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Ron Paul: "Blame The Fed For The Financial Crisis"
An OpEd from the only sane person in Washington, written for the Wall Street Journal
Blame the Fed for the Financial Crisis
The Fed fails to grasp that an interest rate is a price, the price of time. Attempting to manipulate that price is as destructive as any other government price control
To know what is wrong with the Federal Reserve, one must first understand the nature of money. Money is like any other good in our economy that emerges from the market to satisfy the needs and wants of consumers. Its particular usefulness is that it helps facilitate indirect exchange, making it easier for us to buy and sell goods because there is a common way of measuring their value. Money is not a government phenomenon, and it need not and should not be managed by government. When central banks like the Fed manage money they are engaging in price fixing, which leads not to prosperity but to disaster.
The Federal Reserve has caused every single boom and bust that has occurred in this country since the bank's creation in 1913. It pumps new money into the financial system to lower interest rates and spur the economy. Adding new money increases the supply of money, making the price of money over time—the interest rate—lower than the market would make it. These lower interest rates affect the allocation of resources, causing capital to be malinvested throughout the economy. So certain projects and ventures that appear profitable when funded at artificially low interest rates are not in fact the best use of those resources.
Eventually, the economic boom created by the Fed's actions is found to be unsustainable, and the bust ensues as this malinvested capital manifests itself in a surplus of capital goods, inventory overhangs, etc. Until these misdirected resources are put to a more productive use—the uses the free market actually desires—the economy stagnates.
The great contribution of the Austrian school of economics to economic theory was in its description of this business cycle: the process of booms and busts, and their origins in monetary intervention by the government in cooperation with the banking system. Yet policy makers at the Federal Reserve still fail to understand the causes of our most recent financial crisis. So they find themselves unable to come up with an adequate solution.
In many respects the governors of the Federal Reserve System and the members of the Federal Open Market Committee are like all other high-ranking powerful officials. Because they make decisions that profoundly affect the workings of the economy and because they have hundreds of bright economists working for them doing research and collecting data, they buy into the pretense of knowledge—the illusion that because they have all these resources at their fingertips they therefore have the ability to guide the economy as they see fit.
Nothing could be further from the truth. No attitude could be more destructive. What the Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek victoriously asserted in the socialist calculation debate of the 1920s and 1930s—the notion that the marketplace, where people freely decide what they need and want to pay for, is the only effective way to allocate resources—may be obvious to many ordinary Americans. But it has not influenced government leaders today, who do not seem to see the importance of prices to the functioning of a market economy.
The manner of thinking of the Federal Reserve now is no different than that of the former Soviet Union, which employed hundreds of thousands of people to perform research and provide calculations in an attempt to mimic the price system of the West's (relatively) free markets. Despite the obvious lesson to be drawn from the Soviet collapse, the U.S. still has not fully absorbed it.
The Fed fails to grasp that an interest rate is a price—the price of time—and that attempting to manipulate that price is as destructive as any other government price control. It fails to see that the price of housing was artificially inflated through the Fed's monetary pumping during the early 2000s, and that the only way to restore soundness to the housing sector is to allow prices to return to sustainable market levels. Instead, the Fed's actions have had one aim—to keep prices elevated at bubble levels—thus ensuring that bad debt remains on the books and failing firms remain in business, albatrosses around the market's neck.
The Fed's quantitative easing programs increased the national debt by trillions of dollars. The debt is now so large that if the central bank begins to move away from its zero interest-rate policy, the rise in interest rates will result in the U.S. government having to pay hundreds of billions of dollars in additional interest on the national debt each year. Thus there is significant political pressure being placed on the Fed to keep interest rates low. The Fed has painted itself so far into a corner now that even if it wanted to raise interest rates, as a practical matter it might not be able to do so. But it will do something, we know, because the pressure to "just do something" often outweighs all other considerations.
