Libertarian ping! Click here to get added or here to be removed or post a message here!
(View past Libertarian pings here)
Posted on 07/25/2009 7:09:11 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
Transparency at the central bank is a serious question. It deserves a serious answer.
The Federal Reserve Board's independence is a bit like the judiciary's independence. Absolutely vital for the institution's proper functioning, it nevertheless depends on Congress and the president to respect decisions with which they disagree. In such cases, the best protection for either the Supreme Court or the Fed is to stay strictly within its legally prescribed authority and to act according to principled criteria: legal ones for the justices, technical economic ones for the central bank.
Which brings us to the proposed Federal Reserve Transparency Act, sponsored by anti-Fed crusader Ron Paul (R-Tex.) in the House and socialist Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) in the Senate. In the name of open government, it would subject the Fed's decisions to a full-blown audit by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Though the bill has attracted 276 co-sponsors in the House and 17 in the Senate, it is wrongheaded in the extreme.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The establishment feels...threatened.
I’m no big fan of Ron Paul, but for the whores, prostitutes and influence peddlers at the Wapo to slam anybody is quite dubious.
Ping
Apparently the Fed is a fourth branch of government that has zero oversight.
The overclass doesn’t want us to ask too many questions about the workings of this particular Potemkin village. Keep moving, sheeple!
When you can't answer where billions and perhaps trillions in assets are, you can really expect someone’s going to want to look at your books.
The problem with Wapo’s Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branch analogy is that these entities are created separately in the Constitution. Nowhere in the Constitution does it describe a Central Bank, with separate economic powers. Open the books!
While I can find the Constitutional authorization for an independent Federal Judiciary, I seem to be unable to locate the specific, enumerated power of Congress to create a Bank of any kind.
Can any of the WaPo brain trust point it out to me?
Thanks in advance,
L
Someone needs to tell the fools at WaPo, that the Fed was no created by the Constitution, there is no such think as separation , etc, etc. What fools!!
I respect the idea that the Fed ought to remain independent and free of political influence.
But the point is — they’re NOT NOW! They are in total collusion with the Treasury, every step of the way. Who is kidding who here? Without transparency, the Fed can be — and, I believe, IS — corrupt to the core.
It escapes me why they’re fighting the consept of making everything they do open and above board in every single detail. That seems to me to be simple common sense.
Some very powerful people are exercising influence over the (currently financially vulnerable) media to prevent a light from shining upon their (criminal) activities. The amount of money at stake is in the same territory as the federal deficit.
There are several layers to the defensive strategy, including a “hearts and minds” media (old and new) campaign which we are seeing now. The largest protective investment, however, has been the successful placement of hundreds of private financial beneficiaries of fed activities into positions of government power. Even if an investigation is launched, how many of those performing the audit are alumni with (obfuscated) retained holdings, or otherwise beneficiaries of the collection of firms who only stand to lose by any revelation of what is now hidden by shadows?
This cancer has been festering for almost a century. The fed needs to be abolished outright, and replaced with a dispassionate, deterministic algorithm with a strict inflation target of under 0.1% (growth of money supply only following growth of formal market demand for money as to account for genuine economic growth - and a gold standard is no panacea because it would be open to simple government subversion) having mathematical form, parameter values, code, and output publicly available and subject to modification only upon unanimous consent of both houses of Congress and the President.
The Fed publishes their balance sheet every week.
And you believe what the Fed publishes?
It’s mot a branch of government. It’s a private, for profit corporation.
You realize this realistically could mean an actual war on our soil. They will fight this to the end. So… We shall see if ‘diplomacy’ works and the masses back down, or will we stick with it until they have to show their cards?
This is becoming amazing…
Why wouldn’t I?
The unwillingness of the Fed to open its books indicates it has something to hide.
Or maybe the Post is holding out for $25,000 each from Ron Paul and hist cohorts to arrange a salon providing access to Fed staffers.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.