I don't know if you've ever done a business deal in your life but this isn't evil. In fact it's common sense and done by people everyday. If you borrow money, you lend it out on higher interest to someone else and make a profit. Otherwise no one would lend money. Derp? The actual evil in the system is that investment banks and commercial banks can intermingle in each other's markets through 3rd parties. IE AIG dealing in subprime loans with Morgan Stanley on one end and Chase on the other (simplified example obviously). The true evil is exposing other banks with everyday's people money to risk that they themselves don't have a say in. There are other wicked things that can happen but interest free loans aren't even the problem unless runaway inflation is on the horizon.
You really, really have no clue how the economy works. No government - I repeat - NO GOVERNMENT in the world wants their currency devalued in a fractional reserve system. It is one of the most important things to a nation's well being. That's one of the chief reasons the Federal Reserve exists. We accept that inflation is going to happen but they aren't sitting back worried about what the voters are going to think - they have a much bigger problem known as hyperinflation to worry about. Especially since the Federal Reserve Board isn't affected by voters. I think you keep forgetting it is a private agency.
I thought I explained it quite well. You seem to think that banks(commercial or investment?) are "devaluing" everyone's savings for their own benefit which can't possibly work. If interest rates are low and savings aren't generating money then the commercial banks won't have enough capital to lend to each other and their own customers. IE what I told you at the beginning of this post on how lenders make money - they would actually be fighting against their own way of staying in business. Investment banks on the other hand could benefit from lower interest rates in other ways, but they don't set the reserve rate anyway - they follow what the Federal Reserve does. There are some bad things that happen because of how the Federal Reserve and Big Investment Banks and auditors intermingle personnel over the years but "devaluing savings for their own benefit" is one of the dumbest things you could pull out of your ass.
Sigh. Sure. I have an idea for you - go buy X amount of troy ounces of gold right now for $1,000. Then go try and buy gallons of oil with it. See how stupid the idea is when you go trying to settle an oil futures contract with gold bars while everyone else is dealing with actual currencies. The first thing you'll be worried about is the loss on exchange rate. You don't just say "yea but I could turn gold into dollars" because then you wouldn't have ever needed the gold in the first place. Derp.
It's amazing how you can speak so confidently and be so wrong. 2009 was a low point for the oil industry and 2014 just shattered that. You have to be living under a rock to not notice gas is currently at a low point and companies are cutting investments and production. Interest rates aren't even in the ballpark of why this happens.
Yes and no. Low interests were indirectly part of the reason the subprime mortgage market based on derivatives crashed the global economy. But that's because people were borrowing money at ridiculous levels (as usual) and banks weren't hedging their bets correctly. When these people, from all classes of the economy, failed to pay off their loans shyt hit the fan in an exponential way. It doesn't actually matter whether people have good investments or not. Since the dawn of basic banking people have jumped in with bad sense and chased after whatever opportunities presented itself. The Feds' interest rate policy isn't the problem there. Thankfully "just printing money" isn't the way that all financial regulators are fighting the problem. To avoid a credit crisis the real problem is and always will be what happens when investment banks and their industry contemporaries intermingle with the everyday person's money through financial instruments they actually have direct control over.
Yeah the government and federal reserve isn't a business though is it? That's a stupid comparison. The question is why elites are using the government, thats supposed to be populist and for the people, to profit off of ordinary people. The federal reserve is an extension of the government because the government birthed the fed, saying voters should have no control over an agency that has power over the treasury, when the constitution clearly gives the powers of the treasury to congress, doesn't make sense.
Its funny how confident in your arguments you are when they all rest on the idiotic assumption that most modern governments, the US especially, represent(s) the will of the people or the livelihood of the nation, they usually don't today, they represent special interests. (welcome to polisci 101)
Governments are just tools that corrupt people like to use for their own benefit, they just sell off the ostensible "were devaluing your savings because we love you" to chumps like you who have their pride invested in a certain economic theory.
The federal reserve board was once filled with current CEO's and bankers who lobbied the government for this system.
Savings are generating money though, the money just buys less, that's the entire point. Its only the mega-banks that get the virtually printed money. However everyone's savings are inflated no matter how small your bank is.
The reason you buy gold and turn it into dollars is because you buy low and sell high.
durr what the point of buying gold with dollars and selling it for dollars?
because you get more dollars than you otherwise woulda had.
yeah interest rates don't have much to do with recent gas prices, but again, if you cant see that you could buy substantially more gas with gold during 2000-2009, (had you turned cash into gold, then back into cash to buy gas) this demonstrates how big of an issue inflation was and is.
It does matter if you have good investments when the government encourages investments with artificially low interest rates and then holds taxpayers responsible for bailouts. Its funny you assume the US is or isn't a free market depending on if it helps your argument or not.