Tag: Danielle DiMartino

Early morning, December 16, 2008, with a drizzle of freezing rain falling, few would even glance at the line of inconspicuous Mercury Marquis sedans pulling up to Washington, DC’s Fairmont Hotel. Emerging from the luxurious four-star establishment, their Foggy Bottom home eight times a year, are eleven little-known bureaucrats with their contingent of requisite subordinates.

There is no fanfare to mark the coming momentous decision they are to take on as they comfortably settle in for the ten-minute caravan to the neoclassical white marble edifice known as the Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building, located at Twentieth Street and Constitution Avenue NW.

Another half dozen of their peers had already left their homes in nearby Georgetown or some other Washington suburb and they too are making their way to the same address for the all-important 9 a.m. meeting.

Continue reading “How the Fed went from lender of last resort to destroyer of American wealth”