Posted on 05/17/2016 6:09:38 AM PDT by expat_panama
The Federal Reserve is, for all practical purposes, a political institution already.
When it keeps interest rates at near ZERO for 8 years, and monetizes $trillions of US Government debt - it no longer cares about the integrity of the money supply, it is in the business of politics.
Now Clinton will simply take it the final step - formalize the complete socialization and total political take over of the most important commodity there is - money.
There is always a “free market” but our currency won’t even be close to it, and it will surprise and hurt in many ways. We are on the path to Venezuela status.
These people are idiots. They have their house burning down and want to vote that half the firefighters should be female before any firefighting can take place.
Ahh, the ‘Cure-All’, DIVERSITY.........................
I fully expect Obozo to pull something in January like having the Fed suddenly raise interest rates by a huge amount or some such shenanigans to poison the economy completely if Trump wins.
The Federal Reserve System is much larger and more complicated than it should be.
The system of a Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., and 12 (regional) Banks was devised as a compromise between having a central bank versus a decentralized banking system; and, also to deal with “housekeeping operations” such as clearing checks.
The fact is, the system has evolved into a central bank, and the housekeeping operations should be spun off to the private sector. There actually is no need for the (regional) banks.
Now, as to the malarky that the Fed is dominated by white males: Women have made less inroad into banking and finance than into corporate management in general. Management involves a broad range of skills, including many in which the average woman has an advantage relative to the average man (e.g., interpersonal relations). Banking and finance emphasizes the skills (abstract reasoning) in which the average man has an advantage relative to the average woman.
It is, of course, politically incorrect to recognize that we - and practically all other advanced animals - are dimorphic (specialized by sex). The other party is into denying such basic realities. Hence, the other party will eventually come to see sex differences in everything as due to prejudice, and deny the obvious fact of dimorphism.
As to race (or, ethnicity), banking and finance has no necessary connection to race. Other things equal, people of the several races should percolate up to all levels in the industry. But, it should not be surprising that individuals who overwhelmingly vote Democratic are going to have a hard time succeeding in the world of private enterprise and especially those parts of private enterprise that rely on contract and the rule of law.
I couldn’t agree more. Lower taxes will both increase disposable income and incentivize economic activity. Of course we also need to cut down on the regulatory madness that weighs heavily on business.
We need to restore a normal range for GDP growth motivate production in this country once again. And we can start making a dent in the debt by shrinking the excessive growth of government.
I have thought about the same thing except that I would call it economic sabotage.
Agree. Congress is so busy raising money for reelection, they follow the Pelosi Law of passing the legislation without reading it. As a result, regulatory agencies (e.g., EPA) are passing laws that are detrimental to this economic system. If these clowns want to walk across the street to their national headquarters and spend the entire day fund raising, maybe we need a law that says they must stay in their office for 8 hours a day and actually do some work for us for a change. (The law says they cannot use their office for fund raising. Yeah...right? And I have a nice pig in a poke for sale...)
They had better for all our sake. Especially theirs...
I am no fan of central banking, think it is inherently corrupt and has corrupted our society. However the downside of failure is to devastating to comptemplate.
“I think they can all keep this game of three card monte going for a LOOOOOOOOONG time.”
>> There actually is no need for the (regional) banks <<
I disagree. I think the votes on the FOMC that are allocated to the regional presidents are a factor that keeps the Fed from becoming 100% dominated by an inside-the-Beltway DC mentality.
Now to be sure, the regional structure is an awkward mechanism, and I have no doubt that it can be streamlined and improved. But on the other hand, I submit that the overall goal of insulating monetary policy from 100% centralized political control justifies keeping the “baby” in spite of some inevitably dirty bathwater.
Another problem is that they spend a lot of time in recess, which gives them even more time for fund raising. On top of that, congress almost never works a full week.
Its not hard to see why they never want to leave.
How do you know they're holding them down?
What would/should they be? How do you know?
That’s the whole reason for the Fed’s quantitative easing; injecting trillions of dollars into the economy and intentionally lowering interest rates in hopes of stimulating the economy. Read up on QE and you’ll understand.
Now the national debt is so massive that allowing interest rates to rise to normal levels will increase the debt service cost to the government (i.e., it will cost a lot more to pay the interest on the debt and it will compete with funding needs in other areas of the budget).
The Fed is between a rock and a hard place with few arrows left in its quiver.
They ended QE in October 2014.
What would/should rates be?
Cue up Captain Obvious!
Preferably somewhere in the general range of historical norms, and through a gradual process which may take a while depending on the underlying strength of the economy.
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