions, in the context of a strong commitment to both our inflation and employment mandates, succeeded in preventing deflation expectations from taking hold, even though real outcomes were disappointing.  We also took steps to formalize our 2 percent inflation objective.⁷

The Fed’s large-scale asset purchase programs differed from those originally undertaken in Japan both in theory and in practice.  They were concentrated in longer-term securities—Treasuries and agency mortgage-backed securities.  This reflected a different perspective on how purchases affect financial conditions and the economy, as well as the different structure of our financial system.

Our view is that asset purchases work primarily through the asset side of the balance sheet by transferring duration risk from the private sector to the central bank’s balance sheet.  This pushes down risk premia, and prompts private sector investors to move into riskier assets.  As a result, financial market conditions ease, supporting wealth and aggregate demand.  The fact that such purchases increase the amount of reserves in the banking system and the size of the monetary base is a byproduct—not the goal—of these actions.

The U.S. also moved relatively quickly to recapitalize core financial institutions—partly as a result of good judgment, but also because the intense pressures of a capital markets-based financial system forced us to confront these issues. The Supervisory Capital Assessment Program (SCAP) in early 2009 identified and addressed the potential capital shortfalls of the major U.S. bank holding companies in a stressed scenario.  The SCAP forced the banks to recapitalize either through the use of private funds or the injection of government convertible preferred equity from the TARP program.

However, our policy approach was far from perfect.  Comparing actual growth to the growth projections by FOMC participants in the Summary of Economic Projections shows that we were consistently too optimistic about growth over the 2009-2012 period.  As a result, with the benefit of hindsight, we did not provide enough stimulus.  Perhaps, if we had paid more attention to the persistent divergence between growth forecasts and outturns in Japan in the 1990s, we might have been more skeptical about the prospects for a strong economic recovery, even with a more aggressive monetary policy regime.

Also, we could have done better in communicating our intentions and goals.  We put too much emphasis, too early, on the exit.  At an earlier stage, we should have put greater emphasis on our commitment to use all our tools to the fullest extent possible for as long as needed to achieve our dual mandate objectives.

Our policies also had a “start-stop” aspect to them that may have undercut their effectiveness.  For example, until September 2012, our large-scale asset programs generally specified the total size of the program, with a purchase rate and an expected ending date.  This created a void when the programs ended and made our policy response sporadic and hard to forecast.  This limited the scope for market prices to adjust in anticipation of our future actions in ways that would help stabilize the economy.

Another shortcoming was in our use of forward guidance with respect to the path of short-term interest rates.  Although calendar-based guidance worked reasonably well in influencing expectations about the future path of short-term rates and thus the shape of the yield curve, it was clumsy in a number of respects.  For example, if we moved the forward date guidance out in time, did this reflect a change in our reaction function, the amount of desired policy stimulus or greater pessimism about the outlook?

Of course, as we have learned, we have acted to rectify these shortcomings.  For example, our asset purchases are now outcome based, tied to the goal of substantial improvement in the labor market outlook, and our forward guidance on short-term rates is tied to unemployment and inflation thresholds rather than to a calendar date.

The Japanese authorities have also capitalized on our joint experiences and actions.  Thus, we have witnessed a convergence in the monetary policy regimes of our two countries.

Today, the two regimes are quite similar in three important respects.  Both the Fed and the Bank of Japan place considerable emphasis on an explicit inflation objective, commit the central bank to use all available tools to achieve its objectives, and use forward guidance on interest rates and large scale purchases of long duration assets as the main tools to achieve these objectives.

Although there are still some important distinctions in how policy is conducted, much of these relate more to differences in legal frameworks and the current starting point for economic activity and inflation rather than fundamental differences in philosophy.  For example, the BoJ’s asset purchases are broader than the Fed’s, extending to equity ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) and REITs.  This option is not available to the Federal Reserve because the Federal Reserve Act sets tighter limits as to the types of assets that the Federal Reserve can purchase.

Similarly, current circumstances in the two countries are different, with deflationary expectations still in the process of being dislodged in Japan.  The BoJ needs to push up inflation expectations, whereas in the U.S. the current level of inflation expectations is consistent with the long-term objective of the Fed. Therefore, the BoJ, relative to the respective sizes of the two economies, has adopted a purchase program that is more aggressive that the U.S. program.  This is true whether measured in terms of the amount of duration being pulled out of the market or purchases as a share of total issuance.

Lessons learned

As I mentioned earlier, there have been at least six major areas where there has been significant learning, which has influenced the evolution of policy.  Let me turn to them.

The importance of managing expectations

Managing expectations is always central to monetary policy.  However, at the zero bound this is even more critical than usual.

There are two aspects of this.   First, keeping inflation expectations anchored at levels consistent with the central bank’s medium-term inflation objective—2 percent on the personal consumption expenditures deflator in our case—is vitally important. Once deflation expectations become well entrenched, it is very difficult to change them.  And, because inflationary expectations are an important driver of actual inflation outcomes, deflationary expectations can be self-fulfilling in driving actual deflation outcomes.  Also, if inflation expectations were allowed to fall, this would raise the level of expected real interest rates, making monetary policy less accommodative.

Conversely, a central bank does not want medium-term inflation expectations to climb above levels consistent with its inflation objective.  If inflation expectations were to become unanchored to the upside, that could damage credibility and result in higher risk premia for financial assets and tighter financial market conditions.  Thus, a policy that maintains medium-term inflation expectations in line with our inflation objective is most consistent with our mandate.⁸

Second, at the zero bound, the ability to provide credible forward guidance—both in terms of the future path of the policy rate and the future path of the balance sheet— becomes the predominant vehicle by which a central bank’s actions affect financial market conditions.  If this expectations channel did not work, then it would be very difficult to provide additional monetary accommodation because short-term rates cannot be reduced materially.

In the U.S., in recent months we have communicated that short-term rates are likely to stay very low for a long time; our balance sheet is likely to increase further in size and then stay large for a long time; and that we will not be overly hasty in tightening monetary policy once the recovery gets well established.  By doing this, we are influencing expectations about the likely future path of short-term rates and the interest rate term premium.  By utilizing the expectations channel in this way, we have been able to make policy more accommodative and generate easier financial market conditions.

Good communication is essential

To manage expectations well, both credibility and good communication is essential.  This means explaining clearly the policy framework, the relationship between the use of tools and the central bank’s mandated objectives at the zero bound, and how the use of these tools will evolve with changes in the outlook.

In this regard, a central bank’s credibility is crucial.  Only if a central bank does what it promises to do will expectations be solidly anchored.  Of course, this does not mean mechanically following a set policy trajectory regardless of how the outlook changes, but it does mean that the stance of policy over time must evolve in ways consistent with the criteria established in the guidance.

It is important to communicate how policy will respond to changing economic circumstances over time.  This is particularly important when the outlook changes, because expectations about how policy will respond can be an important self-stabilizing element of monetary policy.   In this regard, a framework that ties the use of policy tools explicitly to economic outcomes has many advantages.

Good public communication is also important.   For example, press conferences offer an opportunity to ground the policy actions and stance in a framework that is explicit about how the central bank plans to achieve its mandated objectives.

Asset purchases are an effective tool

Credibility requires taking action in the present as well as providing guidance for the future, and we are fortunate to have learned that asset purchases can indeed be an effective tool to support growth, employment and inflation expectations at the zero bound. While I believe that managing expectations is crucial, I am somewhat skeptical of the view that forward guidance on the policy rate alone is sufficient in these circumstances.  This is particularly the case when guidance extends out several years in the future.  Promises about future actions may be seen as not fully credible given the potential for changes in a central bank’s leadership and policy committee and the degree of uncertainty about economic conditions that will prevail far out in the future.