What exactly the Fed will do is anyone's guess, and it is no surprise that markets continue to founder as anticipation mounts. If the Fed would stop intervening and distorting the market, and would allow the functioning of a truly free market that deals with profit and loss, our economy could recover. The continued existence of an organization that can create trillions of dollars out of thin air to purchase financial assets and prop up a fundamentally insolvent banking system is a black mark on an economy that professes to be free.
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WSJ is now a rag like all Murdoch pubs. I won't even wrap fish in it now.
A+, Dr. Paul
Go Ron! The only guy simply telling the truth.
Which is why TPTB cannot/will not allow him to be elected as President. It's a shame the vast majority of American's are too stupid to understand Dr. Paul is exactly the kind of politician we need...
the east coast joo banksters are invincible.
stereotyping belies intelligence...
stereotype my ass. the federal reserve is like 90% joos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uViRIiEApFE
You are correct. It's just that I cringe every time discourse dissolves to racial brick-throwing...
Why cringe? The truth is always unpleasant, but that's because no one else will talk about the racial dominance of tiny minority worldwide, over every financial organization in the United States and the world.
Jews (and Christians and Muslims and Buddhists and other religious groups) are not a race, so there's no race-baiting here. Anti-semitism was coined to make people feel guilty and that's it. I don't know why Jews get that special treatment.
Ashkenazi jews should be a race as they have historically been extremely exthnocentrist in their "host" countries. This explains their statistically higher IQ as well as higher instances of specific diseases. If thats not a race I don't know what is. 2000 years ago I'd agree with you but a few hundred generations of a different culture moving around the planet have in fact created a different race. Other broad religous sects aren't as "tight" with eachother so their traits are more correlated with geography. That religion is not race is a farce when discussing this group. To make discourse more accurate, someone should come up with a PC term for "nose n1gger" then we'd all know what to call them.
"If you can't talk about someone they own you".
Many bankster thieves are indeed Jewish, but not all Jewsish people are bankster thieves. You know the whole square/rectangle shit. Clean up your act buzzsaw. Your tirades exposure your ignorance.
ALL the key financial posts in the United States and England are headed by jews.
If you doubt it, then your ignorance far exceeds anyone you point to. Try changing the context on someone else.
Firstly, the key financial posts are not the front men, the hofjuden, that you see in the headlines. They are policy implementers, not policy makers. Even Soros needs to check with others that he is not about to tread on the wrong toes.
Secondly, the key financial decisions are taken in secret meetings and passed down to those salaried (and easily/quickly replaced) hofjuden. Ask Dick Fuld and Bernie Madoff.
Thirdly, a great percentage of people with jewish names -- particularly in the banking world -- are not, in fact, [orthodox] jews, but Sabbateans - ie. luciferians that are in league with the Jesuits, Masons and Mormons through the secret societies. They are just as keen on wiping out the religious jews as you obviously are.
Stop watching the magician's right hand. It is just an illusion.
"Even Soros needs to check with others that he is not about to tread on the wrong toes."
yep.
“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the U.S., in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” ~ POS Woodrow Wilson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w-A54h_GQ8
That's a very good documentary for others to see! (I must watch it again...haven't seen it for at least 3 years and will be interested to see what I think of it now, with all I've learned in the meantime :-)
I also highly recommend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7jhXNp4kY and, more particularly, his book: 'Vatican Assassins III'. He's prone to religious hyperbole (I'm an atheist and just ignore it), and occasionally confusing correleation with causation, but it's impeccably researched, includes source documents, and is very accurate.
....uhh....no I'm not keen on wiping out religious jews. I am referring to only secular ones in the Financial community.
I am keen on assasination of Fuld, Madoff, Blankfein, and the others whose names are never mentioned ALONG with their consiglieres like Hank Paulson, and Neil Kashkari.
But to the larger point that I had not known about, the Sabbateans. And the coincidence of interests that brings together the jesuits, masons, mormons, and their secret societies.
Thx for heads up.
JP Chase...no
Treasury...no
It's off top of my head, but sure plenty more. And why does it matter if Jew or not. You care if don't believe Jesus?
"DAMN IT, I WANT MY BANKER TO BELIEVE IN JESUS!"
