Federal Reserve: We are the one percent!
What do you think: is the Fed part of the problem or part of the solution? (Hat tip, Lee.)
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What do you think: is the Fed part of the problem or part of the solution? (Hat tip, Lee.)
Comments are closed.
I ain’t a goldbug (gold standard, same shit with other name or conspiracy theorist), but I think central banks and banking system as its structured right now are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Unless we can’t implement a system which isn’t centred around debt/credit-money and driven by forces of inflation-deflation (and constant compounded ‘growth’) so violently, the system will fail and fall in chaos and anarchy at some point.
But the solution may come ‘naturally’, just the same way banking and money cycle evolved through different crisis during centuries (albeit slowly, as we have seen the fundamentals of the system still are very similar).
Both.
Capture by the industry it is intended to supervise makes it part of the problem.
The inherent power of fiat money to mobilize the real resources of the real economy denominated in it make it part of the solution.
It’s really just a question of who’s problems you are trying to solve with it: like all tools it’s morally neutral, it is what people do with it that gives it moral meaning.
The crisis in Europe shows us what a huge hit on the economy the lack of an efficient central bank is though.
So if you think the Fed is inadequate then we want a stronger and more democratic central banking system.
The issue is really the change in the Central banks. The US in particular has been run since the 70s for the benefit of the banks, yet for sixty odd years before that it worked just as it should have. It is the change in culture in them that is the problem, just as they will not act within the Eurozone they acted malevolently in the US. So the image represents a fair description of the Fed now, it was not always that bad.
Change in culture isn’t the problem. Until the 1970’s, the US was on a goldish-looking standard. That did install discipline on the Fed – from other countries. Same way that discipline has always been imposed on money — by the consumer of that money not the producer.
Once everyone in the world is on a fiat system – since the early 1970’s, there can be no discipline. By definition. That’s what fiat means. Now occasionally things have been a bit more sober than at other times but that’s more a matter of good luck/circumstance rather than systemic strenght.
If by “discipline” you mean the blatantly creditor-centric, quasi-gold austerity policies in Europe, which are not only deadly in the most literal sense but also contractionary to all member states, then you must be out of your mind …
The above anti-Fed poster is thoroughly childish, as is much of the opposition to the Fed in the US. The poster blames everything on debt and inflation since 1913 – allegedly all the fault of the Fed. Well debt and inflation in the US haven’t been much different over that period in other developed countries. And there is no movement of any significance in those other countries to get rid of their central banks.
The main thing wrong with the Fed is undue influence that private banks have over the Fed.