It's worse than that. I didn't post it here, but Ellen Brown did a piece on how JPmorgan an others have been propping up the national debt using interest rate sways in a scam that would make Henry Gandorf proud.

That is one obvious answer, but financial analysts Jim Willie and Rob Kirby think it may be something far larger, deeper, and more ominous.  They contend that the $3 billion-plus losses in London hedging transactions that were the subject of the hearing can be traced, not to European sovereign debt (as alleged), but to the record-low interest rates maintained on U.S. government bonds.

The national debt is growing at $1.5 trillion per year.  Ultra-low interest rates MUST be maintained to prevent the debt from overwhelming the government budget.  Near-zero rates also need to be maintained because even a moderate rise would cause multi-trillion dollar derivative losses for the banks, and would remove the banks’ chief income stream, the arbitrage afforded by borrowing at 0% and investing at higher rates.

The low rates are maintained by interest rate swaps, called by Willie a “derivative tool which controls the bond market in a devious artificial manner.”  How they control it is complicated, and is explored in detail in the Willie piece here and Kirby piece here.

Kirby contends that the only organization large enough to act as counterparty to some of these trades is the U.S. Treasury itself.  He suspects the Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund, a covert entity without oversight and accountable to no one. Kirby also notes that if publicly-traded companies (including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley) are deemed to be integral to U.S. national security (meaning protecting the integrity of the dollar), they can legally be excused from reporting their true financial condition.  They are allowed to keep two sets of books.

Consider that now.