In recent years, we have developed considerable positive experience providing accommodation through changes in the size and composition of the central bank balance sheet.  Taking interest rate risk and mortgage prepayment risk out of private hands has proven to be effective in easing financial conditions, increasing wealth and lowering private sector borrowing costs.⁹   The impact of purchases may be attenuated to some degree by deleveraging and ongoing adjustments in markets such as real estate. But it is material even in these circumstances, and builds over time as these needed adjustments proceed.

The sum is greater than its parts                                            

Another important insight is that each of the components of policy—the current stance in terms of the policy rate and the balance sheet, expectations about the future stance, the degree of commitment to future policy, and the clarity of communications—all interact.  Our tools are more powerful used in combination, and, when their use is explicitly tied to the outcomes we seek to achieve.  As a result, the sum is more powerful than the component parts.

Risk management is particularly important

Risk management is particularly important at the zero bound. At the zero lower bound, once you are caught in deflation, it is very hard to get out.  Thus, policymakers need to put considerable weight on this risk and conduct monetary policy with sufficient aggressiveness to ensure that they avoid such an outcome.

It is also true that we have less experience with the monetary policy tools used at the zero bound.  As a result, there is greater uncertainty around the efficacy and costs of these tools.   This pushes in the opposite direction of being more cautious.

This means that risk management is essential—what are the costs of being wrong in either direction?  Sometimes a cautious, incremental approach may not always be the right strategy.

Limits to monetary policy

At the zero bound, monetary policy encounters additional constraints.  These fall into three broad buckets.

First, there are costs associated with non-conventional tools.  This means they cannot simply be used without limit, though the appropriate limit will vary based on the outlook and balance of risks.   The most obvious example of this is our large-scale asset purchase program.  As the balance sheet increases in size, the potential costs increase in terms of market functioning, risks to financial stability, and the path of future remittances to the U.S. Treasury.

Second, there is a limit on how far the expectations channel can be exploited.  As I discussed earlier, since the current FOMC cannot bind future FOMCs and the economic outlook is highly uncertain, it isn’t reasonable to expect that policies that affect expectations many years in the future will have a powerful impact today.  I believe that the effectiveness of the expectations channel decays as the length of the horizon extends.

Third, monetary policy is only one leg of the stool necessary to generate a vibrant and sustained economic expansion.  In particular, as noted earlier, the health of the financial system is critical.  For without it, the monetary transmission channels will be impaired and monetary policy will be less effective in influencing the cost and availability of credit. Similarly, it is critical that fiscal policy be set appropriately.  This means the short-term impulse needs to be properly calibrated to the current set of economic circumstances (not too much restraint) and the long-run budget trajectory needs to credible and consistent with fiscal sustainability.  Finally, removing structural impediments that hinder growth and economic rebalancing are also important.  In the case of the U.S., this could include changes in immigration policy, infrastructure investments that remove bottlenecks and job training programs that improve the quality of human capital.

Implications for U.S. monetary policy

Undoubtedly, we will continue to learn as we seek to implement monetary policy most effectively.

Let me give a few examples of how my own thinking may evolve.  In terms of our asset purchase program, I believe we should be prepared to adjust the total amount of purchases to that needed to deliver a substantial improvement in the labor market outlook in the context of price stability.  In doing this, we might adjust the pace of purchases up or down as the labor market and inflation outlook changes in a material way. For me, the base case forecast is not the sole consideration—how confident we are about that outcome is also important.

Because the outlook is uncertain, I cannot be sure which way—up or down—the next change will be.  But at some point, I expect to see sufficient evidence to make me more confident about the prospect for substantial improvement in the labor market outlook. At that time, in my view, it will be appropriate to reduce the pace at which we are adding accommodation through asset purchases.  Over the coming months, how well the economy fights its way through the significant fiscal drag currently in force will be an important aspect of this judgment.

We are also learning about how best to prepare for the eventual normalization of monetary policy. For example, we may need to update our thinking with respect to the so-called exit principles that we published in June 2011 in order to bring them up to date with developments since then, and ensure they do not unnecessarily constrain our ability to conduct policy in the most effective way  today.

Those exit principles stated that we would first stop reinvesting, then raise short-term interest rates, and finally sell agency mortgage backed securities over a three-to-five year period. This seems stale in several respects.  In particular, how does one time the end of reinvestment given that we now have economic thresholds that govern the timing of liftoff?  Also, the thresholds are thresholds, not triggers.  Thus it is hard to link the timing of the end of reinvestment to the unknown liftoff date for short-term rates.

More broadly, it may be desirable to update our thinking around the path and composition of the balance sheet over time, in light of our capacity to shape this path in a way that mitigates potential costs and risks. For example, the agency MBS portfolio is substantially larger today than it was when the original exit principles were devised. To the extent that the Committee wants to reduce the risk of disrupting market functioning during normalization, it could decide to indicate that it will avoid selling the MBS portfolio during the early stages of the normalization process.  Moreover, to the extent that the Committee wants to mitigate the risk of a sharp increase in long-term rates, it could judge that it would prefer not to commit to agency MBS sales. Expectations about future MBS sales or actual sales have the potential to generate or amplify such an upward spike in long-term rates.  If the Committee believes that it could be costly in terms of credibility to incur a period of no remittances to Treasury—a notion I am personally somewhat skeptical about—avoiding MBS sales would also reduce this risk.  Indeed, the Committee might conclude that it was better on all three counts to allow the agency MBS securities to run off passively over time.¹⁰

An important challenge for us will be to think carefully about what combination of actions and communications will best ensure that when we do eventually judge that it is appropriate to begin normalizing policy, the initial tightening of financial market conditions is commensurate to what we desire. There is a risk is that market participants could overreact to any move in the process of normalization.  Indeed, there is some risk that market participants could overreact even before normalization begins, when the pace of purchases is adjusted but the level of accommodation is still increasing month by month.¹¹ Not only could such responses threaten financial stability, but also they might make it harder to calibrate monetary policy appropriately to the economic situation. We will need to think long and hard about how best to develop policy in a way that enables us to respond flexibly to a changing economic outlook, but in a way that is not disruptive to the economy.¹²

Based on what we have learned to date at the zero bound, I believe that it will be important for us to anchor all our communication around the core principle: The path of the policy rate and the size and composition of the balance sheet over time will be driven by our unbending commitment to our dual mandate objectives of maximum sustainable employment in the context of price stability.

As you can see, there will be much more to learn as we go.  Thank you for your kind attention.  I would be happy to take a few questions.

¹ Krishna Guha, Paolo Pesenti, Simon Potter, Jamie McAndrews, Jonathan McCarthy, Lorie Logan, John Clark, Eben Lazarus and others on my staff helped with the preparation of these remarks.

² Actual overnight rates; the Bank of Japan did not publish its rate target until 1998.

³ See “Preventing Deflation: Lessons from Japan’s Experience in the 1990s, ” Alan Ahearn, Joseph Gagnon, Jane Haltmaier, and Steve Kamin et. al., International Finance Discussion Papers, No 729, June 2002, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

⁴However, research suggests that the purchases did reinforce the forward commitment.  See, for example, “Policy commitment and expectation formation: Japan’s experience under zero interest rates” Kunio Okina and Shigenori  Shiratsuka North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Vol 15, No 1, pp 75-100.

⁵ See, for example, “Deleveraging and Monetary Policy: Japan Since the 1990s and the United States Since 2007”, Kazuo Ueda, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol 26, No 3, Summer 2012, pp 177-202.

⁶ Some commentators prefer the term “North Atlantic financial crisis” as the failure and near-failure of financial institutions was concentrated in the U.S. and Europe. However, the crisis was global in the sense that financial markets transmitted the shock throughout the world and this resulted in a severe global economic downturn.

⁷ Committee members, through their submissions to the Summary of Economic Projections, had already indicated that their inflation objective was close to 2 percent as measured by the personal consumption expenditures deflator; in January 2012 the Committee formalized the inflation objective as a 2 percent “longer run goal” (see http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary/20120125c.htm).

