Mail bombs sent to CNN / Dems

[USMarine75]

To be fair, I'll apologize for that - I've seen a LOT of attacks on the Fed delivered from a place of total ignorance, so for me "The Fed was such a mistake" is roughly akin to "why do you play seven strings? They're only good for low tuned riffing, you shouldn't play 7 unless you've mastered six," or some of the other usual bullshit delivered at seven string players that, thankfully, seems to be going away. Anyway, my reaction was admittedly painting with a pretty broad brush, and to be fair you actually may have done some pretty serious study of monetary policy at some point in your life. This would make you the exception, not the norm... But it's wrong of me to not give you the benefit of the doubt until you've had the opportunity to explain yourself, so for that I do apologize for my tone.

https://www.healthfreedom.info/Federal_Reserve_Fraud.htm

 

[Drew]

https://www.healthfreedom.info/Federal_Reserve_Fraud.htm

I'll cut you.

 

[Jacksonluvr636]

To be fair, I'll apologize for that - I've seen a LOT of attacks on the Fed delivered from a place of total ignorance, so for me "The Fed was such a mistake" is roughly akin to "why do you play seven strings? They're only good for low tuned riffing, you shouldn't play 7 unless you've mastered six," or some of the other usual bullshit delivered at seven string players that, thankfully, seems to be going away. Anyway, my reaction was admittedly painting with a pretty broad brush, and to be fair you actually may have done some pretty serious study of monetary policy at some point in your life. This would make you the exception, not the norm... But it's wrong of me to not give you the benefit of the doubt until you've had the opportunity to explain yourself, so for that I do apologize for my tone.

Ok fair enough, and I am not looking to argue. I can get trigger for sure

But I did post some info previously the other day. From things I have read which I do believe to be factual. I am curious of what you think on those points. Maybe there is a reply here I will see after I keep reading comments.

 

[Drew]

Ok fair enough, and I am not looking to argue. I can get trigger for sure

But I did post some info previously the other day. From things I have read which I do believe to be factual. I am curious of what you think on those points. Maybe there is a reply here I will see after I keep reading comments.

About the Fed? If so, I completely missed it, and if it's in this thread I can't find it.

 

[Jacksonluvr636]

About the Fed? If so, I completely missed it, and if it's in this thread I can't find it.

My previous post that may have been missed. This was absolutely rushed as I browse while at work so I can't exactly write a professional essay:

"The FED couldn't stop the financial collapse or the great depression or inflation after their wars. In fact, it was their interference on banking to begin with that created any type of panic or reasoning for the FED. Edit: To my knowledge Financial Panics were the sole reason the FED was created yet the Government's restrictions on Notes and Branching could be argued to be the actual reason for these panics to have even exited. So I look at this as a complete setup from day one by Uncle Same to be in complete control and be allowed to manipulate money to pad their own pockets further. /edit

Other countries didn't have these problem I dont think?

We are definitely a first world country but I do not think other places that do not have the FED are too far behind or maybe even riding our tail with much less debt? IDK a lot of those later things are just thoughts.

Government puts hands into pot, things get messy, government claims there is a problem and takes complete control. It is kind of a rinse repeat kind of thing."

 

[USMarine75]

I've read several sources (including a GAO report) that say the US alone lost about $13T during the 2008 crisis and that eventually all of the collateral damage will end up costing round $22T. That's not something the Fed could have stopped once it was set in motion.

The Great Depression was a collapse of the "new" world economy that had become newly investment bank oriented. What largely started from the forced depression of the German economy (I think was top 3 previously) after WWI had a worldwide effect that, combined with this new investment economy that was careening precariously out of control, plowed quickly into what became the Great Depression. Again, how was the Fed supposed to stop a worldwide collapse?

Here's a good article about what was learned years later about the Feds actions in 2008:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/17/the-real-cost-of-the-2008-financial-crisis

 

[tedtan]

In terms of preventing a depression or recession, I'd say think of it as the shock absorbers on your car. They'll smooth out the ride when you're going over small bumps or holes, but they won't do much if you hit a large pothole. And both the Great Depression and the 2008 depression were more like giant sinkholes that opened up and swallowed the entire car. I other words, they were orders of magnitude greater than what a single country's central banking system could prevent.

I know that's a bad analogy, but hopefully it gets the point across.

