AARP advocates on national policy issues.
AARP has demonstrated its influence as an instrumental supporter and beneficiary of Obamacare.
Surprisingly absent from AARP’s current policy advocacy is any mention of the Federal Reserve’s intentional devaluation of the savings their members rely upon. Seniors quite sensibly put their savings into US Treasury securities or Federally guaranteed bank Certificates of Deposit to realize a return while minimizing risk of loss.
The Consumer Price index increased by 3% in 2011. Within that total food increased 4.7% and gasoline increased 9.9%.
Currently, one year US Treasury Bills are yielding less then one quarter of one percent and one year bank CDs are yielding about one percent, putting seniors in a giant hole.
In a March 5, 2012 article in the Wall Street Journal Andy Laperriere writes, “During the past three years, the Federal Reserve has tripled the size of its balance sheet—in effect printing $2 trillion—something it had never done in its nearly 100-year history. The Fed has lowered short-term interest rates to zero and signaled that it will keep them at that level for years. Inflation-adjusted short-term rates, or real rates, have been in the minus 2% range during the past couple of years for the first time since the 1970s.”
One would think the demonstrated errosion of buying power caused by Federal Reserve policies devaluing the dollar and fixing interest rates would prompt the AARP to speak up in protest on behalf of their members.
A strange silence indeed.