I didn’t contradict myself at all. You just manage to confuse yourself.
Central planning is what a bureaucracy does in a socialist economy. Or MITI in Japan, and its twins in Korea and China. The Fed is a central bank, not a central planner. Maybe you know the difference and just misspoke.
One of the Fed’s primary roles since its inception is to adjust the quantity of high-powered money in the banking system. This was a very big deal to the agriculture sector. They do this by buying or selling bonds in open market operations- “expanding and contracting credit”.
Quantitative Easing is a tool that the Fed used to fight the deflationary forces unleashed by the collapse of trillions in bad paper issued during the housing bubble. Bernanke is a student of Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s writing on the cause of the Great Depression, the collapse of the banking system, and QE is one attempt to follow their advice and prevent a repeat.
“That, AND the Federal Reserve’s manipulations means our currency is completely centrally-controlled. “
Google “pushing on a string” and it will teach you something about the ‘central control’ that you imagine the Fed possesses. The size of the money supply is ultimately determined by the decisions of tens of thousands of loan officers at local banks and not a committee at the Fed.
“Your comments about America reaching its apogee in the 1950’s - 40 years AFTER the establishment of the Fed are post-hoc thinking.”
I wasn’t ignoring anything. I was pointing out that contrary to kook belief the Fed isn’t the determining factor in middle class prosperity. The one time that they arguably were was 1930-33 when they failed to save the banking system.
“Obama has increased debt by $10 Trillion, thanks to massive Federal Reserve QE and ZERO interest rates.”
Facts are stubborn things. Obama hasn’t got the power to spend a cent that Congress doesn’t give him. And none of that spending has anything to do with the Fed’s QE, which was entirely aimed at keeping financial firms from collapsing. As far as zero interest rates, if the bond vigilantes weren’t acquiescing to them they wouldn’t be this low. They have more firepower than the Fed as they demonstrated all through the 70s.
Nonsense. The Fed has collected the mandates of "maximum employment," "stable employment," and "reasonable long-term interest rates." It has given itself the entirely fictional and unprovable "goldilocks" rate of 2% price inflation. That is not central planning, comrade?
Quantitative Easing is a tool that the Fed used to fight the deflationary forces unleashed by the collapse of trillions in bad paper issued during the housing bubble.
And what caused the housing bubble? Wouldn't have anything to do with Federal interest rate policy beforehand, would it? And what did the Fed do when the housing bubble hit? They bought up $1.8 trillion of mortgage backed securities, thus bailing out all the major players - from Fed agencies to its owners on Wall Street. The Fed thus creates extreme moral hazard, among its many other faults.
What always surprises is that so-called conservatives, who believe in "free-markets" - and scream if the government meddles in the auto-industry, highly regulates prices and terms in the health care market, and would never accept bureaucratic central planning of the food supply - are so willing to ascribe honorable intentions and vast intelligence to those who centrally plan the most basic commodity of all - money.