 

[Drew]

My previous post that may have been missed. This was absolutely rushed as I browse while at work so I can't exactly write a professional essay:

"The FED couldn't stop the financial collapse or the great depression or inflation after their wars. In fact, it was their interference on banking to begin with that created any type of panic or reasoning for the FED. Edit: To my knowledge Financial Panics were the sole reason the FED was created yet the Government's restrictions on Notes and Branching could be argued to be the actual reason for these panics to have even exited. So I look at this as a complete setup from day one by Uncle Same to be in complete control and be allowed to manipulate money to pad their own pockets further. /edit

Other countries didn't have these problem I dont think?

We are definitely a first world country but I do not think other places that do not have the FED are too far behind or maybe even riding our tail with much less debt? IDK a lot of those later things are just thoughts.

Government puts hands into pot, things get messy, government claims there is a problem and takes complete control. It is kind of a rinse repeat kind of thing."

So, this is by necessity going to have to be a pretty quick gloss since that's a LOT to cover.

So, there may be one or two small exceptions out there I'm not aware of, but generally speaking every government in the world has a central bank, so no, the Federal Reserve isn't a uniquely American invention the rest of the world does without, or even all that unusual. In Europe, you actually generally see two levels of central banking - national banks (Bank of Italy, Bundesbank in Germany, Banque du France, etc), and then the European Central Bank, ECB, setting monetary policy for the entire EU, headed by Mario Draghi. While the Bundesbank has a fair amount of clout given Germany's history of fiscal prudence and their economic clout within the EU, the ECB is the closest European analogue to the Fed, and nearest in power - in terms of impact on the global economy, Chairman Powell and ECB head Draghi are loosely peers.

Also, I think you're confusing the Federal Reserve and the Treasury in a few points -- the Treasury (headed at present by Steven Mnuchin) is responsible for issuing and paying debt (in the form of Treasury bills), while the Federal Reserve is responsible for overseeing monetary policy and pursuing a dual mandate of full employment and stable prices). The Fed can set short term interest rates (the Fed Open Markets Committee sets the Fed Funds Rate, the overnight rate banks can borrow at, as well as the interest rate paid to banks on reserves at deposit at the bank, and by setting those rates has a lot of ability to control short-term interest rates in this country) and has the authority to engage directly in open market transactions, although it usually does not - the Fed's quantitative easing policies after the great recession, buying Treasury bonds and mortgages in the open market to increase the monetary supply and decrease the Treasury supply in the market to drive down interest rates and in doing so attempt to spur investment, is a notable exception). But, if you want to talk about the national debt, that's the Treasury, indirectly, and really it's Congress not balancing a budget and then asking the Treasury to cover the deficit by selling treasury bills. The Federal Reserve isn't really involved in that.

As far as the Great Recession, the most recent collapse... You can nit-pick over who's ultimately responsible on each step of the way, but the generally-accepted chain of events was after the Dot-Com crash in the late 90s, investors decided to get out of the stock market and instead pour money into "safe" assets like real estate. Real estate demand increased (pushing up asset prices), affordability became harder, and since it was a rising market and a "safe" asset class, mortgage originators began relaxing lending standards to compete for customers. This was pretty low-risk for them because the loans would then be sold, bought by Wall Street banks, and then repackaged into Collateralized Debt Obligations supported by pools of mortgages. They would then generally sell off the top traunches with top payment priority (which despite all the backlash actually generally performed in line with their high credit ratings), and then keep the lower-rated, higher yielding stuff on book, collecting the interest. This all worked well and good until lenders began to default (there's a number of reasons for this, but a common one was loans with an ultra-low interest rate "teaser" period that after a year or two would reset to a much higher market rate), which set off a chain reaction of falling housing prices (if two or three houses in a neighborhood go into forclosure, that tends to pull house prices down around them) driving other lenders underwater on their loands, encouraging further defaults, and as lower-traunche CDOs started to deteriorate, bank balance sheets began to get slammed, leading eventually to such high-profile failures as Lehman Brothers, at which point counterparty risk from over-the-counter derivative contracts suddenly became a MAJOR source of risk for "main street" banks like Bank of America with huge retail books of business (ironically enough, Wells Fargo has a long history of exceptionally conservative risk control, and they were almost completely unscathed during this period - I think they might have posted a modest quarterly loss for a single period, but didn't post a single annual loss. Their current scandals, which are stupid more than they are intentionally criminal, are that much more idiotic for it).

