More eyes don't always squash bugs. I seem to remember a problem with OpenSSL awhile ago where someone was initializing a pointer to 0 or something when it was supposed to be there as a random value. Ended up causing a major exploit and a huge mess. More eyes would cause political pressure to decide one way or the other.
On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 11:16 PM, Joshua Marsh <[email protected]>wrote: > 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. > */ > /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
