What do you think of the Fed?

Question

Why?

Answer 1

A Timely Question!

It is a banking cartel like OPEC IS AN OIL CARTEL.The member banks do what's best for them and they hope you think that whatever they do with interest rates and credit availability is in your interest. Don't believe it because they are partly responsible for the current round of credit abuses which they are bailing out by every means possible--free markets are a myth-esp when it comes to money supply and credit availabity. When we dropped the Gold standard we gave the members of the Federal Reserve the power to leverage reserves(deposits,etc) into unseen volumes of money. Do research and learn "The Secrets of the Temple"(There is a book by that title). And you have been brainwashed to believe bankers are benevolent lenders and that conspiracies are fictions? Wake up!

"Greider, William. Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989. 798 pages.

Greider's massive book aims to break down the "religious awe" many Americans feel when they contemplate the Federal Reserve Board or "Fed" (the secretive "temple" of Greider's title). The Fed's 12 key members, usually bankers or similar establishment types vetted by Wall Street, effectively control the U.S. economy by setting interest rates and guiding the national money supply. The press commonly kowtows to Fed members as dispassionate wizards, whose decisions are based on technical criteria lying outside (or above) politics. Long-time Fed chairman Paul Volcker was often portrayed as the father who saved his children (us) from self- indulgence and 70s inflation.

Greider's contrary view is as simple as his arguments for it are longwinded. He sees the Fed as a racket designed to insulate crucial economic decisions from popular control. The Fed's propaganda war against "inflation" justifies the high interest rates that have wrecked the economy, while providing mega-payoffs to the superrich. Such populism is anathema to the respectable press, which virtually ignored Greider's important book. His latest ("Who Will Tell the People?", 1992) may fare better. -- Steve Badrich

ISBN 0-671-67556-7"

ref--->http://www.namebase.org/sources/PN.html

Answer 2

Responsible for ensuring that the fundamentals of the US economy are kept in good order.

Answer 3

In fairness, I don't have formal training in Econ, so this is purely my perception.....  I think the Fed is under a significant degree of untoward influence (either direct or indirect) but otherwise, the Fed. has to at least give the appearance of propriety in its policies, and therefore has to act in the interest of what the economy needs, but this is based on my opinion and, regrettably, I lack a formal reference for this.  My apologies.