Anyway, it'll be a LONG time yet before we can fairly write the post-mortem on the Great Recession... but so far their response has, I'd say, been pretty decent. There was a lot of concern about runaway inflation when the Fed started QE (I'm in the camp that QE may actually have been disinflationary, in that the Fed's ability to set interest rate policy through direct action is modest compared to their ability to influence market expectation, and the fact they believed they could get away with engaging in several trillion dollars worth of bond purchases as a form of stimulus, and in doing so expand the monetary supply, implied they really weren't worried about inflation at all), but inflation has been remarkably low over the last 10 years, and only in recent months have we seen the Fed's preferred measure, core PCE, hit their informal 2% target (and, I'd be very surprised if in the November release core PCE didn't drop back below 2% - a stable annual number has masked the fact that the month-over-month numbers have shown a deceleration since late spring). They cut short term rates down to the effective lower bound of 0% (and instead moved to a range rather than a specific target, 0-0.25%) rapidly, engaged in "extraordinary measures" like QE to attempt to spur investment and risk-taking, and then held rates at or near zero for an extraordinarily long time while pundits fretted about inflation, all the while, sure enough, runaway inflation failed to materialize. They're now in the process of unwinding their balance sheet they built up during QE, and while there will likely be the occasional misstep (the sharp spike in rates at the start of October has been attributed to a number of things, but Powell's comment that policy "was a long way from neutral" (and thus further rate hikes are likely - again, given that to me evidence points to a slowdown in inflation, I think it's going to be tough to hike rates more than 1-2 more times in the next 12-18 months) as well as the Fed's accelleration of their allowing their balance sheet to run off without reinvesting from $40b/month to $50b/month are likely both factors), generally speaking I'm of the mindset that without the Fed's rapid action and willingness to use extraodrinary measures to push down interest rates, and the Treasury's TARP program, the recession would have been deeper and likely would have lasted a lot longer than it did, and the subsequent recovery (which can fairly be critiqued as being more pronounced for asset owners than it has been for workers - Fed policy can only go so far, and monetary policy is only one factor that determines how corporations act) would have been slower.

Idunno. Your critiques above are kind of broad and general, so I'm not sure if I'm really speaking to exactly what you have in mind... But, central banking is a fairly universal part of a modern national economy, and the Fed's mandate isn't related to national debt or even administering national debt, but overseeing the economy and promoting price stability and full employment. And I don't really see how that lends itself to allowing the government to "pad it's own pocket," exactly.

 

[USMarine75]

So, this is by necessity going to have to be a pretty quick gloss since that's a LOT to cover.

So, there may be one or two small exceptions out there I'm not aware of, but generally speaking every government in the world has a central bank, so no, the Federal Reserve isn't a uniquely American invention the rest of the world does without, or even all that unusual. In Europe, you actually generally see two levels of central banking - national banks (Bank of Italy, Bundesbank in Germany, Banque du France, etc), and then the European Central Bank, ECB, setting monetary policy for the entire EU, headed by Mario Draghi. While the Bundesbank has a fair amount of clout given Germany's history of fiscal prudence and their economic clout within the EU, the ECB is the closest European analogue to the Fed, and nearest in power - in terms of impact on the global economy, Chairman Powell and ECB head Draghi are loosely peers.

Also, I think you're confusing the Federal Reserve and the Treasury in a few points -- the Treasury (headed at present by Steven Mnuchin) is responsible for issuing and paying debt (in the form of Treasury bills), while the Federal Reserve is responsible for overseeing monetary policy and pursuing a dual mandate of full employment and stable prices). The Fed can set short term interest rates (the Fed Open Markets Committee sets the Fed Funds Rate, the overnight rate banks can borrow at, as well as the interest rate paid to banks on reserves at deposit at the bank, and by setting those rates has a lot of ability to control short-term interest rates in this country) and has the authority to engage directly in open market transactions, although it usually does not - the Fed's quantitative easing policies after the great recession, buying Treasury bonds and mortgages in the open market to increase the monetary supply and decrease the Treasury supply in the market to drive down interest rates and in doing so attempt to spur investment, is a notable exception). But, if you want to talk about the national debt, that's the Treasury, indirectly, and really it's Congress not balancing a budget and then asking the Treasury to cover the deficit by selling treasury bills. The Federal Reserve isn't really involved in that.

