Via David Stockman’s Contra Corner
On Jan. 12, Congress is scheduled to vote on the “Audit the Fed” legislation (H.R. 24/S. 264), which, if passed, would bring to an end to the Federal Reserve’s unchecked—and even arguably unconstitutional—power in the financial markets and the economy.
We aren’t the first to be wary of the powers of central banks. Founding Father Thomas Jefferson viewed the powers of central banks as being contrary to the protections of the Constitution. As Jefferson wrote: “I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
In a similar vein, the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises also recognized that limiting government power in the realm of money was a matter of liberty, not merely economics. Mises explained that “the idea of sound money … was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights.”
How far we have come as a country that these words from Jefferson and Mises sound so foreign today. Perhaps we have all been blinded by the credit and equity bubbles that surround us. But what better wake-up call to rally support for legislation that would shine a bright light on the government institution that today has created these bubbles, subsidizes small subsets of the population (thus amplifying wealth inequality), and enables endless government debt?
The Fed was intended to be an apolitical body, a concession to placate the naysayers. But today, the Fed isn’t even shy about entering the political fray: witness Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s income inequality speech riddled with Democratic talking points during the 2014 elections.
The Fed is, indeed, a political, oligarchic force, and a key part of what looks and functions like a banking cartel. During the 2007-08 financial crisis, the Fed’s true nature was clear to anyone paying attention. As the Treasury began bailing out the investment banks from the consequences of their profligate risk-taking (and in some cases fraudulent schemes), the Fed moved in tandem, further purchasing the underwater assets of these institutions, as well as actually paying interest to the commercial banks (hemorrhaging from risky loans) for reserves they kept parked at the Fed.
To be sure, Fed officials came up with opaque jargon to describe such operations, but the stark reality is that the Fed was treating risky assets as good collateral, and in the fall of 2008 began literally paying banks to notmake loans to their customers.
Even today, the recent policy announcement has doubled the rate of this massive implicit taxpayer subsidy to the banks—what they call “interest on reserves.” In the textbook rate-hike case, the Fed sells off assets (or slows the rate of purchases) in order to reduce the supply of reserves. Then, the equilibrium price of borrowing reserves (i.e., fed funds rate) rises. In contrast, now and for the foreseeable future, as indicated by the Fed’s guidance statements, the Fed is raising rates by increasing interest on reserves.
As of Dec. 17, the Fed is paying 50 basis points on both required and excess reserves. So the Fed, itself, is increasing how much it will pay to “borrow” reserves from the commercial banks. Given the estimated $2.6 trillion in excess reserves, at 50 basis points that means the Fed will be paying commercial banks some $13 billion in annual income. Right now, the Fed is paying the same on required and excess reserves, though that in principle could differ.
As the Fed keeps raising interest rates through this same mechanism, the amount paid to commercial banks will only mushroom. You can forgive analysts for not discussing this; it was not even mentioned in the Fed’s Dec. 16 announcement.
As the Fed pays commercial bankers more in interest payments, there is dollar-for-dollar less for the Treasury; in other words, for a given level of federal expenditures, the deficit is that much higher. Therefore, the U.S. taxpayer is subsidizing commercial banks to not make loans to their customers—or rather bribing them to charge their customers higher interest rates on loans. And, the U.S. taxpayer is going deeper into debt to provide this bank subsidy.
This is but one aspect of the farce that is today’s Fed policy. In addition, we actually don’t know the full extent of or the precise recipients of the Fed’s asset purchases and bailouts as its balance sheet exploded from about $900 billion in August 2008 to almost $4.5 trillion today.
Now, the Fed has painted itself into a corner. It can’t sell off its bloated balance sheet for fear of crashing the mortgage-backed securities market—and, indirectly, real estate—and it can’t sell off its treasury holdings because that would push up treasury yields and increase the servicing cost of U.S. debt. This is partly the reason the Fed has chosen to raise rates by paying bankers more.
If treasury yields rise, then the market value of existing treasury securities goes down. The Fed currently holds about $2.5 trillion (all maturities) of treasuries. At the same time, the Fed’s capital is at most $67 billion or so. Given that the Fed is levered to the hilt, if treasury yields go up too much, Fed is bankrupt in an accounting sense.
Most dangerous of all, global credit and equity markets have been manipulated by central bank policies to levels that are unsustainable and highly crash-prone.
Clearly, the country needs to understand fully the extent of the Fed’s balance sheet: what it holds and from whom it was acquired, as well as allof the Fed’s other activities and conceivably even more dangerous shenanigans afoot.
We can’t really know what we don’t know until we look. We owe it to the “swindled futurity” of the next generation to take a long, hard look through a full and independent audit of the Fed.
What proposals do any of the Fed’s critics have to correct the problems with it that they claim?
Seriously, I don’t see anywhere near as much thought being put toward a workable solution than toward defining the problem, but without a viable solution I see no reason to waste time attacking it.
The more I think about it, the less sure I am that I can think of a solution that doesn’t involve a major catastrophe for the average man as the end result.
The Fed was created because universal suffrage and making profits are contradictory. Voters would simply vote away someone’s profits. So the only way to keep the masses happy AND to have profits was to steal from non-voters (the unborn) using debt instruments.