⁸ In addition to acting to manage inflation expectations, the central bank can also support expectations about the outlook for growth and job creation.  This can be implemented by making it clear that, subject to medium-term price stability, it will seek to stabilize the economy and has the means to do so even at the zero bound.

⁹ With respect to borrowing costs, this is particularly true in real terms.

¹⁰This would also provide additional stimulus at the margin, since the degree of accommodation provided by our balance sheet holdings is related to how long the public expects us to hold the assets.

¹¹ The move to economic thresholds-based guidance for the federal funds rate should help in this regard. While the thresholds are certainly not triggers, they should help market participants adjust expectations about the likely timing of lift-off in a relatively continuous manner and guard against these expectations being pulled further forward in time than is warranted by changes in the economic outlook.

¹² Indeed, even when purchases of additional longer-term securities cease, the enlarged balance sheet will provide substantial ongoing stimulus. It is important to recognize that the Fed could remain in this posture with policy “on hold” for a significant period.

Source: NY Fed

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

This morning, the New York Fed released its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for 2013 Q1. The report uses the FRBNY Consumer Credit Panel to show that outstanding household debt declined approximately $110 billion (about 1 percent) from the previous quarter. The drop was due in large part to a reduction in housing-related debt and credit card balances. Meanwhile, delinquency rates for each form of consumer debt declined, with the overall ninety-plus day delinquency rate dropping from 6.3 percent to 6.0 percent.

It’s time for another installment of FusionIQ’s Screen Pass.  IQ Screen Pass utilizes FusionIO’s proprietary metrics along with widely followed industry metrics to create high level investing and trading screens.  Today’s edition of Screen Pass looks for stocks that combine both Value and Momentum, or as we like to call it … Valumentum.

The variables used in today’s screen are as follows: (1) Fusion Technical Scores (ETech) between 70 – 100; (2) Market Cap (EMC) of > $ 1 billion; (3) Trading Volume (EV) of 500,000 or >; (4) Closing Price (Price) of > $ 5; (5) Price to Sales Ratio (PSR) of < 1.9; (6) Forward P/E < 18; (7) Price to Growth Ratio (PEG) of < 1.5; and (8) out-performance vs. the S&P 500 (market) over the last 4 weeks of > 5 % (PM4W).

With the market rising a lot of late, we wanted to add a value component to our momentum inputs, to gives us the best of both worlds.

Eight stocks hit today’s list; E-Trade Financial (ETFC), Genworth Financial (GNW), Dresser-Rand Group (DRC), Eaton Corp (ETN), Dicks Sporting Goods (DKS), United Rentals (URI),Pier 1 Imports (PIR) and Foot Locker (FL).

Click to enlarge

CNN reports:

The European Commission raided the offices of Shell, BP and Norway’s Statoil this week as part of an investigation into suspected attempts to manipulate global oil prices spanning more than a decade.

None of the companies have been accused of wrongdoing, but the controversy has brought back memories of the Libor rate-rigging scandal that rocked the financial world last year.

***

A review ordered by the British government last year in the wake of the Libor revelations cited “clear” parallels between the work of the oil-price-reporting agencies and Libor.

“[T]hey are both widely used benchmarks that are compiled by private organizations and that are subject to minimal regulation and oversight by regulatory authorities,” the review, led by former financial regulator Martin Wheatley, said in August . “To that extent they are also likely to be vulnerable to similar issues with regards to the motivation and opportunity for manipulation and distortion.”

***

In a report issued in October, the International Organization of Securities Commissions — an association of regulators — said the ability “to selectively report data on a voluntary basis creates an opportunity for manipulating the commodity market data” submitted to Platts and its competitors.
Responding to questions from IOSCO last year, French oil giant Total said the price-reporting agencies, or PRAs, sometimes “do not assure an accurate representation of the market and consequently deform the real price levels paid at every level of the price chain, including by the consumer.” But Total called Platts and its competitors “generally… conscientious and professional.”

***

“Even small distortions of assessed prices may have a huge impact on the prices of crude oil, refined oil products and biofuels purchases and sales, potentially harming final consumers,” the European Commission said this week.

USA Today notes:

The Commission … said, however, that its probe covers a wide range of oil products — crude oil, biofuels, and refined oil products, which include gasoline, heating oil, petrochemicals and others.

***

The EU said it has concerns that some companies may have tried to manipulate the pricing process by colluding to report distorted prices and by preventing other companies from submitting their own prices.

***

Unlike oil futures, which set prices for contracts, the data used in the MOC process is based on the physical sale and purchase of actual shipments of oil and oil products.

***

According to Statoil, the EU investigation stretches back to 2002, which is when Platts launched its MOC price system in Europe. The suspicion is that some companies may have provided inaccurate information to Platts to affect the oil products’ pricing, presumably for financial gain.

Fox points out:

At issue is whether there was collusion to distort prices of crude, refined oil products and ethanol traded during Platts’ market-on-close (MOC) system – a daily half-hour “window” in which it sets prices.

But the European Commission also is examining whether companies were prevented from taking part in the price assessment process.

The Guardian writes:

The commission said the alleged price collusion, which may have been going on since 2002, could have had a “huge impact” on the price of petrol at the pumps “potentially harming final consumers”.

Lord Oakeshott, former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said the alleged rigging of oil prices was “as serious as rigging Libor” – which led to banks being fined hundreds of millions of pounds.

He demanded to know why the UK authorities had not taken action earlier and said he would ask questions of the British regulator in Parliament. “Why have we had to wait for Brussels to find out if British oil giants are ripping off British consumers?” he said. “The price of energy ripples right through our economy and really matters to every business and families.”

***

Shadow energy and climate change secretary Caroline Flint said: “These are very concerning reports, which if true, suggest shocking behaviour in the oil market that should be dealt with strongly.

“When the allegations of price fixing in the gas market were made, Labour warned that opaque over-the-counter deals and relying on price reporting agencies left the market vulnerable to abuse.

“These latest allegations of price fixing in the oil market raise very similar questions. Consumers need to know that the prices they pay for their energy or petrol are fair, transparent and not being manipulated by traders.”

Shadow financial secretary to the Treasury Chris Leslie said: “If oil price fixing has taken place it would be a shocking scandal for our financial markets.

The Telegraph reports:

“97 per cent of all we eat, drink, wear or build has spent some time in a diesel lorry,” said a spokesman for FairFuel UK, the lobbyists. “If it is proved, they have been gambling with the very oxygen of our economy.”

***

Platts – to determine the benchmark price – examines just trades in the final 30 minutes of the trading day. A group of half a dozen analysts gather round a trading screen and decide on the final price. As with much that goes on in the City, it is a surprisingly old-fashioned method, reliant on gentlemanly conduct. Critics say it leaves the market open to abuse, and the price can suddenly spike or fall in the final minutes of the day.

The New York Times notes of agencies like Platt and Argus Media:

Their influence is extensive. Total, the French oil giant, estimated last year that 75 to 80 percent of crude oil and refined product transactions were linked to the prices published by such agencies.

The Observer writes that manipulation of the oil markets has long been an open secret:

Robert Campbell, a former price reporter at another PRA, Argus – he is now a staffer at Thomson Reuters, which also competes with Platts and others on providing energy news and data – said this a few days ago in a little-noticed commentary: “The vulnerability of physical crude price assessments to manipulation is an open secret within the oil industry. The surprise is that it took regulators so long to open a formal probe.”

Reuters points out that the probe may be expanding to the U.S.:

In Washington, the chairman of the Senate energy committee asked the Justice Department to investigate whether alleged price manipulation has boosted fuel prices for U.S. consumers.

