The Battle Over Your Money

[laughing dog]

The US Federal Reserve is wholly owned by the United States of America. It is managed on behalf of that nation state by a five member board, who are all listed, with photographs, at https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed.htm.

How much more about 'who owns the fed' could you possibly know, or want to know?

Seriously, you should spend some time browsing that website - it answers a lot of your questions, and provides a lot of information of which you are clearly in dire need, if you wish to discuss this topic without sounding either ignorant, crazy, or both.

Money is nothing like you appear to imagine it to be. The US Federal Reserve is also nothing like you appear to imagine it to be.

Without knowledge of the basics, your opinions range from worthless to risable.

Can you site where it says who owns the fed? Who actually gets paid for what they do? What did they make last year? I dont care about the managers, just the directors and owners.

You will quickly find no real answers to those questions.

The chairman of the Fed and its board of director's salaries are set by Congress. Jerome Powell earned $203,500 and the salary of a board of director is $183,100. If found that by googling "How much is Jerome Powell paid".

 

[funinspace]

The argument against direct control is simple - would you trust Congress to keep the financial system relatively stable and well-working?

A trivial side note: Congress does have direct control over the Treasury Dept., and we can't even get rid of the penny that costs more to produce than it is worth...

 

[funinspace]

It probably would have meant the US would have ended up devaluing the dollar,

Exactly. And they wouldn't have let that happen because that alone would have greatly benefited the middle class by greatly reducing the trade deficit and bringing back high value jobs. Allowing the dollar to be tied to the free market would have even benefited everyone else (rich people too) as there would be no more asset bubbles and real price discovery would be possible again.

By not allowing the dollar to be tied to anything real the fed can financially engineer the economy. And that sounds real good if you think that men are smarter than the free market. But it sounds real bad if you happen to believe (as I do) that a communist style centrally managed economy does not work as well as the free market.

Furthermore there is this. No one knows who owns the fed (a private entity) and congress is not allowed to even audit what they are doing. Why does a supposed free society allow our global economy to be centrally managed by a secret cabal of people we do not even elect? A financially engineered economy sounds good to most of us until we stop to realize that there is nothing about it that is democratic.

Many people of many political stripes are trying to caution you regarding notions that are tilting hard into tin foil hat land...and I don't think you are recognizing that.

Your track record on grabbing onto fringe (or just way off unsupported) ideas isn't so great (FWIW, I'm not trying to insult you, I'm trying to get you to think/reflect outside of a fringe idea...):

2018 Nov all those Dems leaving the party...
https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?15569-Democrats-are-walking-away-from-their-party

2016 Nov CIA coupe that never happened
https://talkfreethought.org/showthr...-is-now-underway-to-overthrow-the-POTUS-elect

2016 Nov: US Steel to the moon...
https://talkfreethought.org/showthr...starting-to-deliver/page4&p=355865#post355865

2016 Nov: Oligarchs goin to steal election...
https://talkfreethought.org/showthr...the-oligarchs-are-going-to-steal-the-election

The banksters would not have been bailed out in 2008/9, because back 1971 the US economy would have slammed into a brick wall battling to stay on the gold standard, and who knows what would be in 50 years. Gold was pouring out of the country, as the world was loosing faith in the dollar. The FR would have had to pushed rates thru the roof to contain it (among other things), making what Paul Volker did a decade later look tame.

 

[RVonse]

Many people of many political stripes are trying to caution you regarding notions that are tilting hard into tin foil hat land...and I don't think you are recognizing that.

Fair enough. But let me ask you this funinspace. Why is it perfectly acceptable to foster conspiracy theories with regards to not being able to see Trumps income tax returns. But at the same time it is complete heresy to ask for an audit of the fed? If we do not ever get an audit from the fed, how do we really know where our money is going? And its not like a small amount of money either. Even a rounding error on the interest of the amounts the fed is handling amounts to a huge amount of money. And UNLIKE Trumps tax returns, the money the fed is secretly handling is part of MY money (income tax).

Why is the fed so adamant about never giving us an audit of what they do? The answer probably has a LOT to do with corruption.

 

[funinspace]

Many people of many political stripes are trying to caution you regarding notions that are tilting hard into tin foil hat land...and I don't think you are recognizing that.

