1. GLOBAL ECONOMIC DYNAMICS AND FORECASTS by Richard W. Rahn FREE MARKET ROAD SHOW Stockholm Copenhagen Amsterdam Warsaw 2015

12. The Federal Reserve thinks a bigger Fed is the ticket, but it has had to lower its growth expectations repeatedly. The U.S. is still running blindly along this path. To finance its massive bond holdings, the Fed paid the banking system $6.9 billion in 2014. It plans to double and triple those unprecedented payments as soon as it raises interest rates, possibly later in 2015. This will add directly to the fiscal deficit and the national debt, with nary a nod to congressional oversight, checks and balances or actual economic growth. Japan also went all-in on bad policies, coached heavily by the U.S. and the IMF. In 2014 Japan raised its value-added tax in order to keep spending and ran up its national debt to 250% of GDP. The Bank of Japan is buying an incredible 6 trillion yen ($50 billion) in bonds every month. GDP has plummeted from $5.8 trillion in 2012 to $4.5 trillion in 2014, with per capita income down by the same percentage.IMF