“Efforts to manipulate the European oil indices, if proven, may have already impacted U.S. consumers and businesses, because of the interrelationships among world oil markets and hedging practices,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

Wyden also asked Justice to investigate whether oil market manipulation was taking place in the United States.

Not only are petroleum products a multi-trillion dollar market on their own, but manipulation of petroleum prices would effect virtually every market in the world.

For example, the Cato Institute notes how many industries use oil:

U.S. industries use petroleum to produce the synthetic fiber used in textile mills making carpeting and fabric from polyester and nylon. U.S. tire plants use petroleum to make synthetic rubber. Other U.S. industries use petroleum to produce plastic, drugs, detergent, deodorant, fertilizer, pesticides, paint, eyeglasses, heart valves, crayons, bubble gum and Vaseline.

The India Times explains that:

The price variation in crude oil impacts the sentiments and hence the volatility in stock markets all over the world. The rise in crude oil prices is not good for the global economy. Price rise in crude oil virtually impacts industries and businesses across the board. Higher crude oil prices mean higher energy prices, which can cause a ripple effect on virtually all business aspects that are dependent on energy (directly or indirectly).

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco points out:

When gasoline prices increase, a larger share of households’ budgets is likely to be spent on it, which leaves less to spend on other goods and services. The same goes for businesses whose goods must be shipped from place to place or that use fuel as a major input (such as the airline industry). Higher oil prices tend to make production more expensive for businesses, just as they make it more expensive for households to do the things they normally do.

***

Oil price increases are generally thought to increase inflation and reduce economic growth.

***

Oil prices indirectly affect costs such as transportation, manufacturing, and heating. The increase in these costs can in turn affect the prices of a variety of goods and services, as producers may pass production costs on to consumers.

***

Oil price increases can also stifle the growth of the economy through their effect on the supply and demand for goods other than oil. Increases in oil prices can depress the supply of other goods because they increase the costs of producing them. In economics terminology, high oil prices can shift up the supply curve for the goods and services for which oil is an input.

High oil prices also can reduce demand for other goods because they reduce wealth, as well as induce uncertainty about the future (Sill 2007). One way to analyze the effects of higher oil prices is to think about the higher prices as a tax on consumers (Fernald and Trehan 2005).

The Post Carbon Institute notes (via OilPrice.com) that high oil prices raise food prices as well:

The connection between food and oil is systemic, and the prices of both food and fuel have risen and fallen more or less in tandem in recent years (figure 1). Modern agriculture uses oil products to fuel farm machinery, to transport other inputs to the farm, and to transport farm output to the ultimate consumer. Oil is often also used as input in agricultural chemicals. Oil price increases therefore put pressure on all these aspects of commercial food systems.

Figure 1: Evolution of food and fuel prices, 2000 to 2009
Sources: US Energy Information Administration and FAO.

Economists Nouriel Roubini and Setser note that all recessions after 1973 were associated with oil shocks.

Interest Rates Are Manipulated

Unless you live under a rock, you know about the Libor scandal.

For those just now emerging from a coma, here’s a recap:

• The big banks have conspired for years to rig interest rates … upon which $800 trillion in assets are pegged

• This was the largest insider trading scandal ever … and the largest financial scam in world history

• Local governments got ripped off bigtime by the Libor manipulation

• Libor is still being manipulated

Derivatives Are Manipulated

The big banks have long manipulated derivatives … a $1,200 Trillion Dollar market.

Indeed, many trillions of dollars of derivatives are being manipulated in the exact same same way that interest rates are fixed: through gamed self-reporting.

Gold and Silver Are Manipulated

The Guardian and Telegraph report that gold and silver prices are “fixed” in the same way as interest rates and derivatives – in daily conference calls by the powers-that-be.

Everything Can Be Manipulated through High-Frequency Trading

Traders with high-tech computers can manipulate stocks, bonds, options, currency and commodities. And see this.

Manipulating Numerous Markets In Myriad Ways

The big banks and other giants manipulate numerous markets in myriad ways, for example:

• Engaging in mafia-style big-rigging fraud against local governments. See this, this and this

• Shaving money off of virtually every pension transaction they handled over the course of decades, stealing collectively billions of dollars from pensions worldwide. Details here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here

• Charging “storage fees” to store gold bullion … without even buying or storing any gold . And raiding allocated gold accounts

• Committing massive and pervasive fraud both when they initiated mortgage loans and when they foreclosed on them (and see this)

• Pledging the same mortgage multiple times to different buyers.  See this, this, this, this and this.  This would be like selling your car, and collecting money from 10 different buyers for the same car

• Cheating homeowners by gaming laws meant to protect people from unfair foreclosure

• Pushing investments which they knew were terrible, and then betting against the same investments to make money for themselves. See this, this, this, this and this

• Engaging in unlawful “frontrunning” to manipulate markets. See this, this, this, this, this and this

• Engaging in unlawful “Wash Trades” to manipulate asset prices. See this, this and this

• Otherwise manipulating markets. And see this

• Participating in various Ponzi schemes. See this, this and this

• Charging veterans unlawful mortgage fees

• Cooking their books (and see this)

• Bribing and bullying ratings agencies to inflate ratings on their risky investments

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Let me start by congratulating the graduates and their parents. The word “graduate” comes from the Latin word for “step.” Graduation from college is only one step on a journey, but it is an important one and well worth celebrating.I think everyone here appreciates what a special privilege each of you has enjoyed in attending a unique institution like Simon’s Rock. It is, to my knowledge, the only “early college” in the United States; many of you came here after the 10th or 11th grade in search of a different educational experience. And with only about 400 students on campus, I am sure each of you has felt yourself to be part of a close-knit community. Most important, though, you have completed a curriculum that emphasizes creativity and independent critical thinking, habits of mind that I am sure will stay with you.

What’s so important about creativity and critical thinking? There are many answers. I am an economist, so I will answer by talking first about our economic future–or your economic future, I should say, because each of you will have many years, I hope, to contribute to and benefit from an increasingly sophisticated, complex, and globalized economy. My emphasis today will be on prospects for the long run. In particular, I will be looking beyond the very real challenges of economic recovery that we face today–challenges that I have every confidence we will overcome–to speak, for a change, about economic growth as measured in decades, not months or quarters.

Many factors affect the development of the economy, notably among them a nation’s economic and political institutions, but over long periods probably the most important factor is the pace of scientific and technological progress. Between the days of the Roman Empire and when the Industrial Revolution took hold in Europe, the standard of living of the average person throughout most of the world changed little from generation to generation. For centuries, many, if not most, people produced much of what they and their families consumed and never traveled far from where they were born. By the mid-1700s, however, growing scientific and technical knowledge was beginning to find commercial uses.

Since then, according to standard accounts, the world has experienced at least three major waves of technological innovation and its application. The first wave drove the growth of the early industrial era, which lasted from the mid-1700s to the mid-1800s. This period saw the invention of steam engines, cotton-spinning machines, and railroads. These innovations, by introducing mechanization, specialization, and mass production, fundamentally changed how and where goods were produced and, in the process, greatly increased the productivity of workers and reduced the cost of basic consumer goods.

The second extended wave of invention coincided with the modern industrial era, which lasted from the mid-1800s well into the years after World War II. This era featured multiple innovations that radically changed everyday life, such as indoor plumbing, the harnessing of electricity for use in homes and factories, the internal combustion engine, antibiotics, powered flight, telephones, radio, television, and many more. The third era, whose roots go back at least to the 1940s but which began to enter the popular consciousness in the 1970s and 1980s, is defined by the information technology (IT) revolution, as well as fields like biotechnology that improvements in computing helped make possible. Of course, the IT revolution is still going on and shaping our world today.