Fair enough. But let me ask you this funinspace. Why is it perfectly acceptable to foster conspiracy theories with regards to not being able to see Trumps income tax returns.

I know of lots of speculation, but as Clownstick likes to keep them hidden, he creates his own cesspool...

But at the same time it is completely heresy to ask for an audit of the fed? If we do not ever get an audit from the fed, how do we really know where our money is going?

I'm fine with an audit of the FR.

And its not like a small amount of money either. Even a rounding error on the interest of the amounts the fed is handling amounts to a huge amount of money. And UNLIKE Trumps tax returns, the money the fed is secretly handling is part of MY money (income tax).

Uhm...the FR has been depositing large sums of money into the Treasury dept for years now...they ain't sucking up any money.

https://bankingjournal.aba.com/2020... billion out of its,and $65.3 billion in 2018.

The Federal Reserve System paid $54.9 billion out of its annual net income to the U.S. Treasury in 2019, according to figures released today. The payments declined from previous years, falling from $80.6 billion in 2017 and $65.3 billion in 2018.

 

[RVonse]

...because back 1971 the US economy would have slammed into a brick wall battling to stay on the gold standard, and who knows what would be in 50 years.

That is when the US technically defaulted on the dollar. There has been a lot of smoke and mirrors since that time to the extent that we now have a stock market that is flourishing during a world wide pandemic while there is massive unemployment. And maybe they can continue to kick the can down the road some more so that when the next super bubble breaks we will all vaporize.

 

[RVonse]

I'm fine with an audit of the FR.

I am glad you are fine with it...but the fed isn't! Ron Paul asked politely and they told him to stick it up his butt. The fed clearly does not work for the American people and they could care less whether or not they ever give us an audit.

 

[RVonse]

The US Federal Reserve is wholly owned by the United States of America. It is managed on behalf of that nation state by a five member board, who are all listed, with photographs, at https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed.htm.

How much more about 'who owns the fed' could you possibly know, or want to know?

Seriously, you should spend some time browsing that website - it answers a lot of your questions, and provides a lot of information of which you are clearly in dire need, if you wish to discuss this topic without sounding either ignorant, crazy, or both.

Money is nothing like you appear to imagine it to be. The US Federal Reserve is also nothing like you appear to imagine it to be.

Without knowledge of the basics, your opinions range from worthless to risable.

Can you site where it says who owns the fed? Who actually gets paid for what they do? What did they make last year? I dont care about the managers, just the directors and owners.

You will quickly find no real answers to those questions.

The chairman of the Fed and its board of director's salaries are set by Congress. Jerome Powell earned $203,500 and the salary of a board of director is $183,100. If found that by googling "How much is Jerome Powell paid".

Those are just managers.

 

[RVonse]

I'm fine with an audit of the FR.

I am glad you are fine with it...but the fed isn't! Ron Paul asked politely and they told him to stick it up his butt. The fed clearly does not work for the American people and they could care less whether or not they ever give us an audit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Transparency_Act

Paul charges the Federal Open Market Committee with being "less than transparent" with its secret meetings. In an April 2009 editorial, Paul thanked the Fed for its responsive attempt to enhance transparency and accountability, but called it "window dressing at best, and it's utterly useless at worst".[8]

 

[ZiprHead]

Federal Reserve System Audited Annual Financial Statements

The Board of Governors and the Federal Reserve Banks are all subject to several levels of audit and review. The Reserve Banks' financial statements are audited annually by an independent public accounting firm retained by the Board of Governors. To ensure auditor independence, the Board requires that the external auditor be independent in all matters relating to the audit. Specifically, the external auditor may not perform services for the Reserve Banks or affiliates that would place it in a position of auditing its own work, making management decisions on behalf of the Reserve Banks, or in any other way impairing its audit independence. In addition, the Reserve Banks are subject to oversight by the Board.

The Board of Governors' financial statements are audited annually by an independent public accounting firm retained by the Board's Office of Inspector General. The audit firm also provides a report on compliance and on internal control over financial reporting in accordance with government auditing standards. The Office of Inspector General also conducts audits, reviews, and investigations relating to the Board's programs and operations as well as of Board functions delegated to the Reserve Banks.

2019 audit PDFs in the link.