Anon, I’ve said the very same thing! I put it as, all the Rands do is describe the water to a drowning man! Does anyone understand how the Paul’s would dismantle the current financial structure and replace it without burning the place to the ground? I’ve never read a blow by blow plan on how that would work! It may be out there I’ve just never seen it. You would magically cut the budget by a Trillion a year of defect spending, withdrawal all our troops on foreign soil, after we’ve policed the world since WW2, and peace and prosperity would rush in to fill the vacuum, bullshit! The world would explode in one giant fireball of war and rioting. The System would have to be dismantled and reengineered over many years. Of course none of that is going to happen so we will continue as is until WW3 starts. My hope is Trump can buy us time.
Anonymous: There really is no cure for the Fed. Our whole system is based on ever-increasing debt. I think the next step is for the Fed to simply cancel all debt held by individuals (voters) and take control of all lenders. This frees up a lot of consumption and is a way to keep control of spending (and it is part of our evolution to a command economy).
Anon – of course it can’t be done without incredible amounts of pain. But avoiding the pain of dealing with reality is how we got in this mess. Ending the Fed is analogous to amputating a gangrenous limb…it will certainly hurt, will be crippling in the short term and it may still end in the patients death. Still, it is a wildly better strategy that ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away.
Rand and the rest of CONgress are doing a equally good job of nailing Murica’s coffin shut right along with the criminals down at the Fed. Pot calling kettle black.
DRUD, you are right but the computer is keeping me from giving you thumbs up.
Well…the Fed is a private corporation united around the world
to strip mine all participants in their system. Debt cancellation across the board,
and kick the Fed. out. The Fed. has made enough trillions off the USA…they
can get amnesty if they bug off.
Auditing the FED is a useless and futile approach to a problem that has already been defined.
Instruments of debt do not/cannot work over time. History is rife with examples of fiat currency failure.
The only way to stop the insanity, is for governments to abandon the current system, and go into a major depression. They don’t want that option. They have chosen to “kick the can down the road” option which leads to what? – a major depression!.
The second option is coming very fast, as the road is coming to an end. Consumer’s are tapped out, retail sales are stagnant, stocks are falling, etc etc.
So let the FED continue…… just saves us the bother of it’s ultimate eventuality.
Consider the consequences of cancelling all debt.
#1 There is no money left, that means YOUR bank and savings accounts go to zero. Any cash you have is worth about as much as Confederate dollars or the proverbial Continental.
#2 All individual investments become worthless or near worthless as the disappearance of the bond and money markets cuts their basic support out from under them (paid up RE and tradable real goods would still be yours and have value, maybe that would be a hedge for those that could afford to stock up on them)
#3 The probable Mad Max world #1 and #2 produce would end up with the death of the majority of those in the cities, which means the majority of the population.
Go on from there for yourselves, or propose something that would prevent this while replacing the all pervasive Fed that we now have.
I can’t come up with anything that could be done in the short amount of time (IMO) that we have available to do it. It took a century to get here, it will probably take at least that long to get out of it.
@Sensetti: Your hope in Trump is misplaced. Here’s a guy who calls Edward Snowden a traitor who should be hanged. That tells me Trump is quick to judge w/o reviewing the facts. And it doesn’t give other potential whistle blowers much “hope”.
‘Audit the Fed’ bill fails despite support from Paul, Sanders
By Greg Robb
Published: Jan 12, 2016 3:30 p.m. ET
Sen. Rand Paul’s measure falls short of 60 votes
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — A bill that would have allowed Congress to order reviews of Federal Reserve interest-rate policy decisions failed a procedural test in the Senate on Tuesday as supporters failed to come up with the 60 votes needed to cut off debate on the measures.
The measure to curb the powers of the Fed has been a central theme of the presidential campaign of Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky. The legislation would end a ban on the Government Accountability Office’s authority to audit the U.S. central bank’s monetary policy moves that has been in place since 1978. The Republican House has already approved the measure.
Read more: A look at what’s behind the ‘Audit the Fed’ battle
The bill was designed to “pull back the curtain and uncover the cloak of secrecy” at the Fed, Paul said on the Senate floor. He said there had not been a full accounting for the swelling of the Fed’s balance sheet — to $4.5 trillion from roughly $800 billion before the financial crisis.
Just 53 senators voted to halt debate on the bill Tuesday. Sixty or more votes for “cloture” would have paved the way for possible final passage of the bill.
Sarah Binder, a professor of political science at George Washington University, said the measure had not been expected to pass. The timing of the vote was a political favor from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to his fellow Kentucky senator, she said.
“It gives Sen. Paul an opportunity to bolster his anti-Fed credentials on the campaign trail, to attract a little attention pre-Iowa caucuses and help to define the differences between the parties on the Fed,” Binder said.
The bulk of the opposition to the measure came from Democrats.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, who is ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, said Congress should “keep its hands out of monetary policy.”
Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen called the bill “a grave mistake” and warned the measure could lead to higher market interest rates.
Republicans said the Fed’s bond-buying policies in the wake of the financial crisis showed the need for more Congressional oversight of the central bank.
“I think that the dangerous behavior the Fed has engaged in for years now means they have squandered the right to be independent,’ said Sen. Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, a supporter of the measure.
Toomey called the audit the Fed bill a “good beginning step” to reform the U.S. central bank.
The vote was not strictly along party lines.
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, voted for the measure.
You hear what the congressman from Ohio said….the congress should keep its hands out of monetary affairs….. I wonder how many of these people have ever taken the time to read the constitution?It’s hopeless.
Westcoaster you’ve went full fucking retard. Wanting a socialist to take over the country.
Full Definition of socialism
1
: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2
a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property
b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3
: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.
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