"The Fed can create, or contract"

I meant "expand", or contract...

==AC

I don't have time to read all that stuff.  I just want to know, now that M3 is hidden, is it your contention that (1) M3 is expanding because there is rampant private sector borrowing, or (2) M3 is expanding because the Fed is borrowing from banks?
Wait since when does the Fed borrow from commercial banks?  I thought the Fed was the lender of last resort.  How does it even go about "borrowing" from a commercial bank?

I think the point to this is that the Fed is monetizing debt at a large rate!  They buy securities - that is debt, and in turn put it down on the books as an asset.  Problem is this "asset" is in turn a liability against the American People.  Once this fake cash starts being spent by our fair govt, it is deposited into banks and a small part is held as reserves and the rest is loaned out and it goes to another bank and the process repeats itself.

Right!  So if the Fed is buying debt then wouldn't M3 fall not rise.  M3 is an indirect measure of long term borrowing by private entities from banks isn't it?  Further then, if the Fed wanted to hide monetizing actions then the Fed would cancel its requirement that banks report M3 for publication.  

The "assets" are already an obligation to somebody.  If the Fed buys those assets, thereby giving money to a financial entity, that financial entity might then cover their eurodollar contracts -- no need for the liquidity if the related transaction has been transferred to the Fed, right?

First the FED did cancel publication of the M3 figure and that has all the money people up in arms.

When the FED buys the debt they are giving fake "cash" for a piece of paper.  So the FED gives money for a piece of paper, so they are increasing money in the system, not decreasing.

You also must keep in mind that they are buying debt.  They buy 10 year T bills, which are debts of the people of the US.  Then they take this DEBT and on paper change it into an asset of the bank.  Now do you understand that our lender of last resort (the biggest bank in the world), is using the US debt as a basis to expand the money supply.

Don't mean to double post, but I didn't answer part of your question.  

The only assets I am talking about are repurchase agreements, repo's, and those are done with other governments or our government.

T-Bill's not sold to public ---> Congress takes these to the FED and the FED writes a check ---> On the FED balance sheets, this debt is now a securities asset ---> the government deposits the money into commercial banks through issuing checks to various people agencies, etc. ---> those banks receiving the money only needs to hold a fraction of what was deposited so this orignal govt money has been re deposited up to nine times and up to 9 banks lend of 80-90% of whatever was deposited  ---. so they loan out the rest and it cycles.

The world didn't want to take on the debt of the US, but when the FED assumes the debt (enters in a repo agreement with the govt) it is in effect, creating money from debt.  Thinking only in terms of off setting debits and credits in accounting terms won't let you see the bigger picture.

I think we may be talking about two different things.  I'm talking about how it's supposed to work normally, and you may be talking about some nefarious Fed actions.  Allow me quote something here which may be of use:

"One of the trademarks of perma-bears is to blame all the World's ills on a hyper-active Fed whose policy shifts endanger the state of our economies and the value of financial assets. But is this a fair indictment? Judging Fed policy by the growth rate of the US monetary base, we find that the US monetary base has been growing fairly steadily and in line with US GDP growth.

In fact, if one wants to blame a central bank for volatility in global monetary aggregates, one should instead turn to Japan.  Looking at the past thirty five years, we find that the Japanese monetary base has been allowed to double over short periods (i.e.: less than three years) three times.

Another interesting fact is that, following the large 2001-2004 expansion in the Japanese monetary base, the Japanese monetary base is now larger than the US'. That is quite impressive for an economy less than half the size."

The creation of money, or credit, or debt (they are all one and the same, just different columns of the ledger) is the source of inflation, in the textbook sense of the word. This inflation is also reported as "growth" in the GDP.
Think about it....money was "created", so of course it is reported within GPD growth, in much the same way as your pay is reported on your paycheck.
That is why they are in line with one another (and growing fairly steadily, I might add, or was until fairly recently).

GDP can grow above and beyond the inflationary amount, but in order for that to happen more goods and services have to be 'created' than money/credit/debt is created.  Very little of that has happened. The US does not actually "make" much of anything anymore, after all.

The US Federal Reserve has created more money, via the issuance of more debt, since 2000, than was in the system total prior to that year.  Our debt load more than doubled in that time. As mentioned before, inflation is the result. A $1USD today buys only a fraction of what it did a few years ago.

Japan is a totally different case, one of a slow deflationary collapse over a nearly 20 year period that has been carefully controlled by the Japanese.

Some raw data....

Prior Fiscal
 Years            National Debt
09/30/2006?       $est 8.5T
09/30/2005        $7,932,709,661,723.50
09/30/2004        $7,379,052,696,330.32
09/30/2003        $6,783,231,062,743.62
09/30/2002        $6,228,235,965,597.16
09/28/2001        $5,807,463,412,200.06
09/29/2000        $5,674,178,209,886.86

OUCH!  This will be interesting to see how this spirals...