 

[funinspace]

Down the yellow brick road...to Bitcoin?

I'm fine with an audit of the FR.

I am glad you are fine with it...but the fed isn't! Ron Paul asked politely and they told him to stick it up his butt. The fed clearly does not work for the American people and they could care less whether or not they ever give us an audit.

Yeah, it is weird...'they' never seem to take my direction. 'They' (I'm assuming you mean the Congressional Critters) have a bad habit of getting those American people to keep voting them back into office...WFT is wrong with those people?

The DoD has never passed an audit in the last 30 years they have been required to perform an audit. In fact they only got around to even doing an audit (failed both times) the last 2 years.

 

[laughing dog]

The chairman of the Fed and its board of director's salaries are set by Congress. Jerome Powell earned $203,500 and the salary of a board of director is $183,100. If found that by googling "How much is Jerome Powell paid".

Those are just managers.

You are misinformed. The board of directors are the directors. The chsir is the chairman of the board if directors.

 

[laughing dog]

I'm fine with an audit of the FR.

I am glad you are fine with it...but the fed isn't! Ron Paul asked politely and they told him to stick it up his butt. The fed clearly does not work for the American people and they could care less whether or not they ever give us an audit.

Ron Paul Is a grandstanding economic ignoramus. The Fed meetings are secret so that the deliberations are not politicized.

The Fed’s mandate is to stabilize inflation and to keep employment high. That is working for the american public.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It would be idotic to turn back to the gold standard. Among other reasons, astroid mining may not be that far away. We could one day be flooded with gold. That would destroy an economy on the gold standard, and for no good reason.

Asteroids??

Can you say "Caloris Basin"? Dig deep enough and there's likely a layer of pure gold down there. (Zone refining on an epic scale, courtesy of a rock that can't navigate.) It's not going to be easy to mine but once someone does...

 

[RVonse]

I'm fine with an audit of the FR.

I am glad you are fine with it...but the fed isn't! Ron Paul asked politely and they told him to stick it up his butt. The fed clearly does not work for the American people and they could care less whether or not they ever give us an audit.

Ron Paul Is a grandstanding economic ignoramus. The Fed meetings are secret so that the deliberations are not politicized.

The Fed’s mandate is to stabilize inflation and to keep employment high. That is working for the american public.

Can lending, spending, and pretending really go on forever? There are no fractional requirements for banks now so they can lend with nothing in reserve. With the present kind of accounting by the fed, one really does have to wonder why any of us need to pay taxes anymore? Why don't they just print and build roads with it?

 

[SimpleDon]

None of your misunderstanding about money or currency explains your claim about how bank and fed "fraudsters" have screwed the middle class since the US went off the gold standard.

The 2008 bankster bailouts would have been impossible under the Bretton Woods gold standard.

Banks and hedgefund managers kept their jobs and bonuses. The middle class lost much of their wealth

The Bretton Woods Agreement didn't impose the gold standard for anyone. That would have been the height of stupidity. Economists outside of the Austrian/Libertarian philosophy of fantasy economics recognized the weaknesses of the gold standard for money, that gold was a useful commodity and tying its value to money fixing its price which is never good, that the gold standard caused recessions, depressions, financial panics, etc, and that the gold standard fixed the money supply and restricted the growth of the economy, ideally the money supply should grow with a growing economy.

But the biggest problem with the gold standard is that it causes deflation, as I have said many times, even in this thread.

Deflation is the opposite of inflation. You seem to understand that inflation is when the money becomes worth less. It shouldn't be a massive leap for you to accept that under deflation money becomes worth more over time. Prices and wages have to go down under deflation to account for the increase in the value of the money. If prices and wages don't go down it causes even more deflation. And guess what, businesses are reluctant to lower their prices and workers resist when you try to reduce their wages. The monetary value of real assets have to be reduced too.

What Bretton Woods did was to fix how the different currencies would be normalized in foreign trade. How the books would be balanced between the countries in foreign trade. This was the area where gold was used, although indirectly through buying or selling US dollars, at least until France decided that they would insist on the use real gold for the purpose of settling current accounts. Then the various developed countries deposited as much gold as they thought that would be needed in the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and to settle the accounts the gold of a country with a negative current account balance with another country would be loaded on a cart and it was wheeled into the enclosure in the vault of the other country.