As far as the Great Recession, the most recent collapse... You can nit-pick over who's ultimately responsible on each step of the way, but the generally-accepted chain of events was after the Dot-Com crash in the late 90s, investors decided to get out of the stock market and instead pour money into "safe" assets like real estate. Real estate demand increased (pushing up asset prices), affordability became harder, and since it was a rising market and a "safe" asset class, mortgage originators began relaxing lending standards to compete for customers. This was pretty low-risk for them because the loans would then be sold, bought by Wall Street banks, and then repackaged into Collateralized Debt Obligations supported by pools of mortgages. They would then generally sell off the top traunches with top payment priority (which despite all the backlash actually generally performed in line with their high credit ratings), and then keep the lower-rated, higher yielding stuff on book, collecting the interest. This all worked well and good until lenders began to default (there's a number of reasons for this, but a common one was loans with an ultra-low interest rate "teaser" period that after a year or two would reset to a much higher market rate), which set off a chain reaction of falling housing prices (if two or three houses in a neighborhood go into forclosure, that tends to pull house prices down around them) driving other lenders underwater on their loands, encouraging further defaults, and as lower-traunche CDOs started to deteriorate, bank balance sheets began to get slammed, leading eventually to such high-profile failures as Lehman Brothers, at which point counterparty risk from over-the-counter derivative contracts suddenly became a MAJOR source of risk for "main street" banks like Bank of America with huge retail books of business (ironically enough, Wells Fargo has a long history of exceptionally conservative risk control, and they were almost completely unscathed during this period - I think they might have posted a modest quarterly loss for a single period, but didn't post a single annual loss. Their current scandals, which are stupid more than they are intentionally criminal, are that much more idiotic for it).

Anyway, it'll be a LONG time yet before we can fairly write the post-mortem on the Great Recession... but so far their response has, I'd say, been pretty decent. There was a lot of concern about runaway inflation when the Fed started QE (I'm in the camp that QE may actually have been disinflationary, in that the Fed's ability to set interest rate policy through direct action is modest compared to their ability to influence market expectation, and the fact they believed they could get away with engaging in several trillion dollars worth of bond purchases as a form of stimulus, and in doing so expand the monetary supply, implied they really weren't worried about inflation at all), but inflation has been remarkably low over the last 10 years, and only in recent months have we seen the Fed's preferred measure, core PCE, hit their informal 2% target (and, I'd be very surprised if in the November release core PCE didn't drop back below 2% - a stable annual number has masked the fact that the month-over-month numbers have shown a deceleration since late spring). They cut short term rates down to the effective lower bound of 0% (and instead moved to a range rather than a specific target, 0-0.25%) rapidly, engaged in "extraordinary measures" like QE to attempt to spur investment and risk-taking, and then held rates at or near zero for an extraordinarily long time while pundits fretted about inflation, all the while, sure enough, runaway inflation failed to materialize. They're now in the process of unwinding their balance sheet they built up during QE, and while there will likely be the occasional misstep (the sharp spike in rates at the start of October has been attributed to a number of things, but Powell's comment that policy "was a long way from neutral" (and thus further rate hikes are likely - again, given that to me evidence points to a slowdown in inflation, I think it's going to be tough to hike rates more than 1-2 more times in the next 12-18 months) as well as the Fed's accelleration of their allowing their balance sheet to run off without reinvesting from $40b/month to $50b/month are likely both factors), generally speaking I'm of the mindset that without the Fed's rapid action and willingness to use extraodrinary measures to push down interest rates, and the Treasury's TARP program, the recession would have been deeper and likely would have lasted a lot longer than it did, and the subsequent recovery (which can fairly be critiqued as being more pronounced for asset owners than it has been for workers - Fed policy can only go so far, and monetary policy is only one factor that determines how corporations act) would have been slower.

Idunno. Your critiques above are kind of broad and general, so I'm not sure if I'm really speaking to exactly what you have in mind... But, central banking is a fairly universal part of a modern national economy, and the Fed's mandate isn't related to national debt or even administering national debt, but overseeing the economy and promoting price stability and full employment. And I don't really see how that lends itself to allowing the government to "pad it's own pocket," exactly.