Now here’s a question–in fact, a key question, I imagine, from your perspective. What does the future hold for the working lives of today’s graduates? The economic implications of the first two waves of innovation, from the steam engine to the Boeing 747, were enormous. These waves vastly expanded the range of available products and the efficiency with which they could be produced. Indeed, according to the best available data, output per person in the United States increased by approximately 30 times between 1700 and 1970 or so, growth that has resulted in multiple transformations of our economy and society.¹ History suggests that economic prospects during the coming decades depend on whether the most recent revolution, the IT revolution, has economic effects of similar scale and scope as the previous two. But will it?

I must report that not everyone thinks so. Indeed, some knowledgeable observers have recently made the case that the IT revolution, as important as it surely is, likely will not generate the transformative economic effects that flowed from the earlier technological revolutions.² As a result, these observers argue, economic growth and change in coming decades likely will be noticeably slower than the pace to which Americans have become accustomed. Such an outcome would have important social and political–as well as economic–consequences for our country and the world.

This provocative assessment of our economic future has attracted plenty of attention among economists and others as well. Does it make sense? Here’s one way to think more concretely about the argument that the pessimists are making: Fifty years ago, in 1963, I was a nine-year-old growing up in a middle-class home in a small town in South Carolina. As a way of getting a handle on the recent pace of economic change, it’s interesting to ask how my family’s everyday life back then differed from that of a typical family today. Well, if I think about it, I could quickly come up with the Internet, cellphones, and microwave ovens as important conveniences that most of your families have today that my family lacked 50 years ago. Health care has improved some since I was young; indeed, life expectancy at birth in the United States has risen from 70 years in 1963 to 78 years today, although some of this improvement is probably due to better nutrition and generally higher levels of income rather than advances in medicine alone. Nevertheless, though my memory may be selective, it doesn’t seem to me that the differences in daily life between then and now are all that large. Heating, air conditioning, cooking, and sanitation in my childhood were not all that different from today. We had a dishwasher, a washing machine, and a dryer. My family owned a comfortable car with air conditioning and a radio, and the experience of commercial flight was much like today but without the long security lines. For entertainment, we did not have the Internet or video games, as I mentioned, but we had plenty of books, radio, musical recordings, and a color TV (although, I must acknowledge, the colors were garish and there were many fewer channels to choose from).

The comparison of the world of 1963 with that of today suggests quite substantial but perhaps not transformative economic change since then. But now let’s run this thought experiment back another 50 years, to 1913 (the year the Federal Reserve was created by the Congress, by the way), and compare how my grandparents and your great-grandparents lived with how my family lived in 1963. Life in 1913 was simply much harder for most Americans than it would be later in the century. Many people worked long hours at dangerous, dirty, and exhausting jobs–up to 60 hours per week in manufacturing, for example, and even more in agriculture. Housework involved a great deal of drudgery; refrigerators, freezers, vacuum cleaners, electric stoves, and washing machines were not in general use, which should not be terribly surprising since most urban households, and virtually all rural households, were not yet wired for electricity. In the entertainment sphere, Americans did not yet have access to commercial radio broadcasts and movies would be silent for another decade and a half. Some people had telephones, but no long-distance service was available. In transportation, in 1913 Henry Ford was just beginning the mass production of the Model T automobile, railroads were powered by steam, and regular commercial air travel was quite a few years away. Importantly, life expectancy at birth in 1913 was only 53 years, reflecting not only the state of medical science at the time–infection-fighting antibiotics and vaccines for many deadly diseases would not be developed for several more decades–but also deficiencies in sanitation and nutrition. This was quite a different world than the one in which I grew up in 1963 or in which we live today.

The purpose of these comparisons is to make concrete the argument made by some economists, that the economic and technological transformation of the past 50 years, while significant, does not match the changes of the 50 years–or, for that matter, the 100 years–before that. Extrapolating to the future, the conclusion some have drawn is that the sustainable pace of economic growth and change and the associated improvement in living standards will likely slow further, as our most recent technological revolution, in computers and IT, will not transform our lives as dramatically as previous revolutions have.

Well, that’s sort of depressing. Is it true, then, as baseball player Yogi Berra said, that the future ain’t what it used to be? Nobody really knows; as Berra also astutely observed, it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future. But there are some good arguments on the other side of this debate.

First, innovation, almost by definition, involves ideas that no one has yet had, which means that forecasts of future technological change can be, and often are, wildly wrong. A safe prediction, I think, is that human innovation and creativity will continue; it is part of our very nature. Another prediction, just as safe, is that people will nevertheless continue to forecast the end of innovation. The famous British economist John Maynard Keynes observed as much in the midst of the Great Depression more than 80 years ago. He wrote then, “We are suffering just now from a bad attack of economic pessimism. It is common to hear people say that the epoch of enormous economic progress which characterised the 19th century is over; that the rapid improvement in the standard of life is now going to slow down.”³ Sound familiar? By the way, Keynes argued at that time that such a view was shortsighted and, in characterizing what he called “the economic possibilities for our grandchildren,” he predicted that income per person, adjusted for inflation, could rise as much as four to eight times by 2030. His guess looks pretty good; income per person in the United States today is roughly six times what it was in 1930.

Second, not only are scientific and technical innovation themselves inherently hard to predict, so are the long-run practical consequences of innovation for our economy and our daily lives. Indeed, some would say that we are still in the early days of the IT revolution; after all, computing speeds and memory have increased many times over in the 30-plus years since the first personal computers came on the market, and fields like biotechnology are also advancing rapidly. Moreover, even as the basic technologies improve, the commercial applications of these technologies have arguably thus far only scratched the surface. Consider, for example, the potential for IT and biotechnology to improve health care, one of the largest and most important sectors of our economy. A strong case can be made that the modernization of health-care IT systems would lead to better-coordinated, more effective, and less costly patient care than we have today, including greater responsiveness of medical practice to the latest research findings.⁴ Robots, lasers, and other advanced technologies are improving surgical outcomes, and artificial intelligence systems are being used to improve diagnoses and chart courses of treatment. Perhaps even more revolutionary is the trend toward so-called personalized medicine, which would tailor medical treatments for each patient based on information drawn from that individual’s genetic code. Taken together, such advances could lead to another jump in life expectancy and improved health at older ages.

Other promising areas for the application of new technologies include the development of cleaner energy–for example, the harnessing of wind, wave, and solar power and the development of electric and hybrid vehicles–as well as potential further advances in communications and robotics. I’m sure that I can’t imagine all of the possibilities, but historians of science have commented on our collective tendency to overestimate the short-term effects of new technologies while underestimating their longer-term potential.⁵

Finally, pessimists may be paying too little attention to the strength of the underlying economic and social forces that generate innovation in the modern world. Invention was once the province of the isolated scientist or tinkerer. The transmission of new ideas and the adaptation of the best new insights to commercial uses were slow and erratic. But all of that is changing radically. We live on a planet that is becoming richer and more populous, and in which not only the most advanced economies but also large emerging market nations like China and India increasingly see their economic futures as tied to technological innovation. In that context, the number of trained scientists and engineers is increasing rapidly, as are the resources for research being provided by universities, governments, and the private sector. Moreover, because of the Internet and other advances in communications, collaboration and the exchange of ideas take place at high speed and with little regard for geographic distance. For example, research papers are now disseminated and critiqued almost instantaneously rather than after publication in a journal several years after they are written. And, importantly, as trade and globalization increase the size of the potential market for new products, the possible economic rewards for being first with an innovative product or process are growing rapidly.⁶ In short, both humanity’s capacity to innovate and the incentives to innovate are greater today than at any other time in history.

Well, what does all this have to do with creativity and critical thinking, which is where I started? The history of technological innovation and economic development teaches us that change is the only constant. During your working lives, you will have to reinvent yourselves many times. Success and satisfaction will not come from mastering a fixed body of knowledge but from constant adaptation and creativity in a rapidly changing world. Engaging with and applying new technologies will be a crucial part of that adaptation. Your work here at Simon’s Rock, and the intellectual skills, creativity, and imagination that that work has fostered, are the best possible preparation for these challenges. And while I have emphasized technological and scientific advances today, it is important to remember that the arts and humanities facilitate new and creative thinking as well, while helping us to draw meaning that goes beyond the purely material aspects of our lives. I wish you the best in facing the difficult but exciting challenges that lie ahead. Congratulations.