Corporations who control world are BIG OIL and BIG PHARMA, wonder what religion they believe in?
But they have their men in place, their product ready to go for President. Now that they don't have to report campaign donation they easily buy our President. Shhhhh. But they show selves during debate with advertising!
Treasury?? Geithner? He's, what, Sicilian?
Corporations are also Goldman Sucks, which has derivatives in the tens of Trillions of dollars.
Name one corporation with that kind of leverage?
I'm not necssarily talking about financial institutions, but Financial Nexus like the CFTC, the IMF (Strauss-Kahn), Trasury, the Rotchschild's control of the U.K and tne Continent.
Mises, Rothbard and Rand were Jewish. Oh, and Groucho, too.
so was Karl
Even Zeppo was funnier than Karl.
i clearly wrote "joo banker" dick head. take your strawman out back and give it a good fucking the way joo bankers do the rest of the gentile world.
Bobby Rubin, Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers, Dick Fuld, Bernie Schwartz, Bernie Madoff, Gary Gensler, Strauss-Kahn, Mary Shapiro, Peter Orszag, Timmay Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Larry Fink, Ace Greenberg, Lord Blankfein, and on and on and on.....every single one jew....
...you were saying......
"Any man who admits to nothing but what must be be plainly demonstrated, may be sure of nothing but perishing quickly."
Locke
Hank Paulsen, John Corzine, Ken Lewis, Brian Moynihan, Christine LaGarde, Jamie Dimon, Vikram Pandit
LaGarde's mother is Jewish, get your nationalities straight.
And I didin't list them all. I have another 100 if you care to read them, but I assure you that the jews are running the global financial cabal strictly for their benefit. They are at evey key financial nexus in the world.
PBOC?
looks like the hitler youth have crawled out of their double wides again
heil hitler bitchez
wow - 8 green, 4 red. 'nuff said about ZH, I guess
Wow - 12 votes interpreted as representative of 30,000 readers! You must be a Democrat.
Yes, because the world consists only of Americans and therefore only of the always-right [insert own] party, and the always wrong [insert the other] party.
End the fed.
Joe sixpack read the title and skipped to sports. Nothing to see here.
Joe, at least recgonizes a do-nothing bullshitter when he sees one, which makes him one hell of a lot smarter about what is important and what isn't than you are.
I tend to refrain from name calling but......you're a tool.
You are a perfect RonPaulian thinkking that WORDS actually mean something and actions are useless.
You can call me anything you want, as long as you understand that all Paul has are words, and NO ACTION!
What actions, as a Congressman, has he not taken, that you think he could have that would have had any impact on the status quo?
Don't feed the troll redpill, starve the beast...
Call in ALL Board members of the FED and TBTF banks individually..
Depose them publicly under oath. Make them understand that there are prison terms for any misinformation.
Many of the heads of the TBTF banks have already testified, and of course they lie anyway. What do you think, they are going to come clean because Ron Paul asks them a question?
Some are not good at lieing. Someone would slip up..
interview individually, record them, oh, and make sure they're hooked to a polygraph.
What exactly he is supposed to do besides sponsor legislation like Audit the Fed and vote no on everything else? Throw a molotov cocktail through the front door of 33 Liberty?
That's an awesome visual :)
Actually it would be quite shocking if RP makes as a final statement getting arrested for doing something like that. To my knowledge he's never broken the law.
"You are a perfect RonPaulian thinkking that WORDS actually mean something and actions are useless."
This right here perfectly summarizes the difference between a member of the tribe and an scotch/irish cracker goy debt slave.
The wise banksters use words to poison the minds of many and write laws while the wise crackers perform one act and get thrown in jail by the less-than-wise crackers that just want a paycheck and watch TV,
I'd take Ron Paul's 'inaction' over bush's Iraq 'action', obama's 'Libya' action, the fed's monetizing debt 'action', the tarp 'action' any damn day of the week.
Ron Paul is all about government INACTION. It is you the individual who has to take action, not have action mandated to you by government, like Obamacare.
It's all clear now. The powers actually WANT and PLAN for Ron Paul to be the next president.
