Federal Reserve Out Earns Goldman Sachs

By Michael Pennington © Copyright 2010 Pennco Coins

For some, 2010 was a banner year… Financial firms are expected to pay out an all-time high compensation of $144 billion. The Federal Reserve earned record profits of around $81 billion. Government spending is at an all-time record of about $6.85 million per minute. And the number of Medicare recipients hit a new record (50 million-plus).

By other measures, for regular people who need to keep working to pay bills and eat, 2010 was a disastrous year… A record number of people became so discouraged they stopped looking for work. The federal debt hit $14 trillion. Banks foreclosed on more homes than ever before (2.87 million). More homes were repossessed than ever before (more than 1 million). The average time needed to find a job hit an all-time record. The number of Americans on food stamps hit a new all-time record (43 million-plus), and…

The value of the U.S. dollar hit an all-time low in 2010.
Those records are just another way of saying Goldman Sachs and its friends get paid, the government gets paid… and you and me? Well… we’re the ones doing all the paying!

And again, I must reiterate for those of you looking for the No. 1 money-making strategy… the best way to make a fortune is to print it up. That’s what the Fed did. It printed maybe $1.5 trillion or so and bought a bunch of securities with it. It earned record profits from the yield.

Goldman only earned less than $6 billion in the first three quarters of 2010. Say it makes $8 billion or so for the whole year. That’s less than one-tenth of what the Fed made. It’s hard to stay ahead of a counterfeiter…

Or is it? Another all-time record was set last year: The price of gold hit $1,400 an ounce.