Posted on 10/30/2013 4:17:24 AM PDT by Kaslin
I've always avoided reporting on the Federal Reserve. I know it's more important than much of the stuff I cover, but it's so boring. How can I succeed on TV reporting on the Fed? Fed chairs even work at being dull.
Alan Greenspan said he tried to be obscure because he didn't want to spook markets. He called his obfuscation "Fedspeak." It's a far cry from the clarity of his language -- and principles -- when he was young and a disciple of libertarian Ayn Rand.
Outgoing Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his likely successor, Janet Yellen, are almost as boring.
But we should watch what they do. The Fed can destroy your savings and your future. The current crew of Fed bureaucrats has raised the Fed's balance sheet to a stunning 4 trillion dollars.
As Sen. Rand Paul's father, retired congressman Ron Paul, put it, "No secret cabal of government officials should have the authority to create money out of thin air."
He makes a good point. For three decades, Ron Paul was virtually alone among politicians in questioning the Fed. But now there are more.
Jim Bruce's documentary "Money for Nothing" is a great beginner's guide to the Fed. Bruce points out that the last two Fed chairmen, appointed by both Republicans and Democrats, have quietly increased central planning of our economy. Government now controls more of our economy than ever before. This is not a good thing.
The Fed was created to prevent bank runs. It would be a lender of last resort and create stability.
Yet 16 years after the Fed's creation, the Fed's low interest rates fueled the Roaring Twenties and led to the greatest stock market crash in history. Then the Fed's tight money worsened the Depression.
I'm told they learned from their mistakes. For four decades after that, the Fed usually kept increases in the size of the money supply gradual, steady and predictable. Except for one nasty period, inflation has been kept in check.
But now the Fed is charged with two sometimes clashing missions: preserving a stable currency and reducing unemployment.
There's great pressure for the Fed to time these decisions just right in order to avoid economic downturns and -- some argue -- to make current political officeholders look good. Increasingly, investors and Wall Street analysts obsess over what the Fed will do, instead of paying attention to inventions, productivity and real wealth-creation.
The Fed, created to shore up capitalism, has become an instrument of government economic management not so different from a socialist planning board: a tiny handful of powerful people attempt to fine-tune the entire economy. Its main mission has become continually goosing economic activity through infusions of new cash to maintain the illusion that good times will never falter.
The result isn't stability, but one economic bubble after another.
The Fed's manipulations fit well with President Obama's "stimulus spending" efforts. But neither seems to do the trick. This post-recession "recovery" is among the weakest ever. Japan's central bank tried the same stimulus for the past 15 years, since its economic crash. That didn't work either.
Instead of following Japan's example, we should learn from Canada. The Canadians had no central bank when the Great Depression began, just private banks issuing currency backed by gold. During the 1930s, not even one Canadian bank failed. Thousands failed in the U.S.
The massive bank bailouts a few years ago -- taxpayer money showered on the richest institutions that have ever existed -- are based on the assumption that those banks are "too big to fail."
It would be more accurate to say that those banks and the Federal Reserve that dominates them are too big and too powerful, so much so that they risk dragging us all down with them if they fail. No dozen people should be granted so much power.
Gotta bookmark this one....something I agree with Stoessel on.
It will never happen. Without the Fed, interest rates on the 10 year UST would be 10% right now. That would make the deficit unaffordable and the Government would have no choice but to spend less $$. Basically, it would be a second Great Depression, but maybe even greater because the bubble is a lot bigger.
The only thing saving our bacon is that every Western country is in the same boat. Basically, all countries of stature are industrialized with aging populations. Absent a huge technological breakthrough of some sort, there is nothing to stoke the growth rates of the past. We will just continue selling to each other and experience near zero or even declining growth (again, due to our aging population).
This also explains the push for immigration. Business interests are DESPERATE to import consumers to sell to. The fact that these newly minted consumers are Third Worlders who will change the culture and have to be put on the dole to buy stuff does not phase them. Why? Because the “taxpayer” will foot the bill, not them; they will just get the profit. The Elites think they will always be insulated from the consequences of their policies, no matter how destructive.
And, hey: they might be right.
IMHO the fed has two objectives, to destroy capitalism by debasing the currency. Make money for bank esters.
So you buy the lie that Government deficit spending is “saving” us? Why should I listen to you?
That is one interpretation. The other interpretation is that they should just let the crash happen and let the real recovery begin. At some point, someone will have to take a big haircut.
The other thing is that the price of “stability” is ever increasing State control of the Economy. In effect, a slouch toward a communist system, which is much, much worse.
Griffin is a whack-job conspiracist with no facts backing up his idiotic junk. His book is a long-ago debunked joke designed to suck in the gullible, while making Griffin money at the expense of the rubes.
One can object to the existence or structure or purpose or methods of the Fed, but one cannot effectively do so by concocting or promoting fantasies, believable only by the economically and historically illiterate.
Anyone who recommends the detestable Griffin and his ridiculous book do a disservice to conservative ideas and give ammunition to leftists who propound the generally false idea that conservatives are idiots. But, in your case, they’re right.
This whole Fed thing is just a goofball left wing smokescreen from the Obamanuts. The freerepublic is supposed to be a conservative forum but somehow we keep trying to blame the economy on anything but the those Marxists that got us here.
No it isn’t his country. Never was, never will be.
Fun to look through your “contributions” to FR. Not one positive insight, just criticisms of fellow FReepers, using variants if “idiot” throughout all the posts. It was amazing to see such a critical attitude displayed so outright and hurtfully with consistence. You must really have an “I’m OK-You’re Not OK” personality. It probably sustains you to out people down and be right all the time. Your post history defines you pretty well. I always thought only liberals were “always correct”... Maybe not...but then again maybe?
Actually, there is a very large amount of idiocy expressed here, most of which I ignore.
Every once in a while, when I see something particularly egregious such as your post about the huckster and scam-artist Griffin, it demands a response. Not for my benefit, but for the benefit of other readers, some of whom might mistakenly place some credence in what you reflexively burp up about a discredited whack-job conspiracist.
You don’t like my posts? Tough. Stop posting misleading trash and I won’t bother commenting.
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