1. See Angus Maddison (2007), Contours of the World Economy, 1-2030 AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History (New York: Oxford University Press), table A.7, p. 382. Return to text

2. Two important examples are Tyler Cowen (2011) and Robert J. Gordon (2010, 2012); the latter reference, in particular, also contains a discussion of headwinds to growth beyond the prospects for innovation. See Tyler Cowen (2011), The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better (New York: Dutton); Robert J. Gordon (2010), “Revisiting U.S. Productivity Growth over the Past Century with a View of the Future,” NBER Working Paper Series 15834 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, March); and Robert J. Gordon (2012), “Is U.S. Economic Growth Over? Faltering Innovation Confronts the Six Headwinds,” NBER Working Paper Series 18315 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, August). Return to text

3. John M. Keynes (1931), “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren (1930),” in Essays in Persuasion (London: Macmillan), p. 358. Return to text

4. See Martin Neil Baily, James M. Manyika, and Shalabh Gupta (2013), “U.S. Productivity Growth: An Optimistic Perspective,” International Productivity Monitor, Spring, pp. 3-12. Return to text

5. This tendency has been referred to as the first law of technology. On the potential impact of genome sequencing, see Francis Collins (2010), “Has the Revolution Arrived?” Nature, vol. 464 (April), pp.674-75. For an accessible discussion of the possibilities for life expectancy, see Stephen S. Hall (2013), “On beyond 100,” National Geographic, May, http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/longevity/hall-text. Return to text

6. For a discussion of the economic models of growth that build in cumulative forces of knowledge generation and the effects of expansion in the size of the market, see Charles I. Jones and Paul M. Romer (2010), “The New Kaldor Facts: Ideas, Institutions, Population, and Human Capital,” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, vol. 2 (January), pp. 224-45. Return to text

Why There Is So Much Pro-War Reporting

There are five reasons that the mainstream media and the largest alternative media websites are both pro-war.

1. Self-Censorship by Journalists

Initially, there is tremendous self-censorship by journalists.

A survey by the Pew Research Center and the Columbia Journalism Review in 2000 found:

Self-censorship is commonplace in the news media today …. About one-quarter of the local and national journalists say they have purposely avoided newsworthy stories, while nearly as many acknowledge they have softened the tone of stories to benefit the interests of their news organizations. Fully four-in-ten (41%) admit they have engaged in either or both of these practices.

Similarly, a 2003 survey reveals that 35% of reporters and news executives themselves admitted that journalists avoid newsworthy stories if “the story would be embarrassing or damaging to the financial interests of a news organization’s owners or parent company.”

Several months after 9/11, Dan Rather told the BBC that American reporters were practicing “a form of self-censorship”:

There was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around peoples’ necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions…. And again, I am humbled to say, I do not except myself from this criticism.

What we are talking about here – whether one wants to recognise it or not, or call it by its proper name or not – is a form of self-censorship.

Rather said in 2008:

One of the most pernicious ways in which we do this is through self-censorship, which may be the worst censorship of all. We have seen too much self-censorship in the news in recent years, and as I say this please know that I do not except myself from this criticism.

As Mark Twain once said, “We write frankly and freely but then we ‘modify’ before we print.” Why do we modify the free and frank expression of journalistic truth? We do it out of fear: Fear for our jobs. Fear that we’ll catch hell for it. Fear that someone will seek to hang a sign around our neck that says, in essence, “Unpatriotic.”

We modify with euphemisms such as “collateral damage” or “less than truthful statements.” We modify with passive-voice constructions such as “mistakes were made.” We modify with false equivalencies that provide for bad behavior the ready-made excuse that “everybody’s doing it.” And sometimes we modify with an eraser—simply removing offending and inconvenient truths from our reporting.”

Keith Olbermann agreed that there is self-censorship in the American media, and that:

You can rock the boat, but you can never say that the entire ocean is in trouble …. You cannot say: By the way, there’s something wrong with our …. system.

Former Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin wrote in 2006:

Mainstream-media political journalism is in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant, but not because of the Internet, or even Comedy Central. The threat comes from inside. It comes from journalists being afraid to do what journalists were put on this green earth to do. . . .

There’s the intense pressure to maintain access to insider sources, even as those sources become ridiculously unrevealing and oversensitive. There’s the fear of being labeled partisan if one’s bullshit-calling isn’t meted out in precisely equal increments along the political spectrum.

If mainstream-media political journalists don’t start calling bullshit more often, then we do risk losing our primacy — if not to the comedians then to the bloggers.

I still believe that no one is fundamentally more capable of first-rate bullshit-calling than a well-informed beat reporter – whatever their beat. We just need to get the editors, or the corporate culture, or the self-censorship – or whatever it is – out of the way.

MarketWatch columnist Brett Arends wrote yesterday:

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world. Once upon a time you saw people like this in every newsroom in the country. They often had chaotic personal lives and they died early of cirrhosis or a heart attack. But they were tough, angry SOBs and they produced great stories.

Do you want to know what kind of people get promoted and succeed in the modern news organization? Social climbers. Networkers. People who are gregarious, who “buy in” to the dominant consensus, who go along to get along and don’t ask too many really awkward questions. They are flexible, well-organized, and happy with life.

And it shows.

This is why, just in the patch of financial and economic journalism, so many reporters are happy to report that U.S. corporations are in great financial shape, even though they also have surging debts, or that a “diversified portfolio” of stocks and bonds will protect you in all circumstances, even though this is not the case, or that defense budgets are being slashed, when they aren’t, or that the U.S. economy has massively outperformed rivals such as Japan, when on key metrics it hasn’t, or that companies must pay CEOs gazillions of dollars to secure the top “talent,” when they don’t need to do any such thing, and such pay is just plunder.

All of these things are “consensus” opinions, and conventional wisdom, which are repeated over and over again by various commentators and vested interests. Yet none of them are true.

If you want to be a glad-handing politician, be a glad-handing politician. If you want to be a reporter, then be angry, ask awkward questions, and absolutely hate it when everyone agrees with you.

Self-censorship obviously occurs on the web as well as in old media.  As Wikipedia notes:

Self-censorship is the act of censoring or classifying one’s own work (blog, book(s), film(s), or other means of expression) …

2. Censorship by Higher-Ups

If journalists do want to speak out about an issue, they also are subject to tremendous pressure by their editors or producers to kill the story.

The 2000 Pew and Columbia Journalism Review survey notes:

Fully half of [the investigative journalists surveyed] say newsworthy stories are often or sometimes ignored because they conflict with a news organization’s economic interests. More than six-in-ten (61%) believe that corporate owners exert at least a fair amount of influence on decisions about which stories to cover….

The Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who uncovered the Iraq prison torture scandal and the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam, Seymour Hersh, said:

“All of the institutions we thought would protect us — particularly the press, but also the military, the bureaucracy, the Congress — they have failed. The courts . . . the jury’s not in yet on the courts. So all the things that we expect would normally carry us through didn’t. The biggest failure, I would argue, is the press, because that’s the most glaring….

Q: What can be done to fix the (media) situation?

[Long pause] You’d have to fire or execute ninety percent of the editors and executives. You’d actually have to start promoting people from the newsrooms to be editors who you didn’t think you could control. And they’re not going to do that.”

In fact many journalists are warning that the true story is not being reported. And see this announcement.

A series of interviews with award-winning journalists also documents censorship of certain stories by media editors and owners (and see these samples).

