Who Is Lying: The Federal Reserve Or... The Federal Reserve?

[theo]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/who-lying ... talin-lost

Excellent post about how we got here.

Excerpt:

Why is March 3, 1951 such an important date? Because, more than anything, the confluence of events that led to the "Accord" signed on this day have extensive parallels to our current situation, as the attached paper by the Federal Reserve of Richmond shows in exquisite detail, yet 100% in reverse.

In a nutshell what happened in the late 1940s and early 1950s was that in the aftermath of WWII, and the outbreak of the Korean war, America found itself in a very odd situation... one never really encountered until today. The country had soaring inflation - as in real inflation, not just core inflation measured by hedonic adjustments and excluding all those thing that actually do go up in price. More importantly, it had the 1950's version of ZIRP - only then it was called a peg, in this case of 0.375%, and subsequently 0.125% on short end Treasurys, and 2.5% on long-dated paper. In other words, the monetary situation in 1951 was one where both the short and long end of the curve were artificially boosted (think ZIRP and Twist), just so holders of Treasury paper (at that time only insurance companies as banks were not allowed to invest in TSYs) did not experience losses and get further "demoralized" in addition to the war that Truman was currently waging.