by Erich Simon
The financial vultures are all around. Things took a sharp turn for the worse three years ago, when a wave of store-closings turned strip malls across America into eyesores. In just one year, 42,000 manufacturing businesses in the U.S. closed shop. But the recent announcement by the Fed that it would “buy” $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities every month was a defining moment. What can it hope to accomplish? Printing-press money no longer subsidizes anyone but fat cats – corporate VIPs who can flee in their Learjets to the Southern Hemisphere when troubles that have simmered for years finally reach a boil.