The various currencies of the world pegged their value to the US dollar and the US dollar was pegged nominally to gold. But it wasn't the gold that you and I think of when we think of gold. The value of the metal that is dug out of the ground was allowed to fluctuate according to supply and demand for the different uses of gold as a commodity. There was another value of the gold that was fixed and this was the gold that the US pledged to tie the dollar to. The net result was the US was tying the value of the dollar to gold without actually doing that. In essence, the only thing that came out of this was fixed currency exchange rates since all of the currencies of the developed wold were tied to the value of the imaginary gold that never changed.

All of this had advantages and disadvantages too, as any system in the real world will have. It restricted foreign trade that was imbalanced between nations. It restricted the flow of capital into and out of a country. All because it limited the amount of an imbalance in trade to the amount of gold that a nation had. It wasn't free trade in any respect. (One of the many ironies of neoliberalism is that you can't have free trade and the gold standard at the same time, unless you have Rumpelstiltskin's spinning wheel that spins out gold.)

 

[RVonse]

The various currencies of the world pegged their value to the US dollar and the US dollar was pegged nominally to gold. But it wasn't the gold that you and I think of when we think of gold. The value of the metal that is dug out of the ground was allowed to fluctuate according to supply and demand for the different uses of gold as a commodity. There was another value of the gold that was fixed and this was the gold that the US pledged to tie the dollar to. The net result was the US was tying the value of the dollar to gold without actually doing that. In essence, the only thing that came out of this was fixed currency exchange rates since all of the currencies of the developed wold were tied to the value of the imaginary gold that never changed.

All of this had advantages and disadvantages too, as any system in the real world will have. It restricted foreign trade that was imbalanced between nations. It restricted the flow of capital into and out of a country. All because it limited the amount of an imbalance in trade to the amount of gold that a nation had. It wasn't free trade in any respect. (One of the many ironies of neoliberalism is that you can't have free trade and the gold standard at the same time, unless you have Rumpelstiltskin's spinning wheel that spins out gold.)

I generally agree with you about the gold part of the Bretton Woods system but I do not agree with you that fixed currency exchange rates were bad. Because fixed currency exchange rates prevent trade deficits from occurring between trading countries. The fixed currency exchange rate would have prevented high value jobs being exported from the US to China. We are now seeing the damage all this caused, the political populism, the rise of protesting, and the election of Trump. And there are many who predict we will be going back to some kind of commodity or gold standard when the US loses its reserve status of the dollar.

 

[laughing dog]

The various currencies of the world pegged their value to the US dollar and the US dollar was pegged nominally to gold. But it wasn't the gold that you and I think of when we think of gold. The value of the metal that is dug out of the ground was allowed to fluctuate according to supply and demand for the different uses of gold as a commodity. There was another value of the gold that was fixed and this was the gold that the US pledged to tie the dollar to. The net result was the US was tying the value of the dollar to gold without actually doing that. In essence, the only thing that came out of this was fixed currency exchange rates since all of the currencies of the developed wold were tied to the value of the imaginary gold that never changed.

All of this had advantages and disadvantages too, as any system in the real world will have. It restricted foreign trade that was imbalanced between nations. It restricted the flow of capital into and out of a country. All because it limited the amount of an imbalance in trade to the amount of gold that a nation had. It wasn't free trade in any respect. (One of the many ironies of neoliberalism is that you can't have free trade and the gold standard at the same time, unless you have Rumpelstiltskin's spinning wheel that spins out gold.)

I generally agree with you about the gold part of the Bretton Woods system but I do not agree with you that fixed currency exchange rates were bad. Because fixed currency exchange rates prevent trade deficits from occurring between trading countries.

History rebuts your analysis. When a country has a cost advantage, fixed exchange rates cement that cost advantage. Before central banks, that cost advantage was maintained until the gold flow from the importing country to the exporting country caused deflation in the importing country and inflation in the exporting country. Of course, that correction could take years to occur.

In the modern era of the gold standard, the effect on the price level was moderated by central banks changing the level of bank reserves to increase the amount of private money in the importing country and reduce the amount of private money in the exporting country.

So, the gold standard did not prevent the export of any jobs.

