Happy 100, Fed!

[kalm]

Interesting history on the Fed and why it should perhaps be a public utility. The quotes from a century ago sound familiar...

Time for a New Populist Movement?

The Treasury’s website reports the amount of interest paid on the national debt each year, going back 26 years. At the end of 2013, the total for the previous 26 years came to about $9 trillion on a federal debt of $17.25 trillion. If the government had been borrowing from its own central bank interest-free during that period, the debt would have been reduced by more than half. And that was just the interest for 26 years. The federal debt has been accumulating ever since 1835, when Andrew Jackson paid it off and vetoed the Second U.S. Bank’s renewal; and all that time it has been accruing interest. If the government had been borrowing from its central bank all along, it might have had no federal debt at all today.

In 1977, Congress gave the Fed a dual mandate, not only to maintain the stability of the currency but to promote full employment.  The Fed got the mandate but not the tools, as discussed in my earlier article here.

It may be time for a new populist movement, one that demands that the power to issue money be returned to the government and the people it represents; and that the Federal Reserve be made a public utility, owned by the people and serving them. The firehose of cheap credit lavished on Wall Street needs to be re-directed to Main Street.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/23/ ... c-utility/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[expandspanos]

[Pwns]

Hope you and the other megabanks that comprise you don't have many more.

[expandspanos]

Hope you and the other megabanks that comprise you don't have many more.

What? You're not making sense.

[CitadelGrad]

If the Fed is ever audited, the American people will find out that it is privately owned and the majority owners are foreign, mostly European. That's where the majority of the QE reserves are being created. If that doesn't wake up the sheeple, nothing will.

[Grizalltheway]

Hope you and the other megabanks that comprise you don't have many more.

What? You're not making sense.

Oh the ironing.

[Chizzang]

If the Fed is ever audited, the American people will find out that it is privately owned and the majority owners are foreign, mostly European. That's where the majority of the QE reserves are being created. If that doesn't wake up the sheeple, nothing will.

That will never happen under our present system...
however I would hope that most Americans know (by now) that it's certainly not a "Federal" bank
and that after its first full year in operation (1914) the endgame was obvious

[GannonFan]

Interesting history on the Fed and why it should perhaps be a public utility. The quotes from a century ago sound familiar...

Time for a New Populist Movement?

The Treasury’s website reports the amount of interest paid on the national debt each year, going back 26 years. At the end of 2013, the total for the previous 26 years came to about $9 trillion on a federal debt of $17.25 trillion. If the government had been borrowing from its own central bank interest-free during that period, the debt would have been reduced by more than half. And that was just the interest for 26 years. The federal debt has been accumulating ever since 1835, when Andrew Jackson paid it off and vetoed the Second U.S. Bank’s renewal; and all that time it has been accruing interest. If the government had been borrowing from its central bank all along, it might have had no federal debt at all today.

In 1977, Congress gave the Fed a dual mandate, not only to maintain the stability of the currency but to promote full employment.  The Fed got the mandate but not the tools, as discussed in my earlier article here.

It may be time for a new populist movement, one that demands that the power to issue money be returned to the government and the people it represents; and that the Federal Reserve be made a public utility, owned by the people and serving them. The firehose of cheap credit lavished on Wall Street needs to be re-directed to Main Street.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/23/ ... c-utility/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Wasn't the pre-2008 period one where Main Street got a fair amount of cheap credit? If recent history is to be believed, it would indicate that we should be very careful of doling out cheap credit to the masses. I'm not saying we shouldn't, but let's be realistic that there would be plenty of problems with that strategy that would need to be addressed.