I listened to a senator recently on CNBC speak about the Fed and the need to regulate, audit, etc. While I can't really oppose transparency at the Fed, the real issue is transparency toward the American people. The senator went on to say the the problem with the economic meltdown and bailout had roots in government and that it was not the fault of the free enterprise system.
However, that is not how I see it. The government of the United States, when push came to shove, lacked either the power or the will to take down the TBTF banks, in what I would say is a remarkable lack of sovereign power. All you Austrians and free market guys who rail at the government lost your hard earned dollars in the stock market because the government wasn't powerful enough to stop the Federal Reserve, No president could or would stop the Fed in its allowance of shoddy underwriting that led to the crisis, or stop the Fed from bailing out AIG and the crony European banks.
I went to the CNBC website and did a search for "fed private bank". I don't believe I found one instance in page after page of searching of any reference to the Federal Reserve being a private bank. I cannot guarantee that CNBC has never reported the Fed as a private bank but I seriously doubt it.
I went to the MSNBC website where there were no references to the Fed being a private bank unless you scrolled down to web results where this court case proves that the Fed is a private bank.
But CNBC is where it really counts. CNBC is clearly programmed to never say that the Fed is a private bank. How can there be transparency when CNBC, the network's congressional guests, and network's financial gurus can never say that the Fed is a private bank? This becomes a huge game against the average American from the very start. And for the Republican senator to imply that the Fed was a part of government versus the free market system is just not right. The Fed is the free enterprise system as we know it. The Fed creates the bubbles and takes down the markets when necessary.
This is really a simple case. The American people en masse, need to know that a private bank (the Fed) took their taxpayer money and gave it not only to Goldman Sachs, but also to foreign banks by the billions, including Societe Generale of France, Duetsche Bank of Germany, Barclays of Great Britain and UBS of Switzerland. Sorry, but Joe Taxpayer is not responsible for the inability of AIG to write insurance that it could not cover losses on.
Fact is, the United States of America had no one in power to stop the Fed. The Fed did what it wanted to do. No one was a there to protect the taxpayer. America abdicated sovereignty. The country was actually too weak to fight the banks. When are people going to realize this? The argument has been diverted by well connected types into the US being too socialistic and too big government. But when it came to actual political power our government was not too big, and was not powerful enough to stop the Fed from bailing out the cronies.
Along the same lines I notice CNBC and especially Larry Kudlow bringing up the issue of class warfare. Any attack on the banking community according to Larry is class warfare. Well, what kind of warfare gave ponzi loans that the banks knew could not be repaid to the unsuspecting middle classes? What kind of warfare was it that allowed taxpayer money to be stolen to bail out the very banks that wrote loans destined to fail?
Don't anyone be fooled. Class warfare came from the top down. It was a warfare that made money off the average Joe and hurt him financially. That is why it could almost amuse me, though it is really sickening, when people argue that any bank tax is unfair. I hear that over and over on CNBC. Of course what these shills for big banking don't tell you is that these banks threw all shareholders, including their own, under the bus. They owe trillions for pumping up a market with phony paper, only to see it fall and destroy long time savers and elderly middle class folks and the like. These banks cannot come close to ever even thinking about repayment for what they really owe.
Disclosure: no positions