When the cycle of pillage and theft is over, and they have most of the gold, allow the host to live. Clear the decks for the next 80 year cycle.
I am beginning to come to this conclusion, as well.
Republican sweep in 2012. Blame is then laid upon the usual fascist suspects/scapegoats - the Joos and the homos.
1920s Germany, meet 1930s Germany.
The Austrian school of economics is getting more and more popular because of course they are right whereas the Keynesian school of economics has been wrong time and again.
We must sure that students of The Austrian school of economics write the history books.
And shortly thereafter Ron Paul being voted in as POTUS; Bernanke holds a press conference stating the "end the fed" campaign has succeeded. He continues to say that the private Federal Reserve Bank and its FED chairmen have come to a unanimous vote and the private Federal Reserve is now going to close its doors for good. The private bank is dissolving. Now all electronic Federal Reserve Notes have been deleted from all accounts everywhere in the world. To those who hold the paper notes please return them to your closest local bank, after all: they do belong to us.
P.S. Good luck Americans, until your CONgress can get a new monetary system up and running.....HA HA HA HA HA
Yep. All part of the plan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-j9LBCmM3c#t=32m30s
.
redpill, you are such a prolific poster that someone gave you a green arrow for typing a period! :-)
Probably someone that just appreciates brevity!
Great words by a great man. If he could only take his message of truth one step farther......INFINITE GROWTH IS NOT POSSIBLE ON A FINITE PLANET.
GREAT???? What do you call a man who actually gets something done??
Your standard for greatness mirrors the dumbing down of expectations in this country. If all someone has to do is TALK about something to get your vote for greatness, no wonder this country is so fucked.
Again...in my response to an earlier post of yours ....you're a tool.
How can continuous efforts to educate the sheeple of the true nature of the Federal Reserve and other Central Banks that (together, with infinite growth) are the root causes of many of the woes of the world not constitute some form of greatness? Any other elected leader shouting that message? Ron Paul's record speaks for itself and reflects who he is and what you see with Ron is what you get. Have you even read ANY of his books?
In any case SHUT THE FUCK UP unless you have something of substance to say. And, I will NOT be voting for any candidate as voting is a horrible form of democratic participation. Only as consumers and investors can the status quo be broken.
What an idiot....you want someone to really do something? How about some more politicians that follow the constitution???If we even had 50 people like Ron Paul in the congress the system would be working well as was intended.
It is people like you who invite in the dictator to "really clean things up". God help us.
We used to laugh at the Soviets and their attempts to predict the demand for and price of consumer items. How could a bunch of guys in a room possibly predict how many pairs of shoes would be required in Russia next year and instruct the factories to make just that many, no more, no less.
In years to come, will people look back with the same sense of wonderment at how it was widely accepted that a bunch of guys in a boardroom at the Fed building would predict how much money the US would need and how much it should cost? Insanity.
So, the Soviet Russian walked into the department store and said to the clerk, "I need some tires". The clerk replied, "This is the first floor. We don't have clothes here. You need to go to the third floor. They don't have tires there".
"How could a bunch of guys in a room possibly predict how many..."
Zactly. It's actually quite comical when you think about it (if the outcomes weren't so tragic). It's rather like turning a bunch of chimps loose in the control room of a nuclear reactor and watching them press buttons and turn dials.
Yet even here, the analogy fails b/c the chimps "efforts" would eventually result in damage to themselves and several hundred square miles. The Fed's damage is not so easily contained. The Fed's "efforts" inflict planet-wide damage, but like the chimps, they neither know nor care.
"......... but like the chimps, they neither know nor care."
I think they know, and like the chimps in the reactor control room, would begin to twist dials and throw switches at a quicker and more panicked pace.
Make this man President!
Never in a million years. And, if he were, he would DO nothing.
All he knows how to do is complain.
Big fucking deal.
Cutting a trillion for the budget, that would be something.
Sure, go ahaed and buy into the Impossible and let the DOABLE that would restore the Wall between what a bank can do with your money and not, fall by the wayside.