And one of the biggest underlying causes...
"The banks that had been bailed out by Bush and Obama had engaged in behavior that was beyond insane. In 2004 the five biggest investment banks in the country (at the time, Merrill Lynch, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns) had gone to then-SEC chairman William Donaldson and personally lobbied to remove restrictions on borrowing so that they could bet even more of whatever other people's money they happened to be holding on bullshit investments like mortgage-backed securities. They were making so much straight cash betting on the burgeoning housing bubble that it was no longer enough to be able to bet twelve dollars for every dollar they actually had, the maximum that was then allowed under a thing called the net capital rule. So people like Hank Paulson (at the time, head of Goldman Sachs) got Donaldson to nix the rule, which allowed every single one of those banks to jack up their debt-to-equity ratio above 20:1. In the case of Merrill Lynch, it got as high as 40:1. This was gambling, pure and simple, and it got rewarded with the most gargantuan bailout in history. It was irresponsibility on a scale far beyond anything any individual homeowner could even conceive of."

tl;dr if you're mad at the fed, there's a long line in front of them, about 535 congressman deep, you should be mad at first.

^I highly recommend this book if you (Jacksonluvr636) want to read something that's not a textbook, but is pretty comprehensive, and by a great writer.

 

[Jacksonluvr636]

Idunno. Your critiques above are kind of broad and general, so I'm not sure if I'm really speaking to exactly what you have in mind... But, central banking is a fairly universal part of a modern national economy, and the Fed's mandate isn't related to national debt or even administering national debt, but overseeing the economy and promoting price stability and full employment. And I don't really see how that lends itself to allowing the government to "pad it's own pocket," exactly.

Well you covered a lot and most of it. A bit deep into the Mortgage side of things but I am just generally saying, or trying to say...While I agree with pretty much all of your points. They are kind of hard to deny. I still feel that you are speaking on current times. We have this system now weather we like it or not but what I was saying is before this was our system things seemed to be doing fine until the government's regulations got out of hand. That is when things started getting bad and the reason there was ever a need to have a system like this in the first place. Obviously we will never know what it would be like today without it.

My comment regarding other countries I don't think I worded right. It was also referring to the early 1900's. From what I have read, and idk if these are hard facts. Places like Canada were not having financial scares and did not have a need for a "FED' type of thing. The governments were involved but much less and they were doing fine.

Once our gov got too involved things went to shit, there was panic and the FED was their answer. Due to their actions.

Padding their pockets comment idk. I do not have spreadsheets of this but I know the FED banks are tax exempt. Why is that? Why do they not have to pay anything? I may be mixing treasury and the fed but in whole, our government does not generate any income whatsoever. They only make profit from others and with things like Tax Free banking and Multi TRILLION dollar corporations out there, in general I feel the system is flawed and completely in their favor.

 

[Drew]

We have this system now weather we like it or not but what I was saying is before this was our system things seemed to be doing fine until the government's regulations got out of hand.

Once our gov got too involved things went to shit, there was panic and the FED was their answer. Due to their actions.

Ok, could you maybe elaborate on this or provide some background? That's awfully vague.

Padding their pockets comment idk. I do not have spreadsheets of this but I know the FED banks are tax exempt. Why is that? Why do they not have to pay anything? I may be mixing treasury and the fed but in whole, our government does not generate any income whatsoever. They only make profit from others and with things like Tax Free banking and Multi TRILLION dollar corporations out there, in general I feel the system is flawed and completely in their favor.

Well, yeah. The Fed is a government institution. So is the Treasury. Neither is really trying to make an operating profit, so much as they are to accomplish specific government aims... But, for example, when the Treasury wound down their TARP asset-buying program they had actually turned a profit on the intervention, and that profit was paid back into the US government's operating budget. So, they're tax exempt... but, considering taxes go to the US's operating budget, what's the difference between a tax-exempt Fed and Treasury that returns any "profit" realized on open market transactions back to the government, and one that pays a 100% tax rate, far higher than you or me or large corporations? Because I certainly can't see one.

 

[USMarine75]

Well you covered a lot and most of it. A bit deep into the Mortgage side of things but I am just generally saying, or trying to say...While I agree with pretty much all of your points. They are kind of hard to deny. I still feel that you are speaking on current times. We have this system now weather we like it or not but what I was saying is before this was our system things seemed to be doing fine until the government's regulations got out of hand. That is when things started getting bad and the reason there was ever a need to have a system like this in the first place. Obviously we will never know what it would be like today without it.

My comment regarding other countries I don't think I worded right. It was also referring to the early 1900's. From what I have read, and idk if these are hard facts. Places like Canada were not having financial scares and did not have a need for a "FED' type of thing. The governments were involved but much less and they were doing fine.