It’s not just the mainstream media.  The large “alternative” media websites censor as well.   For example:

Every year Project Censored [which Walter Cronkite and other ] puts together a list of the top 25 stories censored and ignored by the mainstream media.

How many of these stories were you aware of? Even regular consumers of alternative, independent media may be surprised to learn about some of these stories ….

There are many reasons for censorship by media higher-ups.

One is money.

The media has a strong monetary interest to avoid controversial topics in general. It has always been true that advertisers discourage stories which challenge corporate power. In 1969, Federal Communications Commission commissioner Nicholas Johnson noted that tv networks go to great lengths to please their sponsors.

Some media companies make a lot of money from the government, and so don’t want to rock the boat.  For example, Glenn Greenwald notes:

Because these schools [owned by the Washington P0st's parent company, whose profits subsidize the Post] target low-income students, the vast majority of their income is derived from federal loans. Because there have been so many deceptive practices and defaults, the Federal Government has become much more aggressive about regulating these schools and now play a vital role in determining which ones can thrive and which ones fail.

Put another way, the company that owns The Washington Post is almost entirely at the mercy of the Federal Government and the Obama administration — the entities which its newspaper ostensibly checks and holds accountable. “By the end of 2010, more than 90 percent of revenue at Kaplan’s biggest division and nearly a third of The Post Co.’s revenue overall came from the U.S. government.” The Post Co.’s reliance on the Federal Government extends beyond the source of its revenue; because the industry is so heavily regulated, any animosity from the Government could single-handedly doom the Post Co.’s business — a reality of which they are well aware:

The Post Co. realized there were risks attached to being dependent on federal dollars for revenue — and that it could lose access to that money if it exceeded federal regulatory limits.

“It was understood that if you fell out of grace [with the Education Department], your business might go away,” said Tom Might, who as chief executive of Cable One, a cable service provider that is owned by The Post Co., sat in at company-wide board meetings.

Beyond being reliant on federal money and not alienating federal regulators, the Post Co. desperately needs favorable treatment from members of Congress, and has been willing to use its newspaper to obtain it:

Graham has taken part in a fierce lobbying campaign by the for-profit education industry. He has visited key members of Congress, written an op-ed article for the Wall Street Journal and hired for The Post Co. high-powered lobbying firms including Akin Gump and Elmendorf Ryan, at a cost of $810,000 in 2010. The Post has also published an editorial opposing the new federal rules, while disclosing the interests of its parent company.

The Post is hardly alone among major media outlets in being owned by an entity which relies on the Federal Government for its continued profitability. NBC News and MSNBC were long owned by GE, and now by Comcast, both of which desperately need good relations with government officials for their profits. The same is true of CBS (owned by Viacom), ABC (owned by Disney), and CNN (owned by TimeWarner). For each of these large corporations, alienating federal government officials is about the worst possible move it could make — something of which all of its employees, including its media division employees, are well aware. But the Post Co.’s dependence is even more overwhelming than most.

How can a company which is almost wholly dependent upon staying in the good graces of the U.S. Government possibly be expected to serve as a journalistic “watchdog” over that same Government? The very idea is absurd.

In addition, the government has allowed tremendous consolidation in ownership of the airwaves during the past decade.

Dan Rather has slammed media consolidation:

Likening media consolidation to that of the banking industry, Rather claimed that “roughly 80 percent” of the media is controlled by no more than six, and possibly as few as four, corporations.

This is documented by the following must-see charts prepared by:

• Media Channel

• The Nation

• Free Press

And check out this list of interlocking directorates of big media companies from Fairness and Accuracy in Media, and this resource from the Columbia Journalism Review to research a particular company.

This image gives a sense of the decline in diversity in media ownership over the last couple of decades:

The large media players stand to gain billions of dollars in profits if the Obama administration continues to allow monopoly ownership of the airwaves by a handful of players. The media giants know who butters their bread. So there is a spoken or tacit agreement: if the media cover the administration in a favorable light, the MSM will continue to be the receiver of the government’s goodies.

The large alternative media websites also censor news which are too passionately anti-war.

The biggest social media websites censor the hardest-hitting anti-war stories. And see this.

Huffington Post – the largest liberal website – is owned by media giant AOL Time Warner, and censors any implication that a Democratic administration could be waging war for the wrong reasons.   So HuffPost may criticize poor prosecution of the war, but would never say that the entire “War on Terror” as currently waged by the Obama administration is a stupid idea.

Similarly, Drudge Report – the largest conservative website – never questions whether the government’s engagement in offensive military action around the world is strengthening or weakening our national security.

The largest “alternative” websites may weakly criticize minor details of the overall war effort, but would never say that more or less worldwide war-fighting is counterproductive. They may whine about a specific aspect of the war-fighting … but never look at the larger geopolitical factors involved.

They all seem to follow Keith Olbermann’s advice:

You can rock the boat, but you can never say that the entire ocean is in trouble …. You cannot say: By the way, there’s something wrong with our …. system.

3. Drumming Up Support for War

In addition, the owners of American media companies have long actively played a part in drumming up support for war.

It is painfully obvious that the large news outlets studiously avoided any real criticism of the government’s claims in the run up to the Iraq war. It is painfully obvious that the large American media companies acted as lapdogs and stenographers for the government’s war agenda.

Veteran reporter Bill Moyers criticized the corporate media for parroting the obviously false link between 9/11 and Iraq (and the false claims that Iraq possessed WMDs) which the administration made in the run up to the Iraq war, and concluded that the false information was not challenged because:

The [mainstream] media had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President — no questions asked.

As NBC News’ David Gregory (later promoted to host Meet the Press) said:

I think there are a lot of critics who think that . . . . if we did not stand up [in the run-up to the war] and say ‘this is bogus, and you’re a liar, and why are you doing this,’ that we didn’t do our job. I respectfully disagree. It’s not our role.

But this is nothing new. In fact, the large media companies have drummed up support for all previous wars.

For example, Hearst helped drum up support for the Spanish-American War.

And an official summary of America’s overthrow of the democratically-elected president of Iran in the 1950′s states, “In cooperation with the Department of State, CIA had several articles planted in major American newspapers and magazines which, when reproduced in Iran, had the desired psychological effect in Iran and contributed to the war of nerves against Mossadeq.” (page x)

The mainstream media also may have played footsie with the U.S. government right before Pearl Harbor. Specifically, a highly-praised historian (Bob Stineet) argues that the Army’s Chief of Staff informed the Washington bureau chiefs of the major newspapers and magazines of the impending Pearl Harbor attack BEFORE IT OCCURRED, and swore them to an oath of secrecy, which the media honored (page 361) .

And the military-media alliance has continued without a break (as a highly-respected journalist says, “viewers may be taken aback to see the grotesque extent to which US presidents and American news media have jointly shouldered key propaganda chores for war launches during the last five decades.”)

As the mainstream British paper, the Independent, writes:

There is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it. The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news.

The article in the Independent discusses the use of “black propaganda” by the U.S. government, which is then parroted by the media without analysis; for example, the government forged a letter from al Zarqawi to the “inner circle” of al-Qa’ida’s leadership, urging them to accept that the best way to beat US forces in Iraq was effectively to start a civil war, which was then publicized without question by the media.

So why has the American press has consistently served the elites in disseminating their false justifications for war?

One of of the reasons is because the large media companies are owned by those who support the militarist agenda or even directly profit from war and terror (for example, NBC was owned by General Electric, one of the largest defense contractors in the world … which directly profits from war, terrorism and chaos. NBC was subsequently sold to Comcast).

Another seems to be an unspoken rule that the media will not criticize the government’s imperial war agenda.

And the media support isn’t just for war: it is also for various other shenanigans by the powerful. For example, a BBC documentary proves:

There was “a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by a group of right-wing American businessmen . . . . The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.”

Moreover, “the tycoons told the general who they asked to carry out the coup that the American people would accept the new government because they controlled all the newspapers.“

See also this book.