You RonPaulians are the epitome of: " A Perfect solution maybe, sorta, in the next millennium, is better than a damned good one right now".
He could do a lot. The legislature makes the laws, but the Executive branch makes the regulations, and enforces them. He could drop funding, change regulations, and cut departments. And, he has the veto bomb, which too many Pres., in my opinion, are afraid to drop.
Oh, sure, just like theBamster can Do a lot.
You don't realize that the fact they CAN do a lot, does not mean that they WILL anything that upsets their contributors.
It is so evident in the Bamster I can't believe I'm discussing this .
Clinton could have vetoed the GrammLeachBliley termination of Glass Steagall. Did he Do IT? No. And that has set the stage for banks to ruin the finances for everyone but themselves.
Not a "RonPaulian" but I'll say that the only reason anything in America is 'Impossible' is because of glass-half-empty guys like yourself. Just saying....
Embrace the message, embrace the man, embrace neither. But listen more than you talk and have damned good reasons for embracing SOMETHING.
Ron Paul's message, we need to throw the country into a Great Depression so it can fix itself. They might as well print money, its the exact same thing. Either print your way out of debt or default.
I don't think those two outcomes are quite equal. Also, it's not a matter of 'throwing' the country into a depression - a depression is organically going to happen, after the steroid booms of the past decades. The people who 'threw' us into the coming depression are the ones who created the artificial booms.
A gradual descent from the current crisis is going to be as impossible to centrally manage as entire economies are, and pouring fuel on the fire will just make the ultimate crash all the more devastating.
Ohhh, I don't know about that? It seems to me a guy who complains (loudly) is a whole lot better then everyone else in D.C. (and those who want to be in D.C.) who don't seem to have anything to complain about other than each other.
I believe that the main question is how to move to a truly market economy from the current set-up,without causing inordinate disruptions and dislocations in the general population's lives and well-being. A corollary is how does one ensure that there is not abuse by corporations (a true market economy requires that competition be available in every sector, and there are far too many oligopolies and monopolies around today). If it is not, then there is abuse including fraud, shoddy workmanship, lyin', cheatin', and general rambuunctiousness.
Ah, changing the tires on the car while driving (in our case, while driving offroad Baja style). Not easy. Chances are that someone is going to lose a finger or two (at least).
Let me tell you something. We're past the point of "How do we fix this without pain?" There will be pain within your lifetime that is unimaginable to you today. We have run out of cheap energy. Economic "growth" is dying. Debt will explode or implode and at the ground level the ordinary people won't know or care which one it was because they'll be trying to figure out where their next meal is going to come from. There will be (more) wars. Massive social unrest and violence is coming in every "developed" nation that will suddenly see its former standard of living vanish. You'll be shocked to discover that your friends and family were actually "domestic terrorists" all along, when they begin to defy ever-stricter government regulations.
Wake up, man.
I see lots of "smart" people put the odds of this at "low." However, there hasn't been one truly plausible solution so far. I agree that we are long past the point of no return. I put the odds of what you said happening as "high" rather than low.
Too many promises. Too many people dependant on the system. And the system is tragically flawed. It is built on the notion of perpetual growth.
We have already hit that wall in terms of population and resources. No further yield can be organically extracted from the system for TPTB to live on.
Right now and for the last 10 years at least, we have experienced artificial, not organic, growth. Now, even this is failing. The debt saturation point has been crossed.
Economies have collapsed before. It sucks, sure, but it's not like a zombie apocalypse.
One thing important to remember: there has never been any kind of "solution." There never will be.
Our entire history as a species is just flopping along from one set of compromises to another as the previous set of assumptions gets proven wrong. There's nothing to fix, because there's nothing broken. Periods of structural stability don't represent perfection--just stagnation.
Everything important happens during turbulence.
Actually, it's built on legalized theft. The rest is just window dressing.
Ron Paul is an asshole. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk like robot about they say thousand things instead of DOING one single thing.
