Is the Fed privately owned?

Balbus, this is off topic. Also, you aren't making much sense. There are no countries with privately owned central banks and i know of no free market proponents who propose a private central bank. Trying to extrapolate from a government controlled central bank to government control of any other aspect of the economy is meaningless.

Rat, I'm sure you're thrilled by the chance to go off topic so you can escape the fact that you are still running around in circles trying to answer a simple question - if monetary policy is decided by the BoG controlled FOMC, what is the relevance of privately owned RFRBs?

I'm not sure I should bother responding to your zmag article. It is typical for you, when your idiotic theories are being exposed, so start dumping links and demanding that all of them be responded to, although of course if anyone responds you will ignore them and dump more links.

Secondly, it is off topic, since it deals with the "fractional reserve banking" conspiracy theory, which it also gets wrong, and it says absolutely nothing about how private banks control the money supply. I guess you get your Fed conspiracy theories mixed up since you don't understand any of them. In fact, if you read it, it explicitly says that the FOMC is controlled by the BoG and controls the money supply. Of course your Lewis article completely contradicted you too, and you didn't care.

 

Wow... these Fed conspiracy theories are so off base I don't even know where to start, and I haven't even read the whole thread. If you want to believe "multinational corporations" (whatever that even means) are controlling the world, then fine. They arne't controlling me dude.

 

Rat

Are you saying that you reject the whole free market economic model, think it totally unworkable or are you saying that there is no free market at the moment, but there could be?

I mean you have just dodged answering the question on the control and purchase of US assets. Are you saying that key sections of the US economy should be under the control of the government or should they be privatised?

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And once again you seem unable to understand that the corporations ARE the government. The multinational corporations now have control over the government, which is being used to exert its will over the people. It is called fascism.

The question is how would you limit the power of capitalistic wealth?

 

Now there are right wing libertarian ideas on the subject of monetary management.

As far as I can tell many or most of these involve getting rid of the central bank all together and having such things as a free banking and commodity based systems, where there is no central bank and interest rate and money supply would be settled by the market and the value of a national currency would be linked to a commodity (like gold for example).

There are a number of right wing libertarian leaning websites (from Cato to Paul) that claim such things that things were so much better before the Fed was created and the gold standard was in place, and they envision a new commodity based system that wouldn’t involve a central bank.

But let us say hypothetically that someone wanted to bring in such a thing as a return to the gold standard but really didn’t have any decent arguments against the central bank system.

Well one way could be the old John Birch Society idea of smearing what you don’t like as being part of a conspiracy against the American people.

Like most smearing what is said doesn’t have to be true in fact you don’t have to believe it yourself, the point of the exercise is to try and spread the seeds of doubt and of course there are always those that fall for such things hook, line and sinker.

It is basically the cynical manipulation of the truth (or straight out lying) to achieve the result you want. It is the same kind of methods used by the Neo-cons to turn 9/11 into an invasion of a country in no way involved in the attack or the anti-communist Tonkin fabrication, or the Conservative’s fake Zinoviev letter.

Is the Fed privately owned?

It seems very unlikely, as pointed out in – ‘Who Owns and Controls the Federal Reserve?’ by Dr. Edward Flaherty, University of Charleston
http://www.usagold.com/federalreserve.html

But that isn’t the point the intention is about trying to undermine something that you would want destroyed or superseded.

Just the insinuation of corruption and foreign ownership is the goal and conspiracy theory is thought by some to be a wonderful way of making unfounded charges that can never be proved false, because lack of evidence is evidence to a conspiracy theory.

And anyway, anyone that disputes a conspiracy can always be accused of being actually a part of the conspiracy or ‘brainwashed’ by the conspiracy.

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This is what makes this thread so interesting.

You see Rat has always - up till now - basically supported libertarian ideas (and tried to trash any opposing ideas with conspiracy smears) and it must be said that he has on several occasions now seemingly supported the return to the gold standard.

But suddenly he seems to have taken another route.

In the ‘true’ free market envisioned by some right wing libertarians, banks would have no connection with government and there would be no government involvement in monetary management, which would be totally in the domain of the free market.

But startlingly Rat seems to be saying that he thinks the free market system is unworkable and that he wants the government to be in totally, like in hands on control of monetary management, policy and the banks (is that right Rat?).

Please Rat, I’d really like to hear more?



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The gold standard and a government owned central bank are completely separate issues. You are trying to describe a free market theory but you are making no sense.

 

Pepik

You were never this slow or insightful in the past.

Are you OK

I’m trying to point out that someone whose object is to smear something doesn't necessarily have to believe in the story they are using as a smear.

 

The thread's all yours now Balbus.

 

hey at least Wolfowitz is feeling the heat right now at the world bank.

 

A Gold Standard and a Central bank are not mutually exclusive.


I belive Nixon took us off the gold standard.

Follow The Yellow Brick Road !

 

Lets get this thread back on topic.

That was your promise, and you haven't lived up to it.

So Rat, all I had was one simple question which you couldn't answer. One simple thing that none of your links or quotes or cut and paste jobs addressed. Here it is again:

If monetary policy is decided by the FOMC, which is controlled by the Federal Government appointed BoG, what is the relevance of privately owned RFRBs?

 

A Central Bank can't be a private bank, and a Private Bank can't be a central bank. They are two diferent things.

I just dont see how the Federal Reserve Bank has failed us as citizens ?
Where is the complaint against The Fed? What's is based on ?
Whats gone wrong ?

 

Piney this is why I think that this has more to do with a whispering campaign of slurs the drip, drip approach of accusation in the hope some of it will stick.

The accusations don’t have to be true, ( notice how Rat is never actually able to substantiate most if any of his charges), the person saying them doesn’t even have to believe in them.

If you are against something and that animosity is dogmatic, rather than being based on anything rational and concrete, then the only way to attack it is with innuendo and supposition with the hope that the gullible will accept what is said without question.


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The Central Bank had a policy meeting today.
Interest rates will stay the same.

Its covered in detail on Bloomberg .com

Yes thats The Bloomberg running for President, Mike Bloomberg Mayor of New York.

http://bloomberg.com/news/economy/