Have you ever heard of this scheme before? It was certainly a very large one. And if the conspirators controlled the newspapers then, how much worse is it today with media consolidation?

(Kevin Dutton – research psychologist at the University of Cambridge – whose research has been featured in Scientific American Mind, New Scientist, The Guardian, Psychology Today and USA Today – also notes that media personalities and journalists – especially when combined in the same persons – are likely to be psychopaths. Some 12 million Americans are psychopaths or sociopaths, and psychopaths tend to rub each others’ backs.)

4. Access

Dan Froomkin,  Brett Arends and many other mainstream reporters have noted that “access” is the most prized thing for mainstream journalists … and that they will keep fawning over those in power so that they will keep their prized access.

But there is another dynamic related to access at play: direct cash-for-access payments to the media.

For example, a 3-time Emmy Award winning CNN journalist says that CNN takes money from foreign dictators to run flattering propaganda.

Politico reveals:

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to “those powerful few”: Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and — at first — even the paper’s own reporters and editors…

The offer — which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters — was a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

That may be one reason that the mainstream news commentators hate bloggers so much. The more people who get their news from blogs instead of mainstream news sources, the smaller their audience, and the less the MSM can charge for the kind of “nonconfrontational access” which leads to puff pieces for the big boys.

5. Censorship by the Government

Finally, as if the media’s own interest in promoting war is not strong enough, the government has exerted tremendous pressure on the media to report things a certain way.

If they criticize those in power, they may be smeared by the government and targeted for arrest (and see this).

Indeed, the government treats real reporters as terrorists.  Because the core things which reporters do could be considered terrorism, in modern America, journalists are sometimes targeted under counter-terrorism laws.

The government spies on reporters.

Not only has the government thrown media owners and reporters in jail if they’ve been too critical, it also claims the power to indefinitely detain journalists without trial or access to an attorney which chills chills free speech.

After Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges, journalist Naomi Wolf, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and others sued the government to enjoin the NDAA’s allowance of the indefinite detention of Americans – the judge asked the government attorneys 5 times whether journalists like Hedges could be indefinitely detained simply for interviewing and then writing about bad guys. The government refused to promise that journalists like Hedges won’t be thrown in a dungeon for the rest of their lives without any right to talk to a judge.

An al-Jazeera journalist – in no way connected to any terrorist group – was held at Guantánamo for six years … mainly to be interrogated about the Arabic news network. And see this.

Wikileaks’ head Julian Assange could face the death penalty for his heinous crime of leaking whistleblower information which make those in power uncomfortable … i.e. being a reporter.

As constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald notes:

It seems clear that the US military now deems any leaks of classified information to constitute the capital offense of “aiding the enemy” or “communicating with the enemy” even if no information is passed directly to the “enemy” and there is no intent to aid or communicate with them. Merely informing the public about classified government activities now constitutes this capital crime because it “indirectly” informs the enemy.

***

If someone can be charged with “aiding” or “communicating with the enemy” by virtue of leaking to WikiLeaks, then why wouldn’t that same crime be committed by someone leaking classified information to any outlet: the New York Times, the Guardian, ABC News or anyone else?

***

International Law Professor Kevin Jon Heller made a similar point when the charges against Manning were first revealed:

“[I]f Manning has aided the enemy, so has any media organization that published the information he allegedly stole. Nothing in Article 104 requires proof that the defendant illegally acquired the information that aided the enemy. As a result, if the mere act of ensuring that harmful information is published on the internet qualifies either as indirectly ‘giving intelligence to the enemy’ (if the military can prove an enemy actually accessed the information) or as indirectly ‘communicating with the enemy’ (because any reasonable person knows that enemies can access information on the internet), there is no relevant factual difference between [Bradley] Manning and a media organization that published the relevant information.”

***

It is always worth underscoring that the New York Times has published far more government secrets than WikiLeaks ever has, and more importantly, has published far more sensitive secrets than WikiLeaks has (unlike WikiLeaks, which has never published anything that was designated “Top Secret”, the New York Times has repeatedly done so: the Pentagon Papers, the Bush NSA wiretapping program, the SWIFT banking surveillance system, and the cyberwarfare program aimed at Iran were all “Top Secret” when the newspaper revealed them, as was the network of CIA secret prisons exposed by the Washington Post). There is simply no way to convert basic leaks to WikiLeaks into capital offenses – as the Obama administration is plainly doing – without sweeping up all leaks into that attack.

***

The same [Obama] administration that has prosecuted whistleblowers under espionage charges that threatened to send them to prison for life without any evidence of harm to national security, and has brought double the number of such prosecutions as all prior administrations combined. Converting all leaks into capital offenses would be perfectly consistent with the unprecedented secrecy fixation on the part of the Most Transparent Administration Ever™.

The irony from these developments is glaring. The real “enemies” of American “society” are not those who seek to inform the American people about the bad acts engaged in by their government in secret. As Democrats once recognized prior to the age of Obama – in the age of Daniel Ellsberg – people who do that are more aptly referred to as “heroes”. The actual “enemies” are those who abuse secrecy powers to conceal government actions and to threaten with life imprisonment or even execution those who blow the whistle on high-level wrongdoing.

Former attorney general Mukasey said the U.S. should prosecute Assange because it’s “easier” than prosecuting the New York Times. But now Congress is considering a bill which would make even mainstream reporters liable for publishing leaked information (part of an all-out war on whistleblowing).

As such, the media companies have felt great pressure from the government to kill any real questioning of the endless wars.

For example, Dan Rather said, regarding American media, “What you have is a miniature version of what you have in totalitarian states”.

Tom Brokaw said “all wars are based on propaganda.

And the head of CNN said:

There was ‘almost a patriotism police’ after 9/11 and when the network showed [things critical of the administration's policies] it would get phone calls from advertisers and the administration and “big people in corporations were calling up and saying, ‘You’re being anti-American here.’

Indeed, former military analyst and famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said that the government has ordered the media not to cover 9/11:

Ellsberg seemed hardly surprised that today’s American mainstream broadcast media has so far failed to take [former FBI translator and 9/11 whistleblower Sibel] Edmonds up on her offer, despite the blockbuster nature of her allegations [which Ellsberg calls "far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers"].

As Edmonds has also alluded, Ellsberg pointed to the New York Times, who “sat on the NSA spying story for over a year” when they “could have put it out before the 2004 election, which might have changed the outcome.”

“There will be phone calls going out to the media saying ‘don’t even think of touching it, you will be prosecuted for violating national security,’” he told us.

* * *

“I am confident that there is conversation inside the Government as to ‘How do we deal with Sibel?’” contends Ellsberg. “The first line of defense is to ensure that she doesn’t get into the media. I think any outlet that thought of using her materials would go to to the government and they would be told ‘don’t touch this . . . .‘”

Of course, if the stick approach doesn’t work, the government can always just pay off reporters to spread disinformation.

Famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein says the CIA has already bought and paid for many successful journalists. See also this New York Times piece, this essay by the Independent, this speech by one of the premier writers on journalism, and this and this roundup.

Indeed, in the final analysis, the main reason today that the media giants will not cover the real stories or question the government’s actions or policies in any meaningful way is that the American government and mainstream media been somewhat blended together.

Can We Win the Battle Against Censorship?

We cannot just leave governance to our “leaders”, as “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance” (Jefferson). Similarly, we cannot leave news to the corporate media. We need to “be the media” ourselves.

“To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards out of men.”
- Abraham Lincoln

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Powerlessness and silence go together. We…should use our privileged positions not as a shelter from the world’s reality, but as a platform from which to speak. A voice is a gift. It should be cherished and used.”
– Margaret Atwood

“There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at points in history and creating a power that governments cannot suppress.”
- Howard Zinn (historian)

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent”
- Thomas Jefferson