On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 3:18 PM, Levi Pearson <[email protected]> wrote:
> No, the law does not allow shares to be sold to the public. There was > a provision that allowed it *at the time the Fed was created*, but > only *if* the regional banks did not meet their funding goals through > sale of shares to the banks as I described. They did meet their > funding goals, so no public shares. Do you have somewhere I could read more about this? My google-foo wasn't sufficient. The only thing I've read about it was from the original law. > By 'these people' I assume you mean the FOMC, because they're the ones > that control the open market operations of the Fed. When have you > ever seen 12 elected or appointed people work together that closely on > something that requires that kind of subtle manipulation? It's happened enough that sociologists have studied it and coined a term for it: oligarchy. These people weren't 7-11 cashiers in their previous position. Powerful and rich people like to keep their power and money. In a political system where you have to solicit $1 billion dollars to become the president, it's can't be too far fetched to assume some of that money comes with strings attached. It doesn't seem like a stretch to me to have financial savvy people conspire to make money. > And where are you getting the 'government gets a large kickback on those > profits' thing? Are you referring to the Fed returning the majority > of the interest it collects on Treasury securities to the Treasury? > This means that somewhere around 7% of the national debt is actually > interest-free. Not really a kick-back. > Congress passed a law that gives power to an organization that gave the government $90 billion dollars last year. Is it financially smart? Sure. Is it a kick-back? I think so. > So, what this comes down to-- do you trust the idea of having elected > officials appointing people to make decisions for the governance of > the Federal Reserve? Or do you think the people should have a more > direct say in what's happening via a more democratic process? I'm actually OK in general with the system. My biggest complaint is transparency. I may not be able to wade through the details if they were released, but there are professors of economics who would. Much like open-source software, it could lead to more eyes squashing bugs and preventing tampering. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
