Posted on 09/25/2009 10:45:34 AM PDT by Palin Republic
Buying a bond isn't quite the same thing as Congress wasting our money. And just what kind of "oversight" do you want over the Fed bond purchases?
Do you think they should have bought 7 year bonds instead of 5 year? $12 billion instead of $10 billion?
I don’t think a market needs any help from a bunch of people who can at their whim drastically effect it.
I think that is a lot of power we generally choose to keep in the hands of elected individuals. And for good reason.
I don’t know exactly what the federal reserve should do as its policy and I think that neither does the federal reserve, and even if it did it has no reason to do what it does for the benefit of us because no one can check up on it.
Market? I thought you were discussing money supply?
I’m referring to the entire economy.
Yah. So the GAO has limited ability to audit a non-governmental agency. Of course. But Deloitte Touche can and does.
I know, I know... lots of people get all freaked out about the Fed. It just doesn’t bother me so much. And they *are* audited and those records are public. ...and any more articles related to Ron Paul’s rantings don’t exactly lend any credibility to the arguments. Paul is a decent enough fellow, but he’s just positively loony on a few issues and this is one of them. His ranting for a commodity-backed currency, for example. Anybody that regularly uses the term “fiat currency” in a sentence should no longer be trusted on matters of finance.
Why create money from debt at all? What do you think of a debt-free, government-issued, fiat currency like Lincoln’s Greenback? A small sliver of our money supply is already this way - our coins.
Maybe we should just turn the entire government over to private enterprise and allow different groups of “experts” to make laws in their area of expertise without being hampered by “oversight”.
It is wrong to suggest that anybody that is given huge powers by the government is then immune to oversight.
So then you are not the brilliant investor you have claimed to be. No problem, I never considered you as such. So did you lose about half or more like the rest of us? Or are you just some pitiful penniless BS’r here with nothing else to do?
Except for the part where there *is* oversight.
Whatever... please feel free to be freaked out by the Fed. I just haven’t yet seen any reason to do so, myself.
Not to brag or anything, as it was mostly blind stinking luck, but I somehow managed to have my portfolio almost entirely in cash when everything crashed. I started getting back into the market with both feet back in about January/Feb/Mar... as there were some excellent bargains on good stocks at low prices and epic low P/E’s. So far I’m up about 40% this year. Now *that* part I feel pretty good about.
There are significant limits on what they can audit. They cannot audit monetary policy or “open market operations” (where the money supply is increased or decreased) and they cannot audit deals with foreign central banks.
The audits they can do are about less important stuff.
So Obama’s stimulus has been good to you. I’m impressed. You are the fortunate son. What do you play, penny stocks? I thought they outlawed those.
What’s to “audit” regarding monetary policy? Those decisions are open records. Every decision is the subject of Godknows how much public dissection and discussion. People may disagree about monetary policy “a” or “b”, but there’s nothing secret about any of it and there’s nothing really auditable about such decision-making processes.
Auditing is about verifying transactions and backing up financial statements with trustworthy documentation and testing. Auditing is not about disagreements with various executive decisions.
Nope. Wrong on both counts.
You and I both know I am right on both counts.
We should be able to know why they do what they do so we can understand whether or not they are playing favorites. They have to have reasons for what they do and they should have good reasons.
And we don’t know what deals they make with international organizations or foreign governments.
“Political theater, folks. Nothing more. “
Perhaps. Some good may come out of shedding light on the Fed, but if Congress does it, there is far more likely to be a grandstanding political exercise.
“The verb should be “refuses to answer” rather “doesn’t answer.” The Federal Reserve is charged in the Federal Reserve Act with reporting to the Congress, and they have willfully refused to do so.”
Not so. Maybe you’ve missed all those C-SPAN times when Bernanke and his predecessors testified to Congress. If Congress wants something, they can just ask. He testifies regularly.
“While an audit is certainly a good idea, it might well be better to simply give the Fed the Jacksonian treatment.”
A depression ensued when it was done the first time. Is that what you want? ....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jackson#Opposition_to_the_National_Bank
The bank’s money-lending functions were taken over by the legions of local and state banks that sprang up. This fed an expansion of credit and speculation. At first, as Jackson withdrew money from the Bank to invest it in other banks, land sales, canal construction, cotton production, and manufacturing boomed.[27] However, due to the practice of banks issuing paper banknotes that were not backed by gold or silver reserves, there was soon rapid inflation and mounting state debts.[28] Then, in 1836, Jackson issued the Specie Circular, which required buyers of government lands to pay in “specie” (gold or silver coins). The result was a great demand for specie, which many banks did not have enough of to exchange for their notes. These banks collapsed.[27] This was a direct cause of the Panic of 1837, which threw the national economy into a deep depression. It took years for the economy to recover from the damage.
“What I think is wonderful is how liberals and conservatives are coming together on this issue.”
You have to ask yourself why the libs would do this.
Be careful what you ask for. More political control over the money supply is not a Good Thing, it means Congress could lean on Fed to manipulation of money supply to jigger the next election ... and that could be the unintented consequence of more ‘Congressional oversight’.
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