Once our gov got too involved things went to shit, there was panic and the FED was their answer. Due to their actions.

Padding their pockets comment idk. I do not have spreadsheets of this but I know the FED banks are tax exempt. Why is that? Why do they not have to pay anything? I may be mixing treasury and the fed but in whole, our government does not generate any income whatsoever. They only make profit from others and with things like Tax Free banking and Multi TRILLION dollar corporations out there, in general I feel the system is flawed and completely in their favor.

No... man... just... no. I mean I hear ya... but... no.

"Regulations out of hand"? Literally read my quote above. Literally the repealing of regulations allowed the financial collapse to happen. Deregulating essential commodities (which is a joke, because e.g. OPEC colludes in regulating oil on behalf of the sellers = why oil could hit $150/barrel) doesn't benefit buyers, only the company's executives and shareholders. The reason why you pay ridiculous costs for medicine isn't Obama, it's that exorbitant amount of money that goes into insurance companies which should be regulated, but aren't... again... thanks to your congressman, who repealed the regulations and sent it down to the state level, where... many states dont even have mechanisms to regulate. Deregulation was pushed for by Ken Ley... you know, the guy that used deregulation to create Enron.

Show me where any over-regulation by the federal or state government was bad? Obamacare was a sabotaged 'attempt' at regulating the high cost of medical devices, pharma, and health insurance. Obama F'd us! Right? No. Those businesses lobbied hard, paid for repealing of regulations, and fought against universal health care which would have leveled off their profiteering from the sick ($50 for gauze? Really?). But instead, those companies won, and convinced 40% of the country that wellness is a privilege and not a right, in the supposed best country in the world. They literally convinced people to vote against their own interests (I want insurance companies to make a huge profit and I want my medical bills high, but luckily not as high as 'Obummer' would make it in the fantasy world they portrayed of death panels and other BS). And the POS that was the actual ACA was a gutted piece of garbage thanks to congress, that was a handout to pharma and insurance companies... exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to be. So no this was truly regulation, this was a gutted regulation that has since been sabotaged instead of fixed... fixing entailing reinstating those provisions to cut your costs, which would be regulating pharma and insurance companies.

/rant lol... but it just drives me crazy how many people vote against their own self interests, because they read or buy into BS business-funded propaganda.

Read about the Panic of 1907 and how JP Morgan had to stave off a Great Depression using his own money... hence the desire to create an institution that could provide the same service, governed by federal supervision.

Oh well, either way, read that book. At least you'll like the chapter called "The Biggest Asshole in the Universe" about Alan Greenspan, the former Fed Chairman lol. The writer really hates him!

 

[Mathemagician]

Do people still knock independent central bank policy?

....

The EU has the ECB.

The UK has the BOE.

Japan has the BOJ.

Every single developed economy has a central bank.

China has the PBOC.

And post-recession every single world economy is tragically trailing ours. Aside from China’s. And that’s almost entirely because they only have one party anyways, and the entire world is bankrolling their exploding middle class by moving manufacturing there.

The US central bank’s sole job is to independently of political whims and whimsy, steer the country towards stable interest rates that promote economic growth via steady interest rates (and by extension prices) and high employment.

I will never understand how people regardless of political bent can stand there and say “the party in office should have control over interest rates.”

No amount of shit presidential advisors whose positions are temporary and at the mercy of the president’s mood are better equipped to handle economic rate decisions better than the reserve banks. It literally operates like a private enterprise and one has to be promoted to move up not simply voted by a plebeian voter base or appointed by a politician who studied English or Law. The ones who claim to want less regulation should love that.

No elected official should be able to influence monetary policy.

Fiscal policy is already set by the government and that has always been shown to be lobby-able by special interest groups.

 

[Drew]

Yeah, hence my continual bewilderment with people having problems with the Federal Reserve. Hell, Trump is TRYING to pressure the Fed on interest rate policy* and thank god isn't successful.

On the bright side, no one has said a thing about "globalists" or the Illuminati in this thread, which is a small blessing.



*Which, as an aside, is a really weird thing to be doing - about the only thing I think Trump has gotten RIGHT is his Fed appointments; I liked Yellen and was hoping he'd keep her on, but Powell is a moderate dove in the same mold as Yellen, and with the exception of Goodfriend, whose nomination is DOA in Congress, the others he's appointed have been qualified, experienced, centrists likely to stay the course on a slow, gradual increase in short term rates. Seeing as the only direct way Trump can shape Fed policy is by Fed board nominations, it's kind of dumbfounding to me that he's appointing these really qualified moderates highly likely to keep current policy in place, and then fuming about Powell "going crazy" and threatening to fire him (which he doesn't have the authority to do) if he keeps raising rates.

