Thursday, October 21, 2010

The Federal Reserve We Need

Professor Timothy Canova has recently published “The Federal Reserve We Need” in The American Prospect. Therein, Professor Canova details, painstakingly, the path that The Federal Reserve has taken from a governmental agency charged with safeguarding the American economy through sound monetary policy to an organization that has simply adopted the private banking interests and agenda as its own. Professor Canova highlights the groundbreaking work of former Fed Chair Marriner Eccles during and after the Great Depressions and juxtaposes the role that Eccles played in assisting the American economy with that of Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke and argues that Greenspan and Bernanke have co-opted the private interests of banks rather than safeguarding the best interests of the American economy. Read his excellent article here: The Federal Reserve We Need

Additionally, Reuters has just published an investigative report, entitled “Cozying Up to Big Investors at Club Fed,” that details the many conflicts of interest that continue to exist at the Federal Reserve, including what amounts to very nearly insider trading engaged in by members of the Federal Reserve and the clients that subscribe to a specific member’s consulting services. The full article can be read here: Club Fed
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousOctober 22, 2010 at 11:23 AM

    This is simply too much. Why would administrations appoint laissez faire champions as the chair of the Federal Reserve? Terrible.

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  2. Saulo P.November 16, 2010 at 11:26 AM

    There is no doubt that the Banks engaged in negligent lending practices thought the world. It is also may be true that members of the Federal Reserve have engaged in something that may be tantamount to insider trading. However, the accusation that the Fed sided solely with the interest of private banks is absurd and ridiculous. When the Fed “bailed out” the big banks they were essentially bailing out everyone in America. When Lehman brothers was allowed to fail, the stock market plunged, billions of dollars where lost and the failure impacted businesses worldwide. Individual bank accounts lost any amount in excess of 250,000 the amounts insured by the FDIC. What would have been the world wide impact if every big bank that the Fed bailed out would have failed?

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