You who idolize him NEVER demand that he put Glass Steagal back on the books, by introducing it TODAY and taking his cas to the people and staying on it until he has shamed enough members to reinstate it or else lose their jobs, and instead fall for his utter bullshit about ending an agency that controls the world of finance ONLY BECAUSE GLASS STEAGAL WAS TORN DOWN!
F fucking Fail Ron, either get your ass in gear and get something done instead WHINING CONSTANTLY ABOUT IT OR GO THE FUCK HOME AND TAKE ALL YOUR IDIOTIC DISCIPLES WITH YOU.
GO BIG OR GO HOME!
Yawn.
Go BIG means rescinding Emergency Powers, and the last POTUS that indicated he even was thinking about it was JFK.
Sometimes you need to know when to hold em', and know when to fold em'...and Dr. Paul's hand has not, by ANY stretch of the imagination, been fully seen yet!
not been fully seen yet , you can bet on that, considering his years of experience on the Hill, he knows to keep a lot, under his vest.
Quixotic_Not ,
GO BIG OR GO HOME!
Go BIG means rescinding Emergency Powers
AMEN Bro, if the American sheeple had a CLUE of what can be, is being done to them,( see the Eo's and PDD's) they would have taken over DC by force before now.
You BARELY have he right to breathe, and that priviledge is soon going to be debated.
Face it, we have been taken over by a Foreign entity,Paul knows it, he just can't say it.
Gov't needs to downsized by 40%, min.
Who gives a fuck about Glass Steagal? He's talking about the value of money...
If you don't understand what Glass Steagal did to prevent the mess the financial world has created, and WHY it was torn down in the first place, than all you are doing is demonstrating your total ignorance about what has been done to you, your country, your family, and you deserves, along with your bros, all that is coming to you,
And even then Ron Paul will be talking talking talking and DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!
(or you could just be a plant from the democrats and republicans to attempt to distract from the ongoing screwing that americans are getting because banks are free to do with your money anything they want.
You ma'am are too stupid to breathe.
If you believe that you're educating people about your cause with this kind of post then you're too stupid to live. If you believe that you're right then explain your position and use logic to convince those who disagree with you. Only someone who knows their position is unsupportable would behave as you do.
I'm not here to educate anyone. The stupider people are around me the better it is for me.
I'm here to tell you that Ron Paul is a joke, and that those who fall for his claptrap and do not realize that all he is is a disorganized, likely schizo talker who has never done one thing he has proposed.
And those of you think that is ok are fools in the extreme to follow one who DOES NOTHING.
My position is supportable to anyone who looks for some evidence of achievement on Ron Paul's part.
Point me to one single law he has seen through to passage, that he authored?
And also tell me why he will not immediately propose reinstating Glass Steagal?
One thing at a time, mon petit mouton.
The first order of the day for Dr. Paul is to get elected, and he's moving in that direction via a simple message, perhaps too simple for the likes of you and your ilk, but plenty of AMERICANS are getting IT.
I understand you want to crush the enemy under your boots, but I hope that cooler heads will prevail...
Besides, reinstating Glass Steagal requires CON-gress, no?
Correct, and one of the things he has promised is that he will not legislate via executive order. He will, however, rescind all the prior executive orders that were abusive of that executive power.
He can do it right now! He doesn't have to be POTUS to do so, AND as POTUS he can't do doodly about G-S OR the FED. Of course he needs CONgress or a majority of them to go along and that is what he should spend the next 2 years doing until his fingers bleed, getting the message out to everyone in the country, until no rep stands a chance of election UNLESS they reinstate it. Instead of Spouting off about the military, the FED or whatever else he complains about and never DOES anything about.
He would have even less power to do those things than he does now.
I swear you who are lusting for him to be POTUS just want to get him the hell out of CONgress.
Plenty of americans? Good grief. Do you know how few people actually would vote for him? The last figure I saw was in the single digits, fer krissakes.
I dunno, why do you think he won't? He opposed GrammLeachBliley and voted against it at the outset. He knew that the new legislation would cause nothing but trouble.
But hey, at least GLB "did something", right?
