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  Date / Time: 11/9/2008 4:11 PM UTC

  HERE IS WHAT THE FEDS DOESN'T TELL YOU THEY BORROW AT 0 PERCENT AND CHARGE US UP TO 21 PERCENT
  

  NOTE: ONLY U.S. CONGRESS IS SUPPOSED TO "LAWFULLY" BE PRINTING CURRENCY FOR THE
  U.S.
   
  Not Wal-Mart, Not the Roman Catholic Church, Not Jerry Springer, Not Homeland
  Security, and definately not the Privately-Owned Federal Reserve Bank.
   
  U.S. Citizens will be eating their DOG and CAT for Christmas (and We don't even
  want to know what the 14th Amendment "Black" Ones will be doing).
   
  Somebody is getting paid (and laid) under the table.
  * * * End of Note * * *
   
  A Rate of Zero Percent From the Fed? Some Analysts Say It Could Be Coming
  by Edmund L. Andrews
  Thursday, October 30, 2008
   
  provided by
  The New York Times
   
  Zero percent interest rates! It sounds like free money, or maybe a promotional
  deal from General Motors to get people to buy Hummers. Are zero rates coming to
  the Federal Reserve?
  As it happens, the Fed is surprisingly close to that point already. On
  Wednesday, the central bank lowered its target for the federal funds rate — the
  rate that banks charge each other on overnight loans — to 1 percent from 1.5
  percent.
  But in practice, the actual federal funds rate fluctuates slightly around its
  target as the Fed carries out its open-market operations in the money markets.
  And because banks and financial institutions have been so frightened about
  lending in the last month, the actual Fed funds rate has been below 1 percent
  for the last two weeks. On Tuesday, it averaged only 0.67 percent.
  A growing number of analysts now predict that the economy is so weak that the
  Fed will have to reduce its official target to zero if it wants to jumpstart the
  stalled economy.
  Japan’s central bank reduced its benchmark interest rate to zero for five years,
  from 2001 to 2006. It did so mainly to combat a particularly persistent case of
  deflation, a broad-based decline in consumer prices, and to revive economic
  growth.
  Some analysts see signs that the United States faces a similar threat. Like
  Japan’s, American banks have become so decimated by losses in real estate that
  they are either unable or unwilling to resume normal lending. And as prices for
  oil and many other commodities have crashed during the past two weeks, some
  analysts now warn that deflation might be a threat here as well.
  With the Fed funds rate already down to 1 percent, and below one percent on many
  days, the central bank is fast approaching what economists call the “zero
  bound.”
  If the Fed funds rate did drop to zero, it would not mean free money for
  consumers or businesses. The zero rate would only apply to the reserves that
  banks are required to maintain and that they lend to one another. Customers
  would still have to pay some interest, but the rates could be extremely low for
  some business borrowers.
  The real question for policy makers is what to do if they reach a zero rate and
  still want to rev up the economy. Fed officials have studied the question
  closely, and the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, gave a famous speech on the
  issue when he was a Fed governor in 2002.
  In that speech, Mr. Bernanke described a series of options. The simplest option
  would be for the Fed to start buying Treasury securities with longer maturities.
  Buying up those longer-term securities would push up their prices and drive down
  longer-term interest rates. If that didn’t work, the Fed could start buying up
  privately-issued debt, like corporate bonds.
  In effect, the Federal Reserve would be printing more money and injecting it
  into the economy — a strategy of “quantitative easing,” in Fed jargon.
  Too much money would provoke a new round of inflation and perhaps yet another
  asset bubble. But Japanese inflation never took off. After five years, the Bank
  of Japan cautiously raised its benchmark rate to .5 percent. This week,
  published reports have suggested that it might cut the rate in half once again.
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