When we are rolling the wheelbarrels of money to the grocery store, the debt won't look that bad.
Then we'll be like Zimbabwe, where it takes longer to pay for the meal than it does to eat it.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2170099,00.html
I've got bankruptcy proof college debt, so at least it will be easier to pay it off with inflated money.  I'm all for it.
Ah yes, good news for you, your existing fixed-rate student loan debt will be monitized, right along with the US federal debt. One day, you'll come home from work and can pay it all off with a single paycheck.  Too bad you (all of us Americans, really) probably won't be able to afford much else.
In Japan they lend money @ 0% interest.  No one spends money, so American companies for years have siphoned Yen out of japan (basically for free) & turned it into USD.  Once they did that they could put it anywhere and make a pure profit.  This only happens in the largest investment banking houses (JP Morgan, Goldmach Sachs).
Sorry...Goldman
"One of the trademarks of perma-bears is to blame all the World's ills on a hyper-active Fed whose policy shifts endanger the state of our economies and the value of financial assets. But is this a fair indictment? Judging Fed policy by the growth rate of the US monetary base, we find that the US monetary base has been growing fairly steadily and in line with US GDP growth."

Ya that might make sense if the GDP numbers, make that any official economic numbers, the government reports were REAL.  The numbers are a joke so judging anything based on the economic numbers is a joke.  Here is a mainstream article pointing out the lies.  It is probably worse than this:

The numbers behind the lies
http://tinyurl.com/rqzje

It is worth reading the PDF report referenced in the article
:
http://tinyurl.com/meq6s

==AC

I've heard all the critcisms of CPI, govt numbers, etc.  But if people just thought of CPI as a measure for people who rent apartments, buy used cars, and have a government job which provides for all their health care needs, then CPI is an ok measure.  Rents were going down relative to incomes during the housing boom, and used cars were similarly in oversupply after 9/11 created 0% new car financing.  It's just that a lot of wall street types a while back thought CPI was measuring some sort of overall deflation!  
"
The "assets" are already an obligation to somebody.  If the Fed buys those assets, thereby giving money to a financial entity, that financial entity might then cover their eurodollar contracts -- no need for the liquidity if the related transaction has been transferred to the Fed, right?"

Does this answer your question?

"Because the Federal Reserve can be counted on to "monetize" (convert into money) virtually any amount of government debt, and because this process of expanding the money supply is the primary cause of inflation, it is tempting to jump to the conclusion that federal debt and inflation are but two aspects of the same phenomenon. This, however, is not necessarily true. It is quite possible to have either one without the other.

The banking cartel holds a monopoly in the manufacture of money. Consequently, money is created only when IOUs are "monetized" by the Fed or by commercial banks. When private individuals, corporations, or institutions purchase government bonds, they must use money they have previously earned and saved. In other words, no new money is created, because they are using funds that are already in existence. Therefore, the sale of government bonds to the banking system is inflationary, but when sold to the private sector, it is not. That is the primary reason the United States avoided massive inflation during the 1980s when the federal government was going into debt at a greater rate than ever before in its history. By keeping interest rates high, these bonds became attractive to private investors, including those in other countries. Very little new money was created, because most of the bonds were purchased with American dollars already in existence. This, of course, was a temporary fix at best.

Today, those bonds are continually maturing and are being replaced by still more bonds to include the original debt plus accumulated interest. Eventually this process must come to an end and, when it does, the Fed will have no choice but to literally buy back all the debt of the '80s -- that is, to replace all of the formerly invested private money with newly manufactured fiat money -- plus a great deal more to cover the interest. Then we will understand the meaning of inflation."

This may be the reason the Fed suspended the M3 because they are beginning the process to "buy back" all the private debt plus interest from the 80s and early 90's.  The ponzi scheme is coming to an end, there is no way out.  It was fun while it lasted...

==AC

There is also some evidence that over the last few years, the Treasury department (or the Fed) has been buying up it's own unsold bonds, via Carribean intermediaries, in an attempt to prop up the system.
Is there anywhere I can find this?
Prudentbear,Fiendbear and Financialsense usually cover this topic (on and off).
Financial sense had the best article and it was dated a year ago almost exactly.  It's funny that within the year from that article the FED has stopped publishing M3 stats, but there is a clear indication that this is spiraling out of control.

The FED is quoted as saying they will take unconvential means to maintain the dollar.  It pointed out that our trade deficit was like 55B in APR 05, yet Net Foreign Investment was only 45B.  So who are we getting the other 10B from?  I say we're printing money, though not with any presses, unless it's the press of a button.

In other words, when the bubble bursts, it'll explode like an asteroid hit. The national debt is the mother of all weapons of mass destruction. And BCR is determined to detonate it.
"Wait since when does the Fed borrow from commercial banks?  I thought the Fed was the lender of last resort.  How does it even go about "borrowing" from a commercial bank?"

Did you ever here of The Bank for International Settlements?