 

[Cabinet]

Yeah, hence my continual bewilderment with people having problems with the Federal Reserve. Hell, Trump is TRYING to pressure the Fed on interest rate policy* and thank god isn't successful.

On the bright side, no one has said a thing about "globalists" or the Illuminati in this thread, which is a small blessing.



*Which, as an aside, is a really weird thing to be doing - about the only thing I think Trump has gotten RIGHT is his Fed appointments; I liked Yellen and was hoping he'd keep her on, but Powell is a moderate dove in the same mold as Yellen, and with the exception of Goodfriend, whose nomination is DOA in Congress, the others he's appointed have been qualified, experienced, centrists likely to stay the course on a slow, gradual increase in short term rates. Seeing as the only direct way Trump can shape Fed policy is by Fed board nominations, it's kind of dumbfounding to me that he's appointing these really qualified moderates highly likely to keep current policy in place, and then fuming about Powell "going crazy" and threatening to fire him (which he doesn't have the authority to do) if he keeps raising rates.

Those who favor the US in isolation do not have a serious opinion on foreign policy. Our geographic location gives us natural security and our military force accounts for security for the entire Western hemisphere and more. The United States is destined to be globally involved in power politics and that will never change. The anti globalist will have to reconcile with that one way or another.

 

[USMarine75]

Yeah, hence my continual bewilderment with people having problems with the Federal Reserve. Hell, Trump is TRYING to pressure the Fed on interest rate policy* and thank god isn't successful.

On the bright side, no one has said a thing about "globalists" or the Illuminati in this thread, which is a small blessing.

Please don't talk about us while we are busy plotting and eating delicious homemade cookies in my mom's basement.

 

[Drew]

Please don't talk about us while we are busy plotting and eating delicious homemade cookies in my mom's basement.

Delicious cookies, you say? I won't, if you share!

 

[vilk]

Trumpo incel shot up a bar in CA last night.

The Right announced a plan to slow down the weekly mass shootings:

 

[Drew]

And one of the biggest underlying causes...
"The banks that had been bailed out by Bush and Obama had engaged in behavior that was beyond insane. In 2004 the five biggest investment banks in the country (at the time, Merrill Lynch, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns) had gone to then-SEC chairman William Donaldson and personally lobbied to remove restrictions on borrowing so that they could bet even more of whatever other people's money they happened to be holding on bullshit investments like mortgage-backed securities. They were making so much straight cash betting on the burgeoning housing bubble that it was no longer enough to be able to bet twelve dollars for every dollar they actually had, the maximum that was then allowed under a thing called the net capital rule. So people like Hank Paulson (at the time, head of Goldman Sachs) got Donaldson to nix the rule, which allowed every single one of those banks to jack up their debt-to-equity ratio above 20:1. In the case of Merrill Lynch, it got as high as 40:1. This was gambling, pure and simple, and it got rewarded with the most gargantuan bailout in history. It was irresponsibility on a scale far beyond anything any individual homeowner could even conceive of."

tl;dr if you're mad at the fed, there's a long line in front of them, about 535 congressman deep, you should be mad at first.

^I highly recommend this book if you (Jacksonluvr636) want to read something that's not a textbook, but is pretty comprehensive, and by a great writer.

Missed this earlier - Matt Taibbi is an idiot who favors sensationalism over solid research. He's not wrong that Wall Street banks lobbied the SEC to allow them to increase leverage before the Great Recession, but describing that as "betting even more of other people's money on bullshit investments like mortgage-backed-securities" is kinda disengenuous, and considering MBS as an asset class covers a HUGE range of assets including uber-high-quality assets like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds, well, he's playing fast and furious here.

Try as he might, the dude's no Hunter S. Thompson.

 

[Randy]

I'd stop short of saying he's an idiot necessarily. I think his compass points the right way and he processes events coherently in a way that allows him to put them into words better than most, but it doesn't come as much of a surprise if Taibbi would be the type to go into a discussion like Wall Street/SEC/MBS with his mind already made up, and only court whatever facts back up his conclusion, without a broader context.