 

[SimpleDon]

Ron Paul Is a grandstanding economic ignoramus. The Fed meetings are secret so that the deliberations are not politicized.

The Fed’s mandate is to stabilize inflation and to keep employment high. That is working for the american public.

Can lending, spending, and pretending really go on forever? ...

If you can design an economic system that doesn't depend on the economy growing have at it. Let us know. So far every economic system that did depend on growth in the entire history of man has succeeded while all that didn't have failed.

It depends on how closely you feel that growth equals progress.

All monetary systems throughout history have been fiat money systems. The Greeks used temple goods as the basis of their monetary system, the Babylons used wheat and barley, essentially beer. Does this mean that Greeks led bulls around to make major purchases? And went to the butcher shop to make change? Of course not.

Your Econ 101 that you have been taught is based on the classical economists of the 18th century and not on very much that we have learned about the economy since. It is as if we taught astronomy with the earthcentric theory and waited until graduate school to teach how the universe really is.

The classical economists made a lot of mistakes about the economy. The one that we are dealing with in this thread is that the economies of the past used barter as the basis of exchange, that gold, silver and copper provided a more convenient way to barter because of a mutual agreement of the value of those metals and therefore they formed the basis of our money. And by extension, that it is only recently that we have used fiat money as currency.

As we know now this is almost completely wrong. Barter was used by humans, but only when they traded outside of their scope of trust. Tribal man used barter when they traded with other tribes but they used gifting exchanges within their tribe, the largest and most important of the exchanges they did. They would gift an item that another needed but with the tact understanding that the gift would be reciprocated in the future. In today's terms, the basis of the exchange was debt.

As tribes grew in size beyond each member knowing every other member of the tribe, it was hard for an individual to know if an unknown to him member of the tribe was reliable enough to gift to, whether the unknown member would give a gift in return in the future. He would go to either the tribal chief or the head of the religion for a recommendation, ie the government of the tribe would guarantee the transaction, in libertarian terms, would enforce the contract, in modern terms, the government enforces the basis of the economy, to prevent bad behavior.

Ancient civilizations based their exchanges on commodities like grains and temple goods in a similar fashion, the transactions were based on a schedule of related values, a fixed set of prices for the major goods exchanged in the economy. The oxen that the farmer needed to plant in the spring would be worth 10 sheaves of grain the fall, guaranteed by the temple which got one sheave from the farmer for the service. In modern terms, the start of banking, exchanges based on debt creating the money, and prices set by a government, not barter negotiation.

Why doesn't your Econ 101 teach you this? Econ 101 tells you the fable of barter exchanges and gold as the natural economy as it was in ancient times. Is there a reason for this? Does someone gain from teaching the fable that leaves out the role of the tribal chief, the king, i.e. the government in the economy?

There are no fractional requirements for banks now so they can lend with nothing in reserve. With the present kind of accounting by the fed, one really does have to wonder why any of us need to pay taxes anymore? Why don't they just print and build roads with it?

The only limit to how much banks can lend is that they can't lend more than 8 times their capitalization in total. That is if the conservative/libertarian deregulation delusion doesn't succeed in eliminating it, which they have tried many times to do. Reference the attempts to repeal all or parts of Dodd Frank.

The practical limitation of creating more money either by the federal government running a deficit and spending it into our economy or by the Fed running the printing press to buy back T-Bills or other bonds or even common stock shares, all to pump money to the rich and to boost the stock market which some mistakenly believe impacts the economy, is inflation. If they create too much money they will create inflation in the economy which is bad or in the stock market and in real estate, where inflation is considered to be a good thing even though it isn't.

 

[bilby]

Ron Paul Is a grandstanding economic ignoramus. The Fed meetings are secret so that the deliberations are not politicized.

The Fed’s mandate is to stabilize inflation and to keep employment high. That is working for the american public.

Can lending, spending, and pretending really go on forever?

Yes.

Why wouldn't it be able to?

What do you imagine would limit it - where's the point that it all crashes down?

Bear in mind that nation states are effectively immortal...

There are no fractional requirements for banks now so they can lend with nothing in reserve. With the present kind of accounting by the fed, one really does have to wonder why any of us need to pay taxes anymore? Why don't they just print and build roads with it?

Because you need to take money out of your economy to control inflation, and taxes are one good way to do that.