A banker's bank, the BIS does no direct business with individuals, governments, or corporate entities. Instead, it deals solely with member nations' central banks (most of which are privately owned). There are 55 of them at present, and the list includes every central bank of consequence in the world.

All members are owners and have voting privileges, in proportion to the number of shares they have. (Private citizen ownership was originally allowed, and comprised about 14% of shares outstanding, but in 2001 all of those were bought out by the central banks.) We were unable to pin down the exact present share structure, but it can be assumed that the founding members have the most clout.  

The founders were the central banks of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.K., all of which got an identical number of shares. The U.S. Federal Reserve was not an original shareholder; however, three American banks (J. P. Morgan, First Bank of New York, First Bank of Chicago) each got the same number, giving the U.S. three times the voting power from the outset.

Management's inner circle is of course the Board of Directors. There are six ex officio (i.e., permanent) members, the central bank governors of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and the U.K., plus the chairman of the Fed. These six appoint six others of their own nationality, and then there can be up to nine more elected members (there are five at the moment, representing Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland). Ben Bernanke has thus just replaced Alan Greenspan as the U.S.'s ex officio rep, and his appointed American sidekick is New York Bank President Timothy Geithner.

So, what does the BIS do these days? According to the bank's website, "BIS . . . fosters international monetary and financial cooperation and serves as a bank for central banks . . . by acting as: a forum for discussion and decision-making among central banks and within the international financial and supervisory community; a centre for economic and monetary research; a prime counterparty for central banks in their financial transactions; and agent or trustee in connection with international financial operations."
http://tinyurl.com/epa8d

==AC

It is worth reading, when you have the time.
Knowledge comes from understanding.
It seems simple enough to me that the Japanese and Chinese have recycled a lot of the money that they've made into Treasuries.  The fact that the Fed has a variety of complex ways to create money isn't surprising to me.  We've received cheap "vendor financing" -- why blame the Fed for this?  

We won't/can't pay the foreigners back at fair value.  So what if the Chinese cancelled our debt in exchange for us relaxing our policy on the defense of Taiwan?  And the Japanese cancelled our debt in exchange for grain export guarantees after peak oil?  Or a bunch of nukes for their new army?  Or both of them on some other political deal?  We can't pay them back, and as Bob Dole would say, "You know it, I know it, they know it, we all know it.".

Ok and when the rest of the world knows it...what is the incentive to hold it?
Incentive to hold it?  I don't know!  I'm trying to play a little devil's advocate in here -- and as usual getting shot down.  I'm long energy, commodities, and effectively short the dollar in my long term investments, and it makes me nervous when I start seeing too many people agree on what "must" happen.  So I'm constantly on the look out for that great new energy technology that everyone will believe is the savior, or the political deal that will save the dollar, or whatever.  I constantly try to find things that disagree with my beliefs.
It's really not that many people though.  I would short all entertainment equities.  I would think we cut back their first.
My preference is to figure out how much money I'm willing to lose, and buy puts.  Shorting can be reasonably dangerous without dicipline.  Another approach is to sell call spreads and collect premiums towards expiration, but options have been too cheap recently for this.

Not that many people?  I'm trying to believe you.  I guess it should be obvious to me that not that many agree on this, given the DJIA runup (until recently).

The train has left the station...i've been telling a few different people to dump their equity holdings in their 401K's and one listened.  My mom didn't and she called me a couple days ago to let me tell her I told you so.  In less than a week the DOW dropped over 400 pts since.  Not that it's the ONLY index.
From my perspective the elite ruling classes in all the major economies, the "functioning Core" of globalization,

http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/images/pentagons_new_map.jpg

are all working together towards a common goal.  Through central banking they have gained control of governments and are in the process of redistributing the wealth around the globe.  When this process is completed the will pull the plug on the current finacial paradigm and bring about a high-tech global feudalism under the guise of a New World Order.  If I was at the top of the pyramid it is what I would do. We must die so they may live.

==AC

Dogs of war and men of hate

With no cause, we don't discriminate

Discovery is to be disowned

Our currency is flesh and bone

Hell opened up and put on sale

Gather round and haggle

For hard cash, we will lie and deceive

Even our masters don't know the webs we weave

On world, it's a battleground

One world and they smash it down

One world...one world

Invisible transfers, long distance calls

Hollow laughter in marble halls

Steps have been taken, a silent uproar

Has unleashed, the dogs of war

You can't stop what has begun

Signed, sealed, they deliver oblivion

We all have a dark side, to say the least

And dealing in death is the nature of the beast

On world, it's a battleground

One world and they smash it down

One world...one world

The Dogs of War don't negotiate

The Dogs of War won't capitulate

They will take and you will give

And you must die so that they may live

You can knock at any door

But wherever you go, you know they've been there before

Well winners can lose and things can get strained

But whatever you change, you know the dogs remain

On world, it's a battleground

One world and we're going to smash it down

One world...one world
~Pink Floyd