Federal Reserve News

STAFF REPORT FOR THE COMMITTEE ON BANKING, CURRENCY AND HOUSING
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
94th Congress. Second Session
August 1976

I highly recommend this book for whoever tackles a chapter on the Great Depression: Thomas E. Hall’s “The Great Depression: an international disaster of perverse economic policies.” Hall is a Friedman monetarist, pointing out many times the folly of Federal Reserve policies prior to 1935. There are hints that the banking industry started realizing what real power it had in the Fed’s powers, with changes to the charter during the Depression.

November 12 former chairman of the Fed Reserve Alan Greenspan in an interview aired on PBS' News Hour was asked by Jim Lehrer what should be the proper relationship between a chairman of the Fed and The President of the United States . In a shockingly honest tone Greenspan replies,

I found this article and thought it was quite interesting.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Panic-of-1907

The closing paragraph reads:

I am selfish. I am proud of that. I deserve to have the Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness that the Declaration of Independence talked about. However, every day that passes seems to take me farther from those values. I and my wife worked hard to get to what looked like a doable retirement, a time to enjoy life, liberty and whatever happiness my pursuit got me, only to see it all about to blow up, to implode. The money we saved is shrinking. It is being inflated right now, through expansion of the money supply by more than 14% per year.

"Crony capitalism = fascism....fascism is capitalism in decay" - Vladimir Lenin

The structure and ownership of the Federal Reserve System (FRS), to paraphrase Winston Churchill, I cannot fully explain the FRS. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is the bankers' legalized plunder.

Goods as Money

Since I launched this project last month, I've been acquiring books on the subject via the local library and Amazon.com, as well as reviewing books in my own collection on the subject of money and banking. It's been an emotionally traumatic journey in some ways as I work my way through the books. On the one hand, it's very depressing to realize just how serious the Fed problem is and how misunderstood it is even by many who write about it. For instance, I found one particularly depressing comment by Martin Mayer in his book, The Fed. He wrote:

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Most people think of the Federal Reserve as a government agency. This is supported by several bits of evidence, including the Fed website having the ".gov" suffix, the close cooperation we note in news stories between the Fed and the U.S. Treasury, etc.

On the other hand, I have been told that the national banks who are members of the Federal Reserve System are the owners of the Federal Reserve. The relationship is obvious, made visible by the absence of people from firms outside the Fed member banks among the leaders, the governors.