.........The stupider people are around me the better it is for me.
I have read some ignorant statements on ZH. I have even said a few I am sure. But this takes the cake in my opinion. You sir, should run for Congress. You would win in a landslide!
I was going to point out that since there can't possibly be people more stupid he is fighting a futile cause.
OK. Got it. Paul a joke. You can stop typing now.
I’m going to K.I.S.S.
So in your endless rant about Ron Paul is reinstating Glass-Steagall (and that's how it is correctly typed, by the way) your only contribution?
Surely even you can see that, in tackling the Fed, Paul has CLEARLY set his sights on a little bigger fish than simply reinstating Glass-Steagall. As a good country Doctor, Paul's decided to attack the disease while you seem focused on treating (only one) of the smaller symptoms. Reinstate the Act (and I've no problem with that; whatever) and you've done nothing more than drop a rock in the water to try and stop the stream.
Take it for what it’s worth, but as someone who has worked in and around the world of Glass-Steagall (both from the regulatory and industry side)… When Glass-Steagall was repealed many (mistakenly) believed that the Fed represented a safeguard against any possible abuse. OK, so in hindsight that turned out to be a wrong assumption. We also (mistakenly) believed that the SEC would stand as an obstacle and that the ‘free market’ would allow for healthy competition and, in the end, keep everything on the up-and-up. Again, all that didn’t work out so well.
But this is important… Did not having the Act open a door to abuses? Perhaps. But what we’ve learned in the interim is that having or not having Glass-Steagall falls way short of fully understanding the problems and, more important, the solutions; the consensus is that had Glass-Steagall not been repealed the abuses and irregularities would STILL have taken place. THE PROBLEM WAS/IS A COLLAPSE OF MORALS (not to be confused with ethics), AN ACCOMMODATIVE MONETARY POLICY AND A CORRUPT POLITICAL PROCESS.
So instead of seeing a glass-half-empty, give Paul a little credit for seeing the big picture that, perhaps, you are unable to see. I suspect what he is trying to tell you (maybe he is guilty of not offering enough perspective, assuming you and others can see this for yourself) is that the ‘bigger fish’ in this triangle is the Fed, NOT something as simply and wholly ineffective as reinstating Glass-Steagall. Reinstate the Act and you still have the Fed and an accommodative monetary policy. But solve the Fed conundrum and (not having) Glass-Steagall will take care of itself.
Sorry, but the problems that we face took place well beyond the letter of Glass-Steagall.
No more posts on this subject, moving on... Paul a joke. Got it.
I have never said that ending the FED is NOT the thing to do. What I said was it is IMPOSSIBLE to end the FED because it is as embedded in the system as a barnacle is on a boat bottom. IT is FOREVER and there is nothing he or you or anyone else can do about it.
Your explanation is right in every single respect, but one: The FED is here to stay and he is tlting at windmills to try and get rid of an instituion that rules the world, behind closed doors, in complete secrecy, whose public statements are mostly lies, piled on top of fictions, on top of inscrutable and mysterious goings on that few people in the world are privy to.
What I'm suggesting by reenactment of G-S (and I apologize for a misspelling, as it bugs me too to see one) is at least the beginning of the separation of banks(depositories) from the investment (that has deteriorated into a casino) houses, at least keeping banks out of the gambling they have been doing with depositors' money and secondly, not permitting I-banks to, overnight, change from their investment gambling activities into banks to get access to the public's money via FDIC when the get into trouble as Goldman Sucks did.
When Paul first raised the idea of ending the FED I was (and still am ) all for it. But I don't see that happening as POTUS and his track record of merely pointing out problems and catastrophes is competely untfettered with any action, not one, in seeing things through to completion as manhy others in CONgress before him have managed to do.
Glass S., if taken a run at, would only be stripped down, in this enviroment.
And the "Fear factor" on "Market Weakness" versus a support to "change it all" isn't there right now.. E.U. fails, you can bet Glass S., D Frank and other Regs will get their chance. Obama just shows he won't stand up to Wall Street(Donations). Things will change imo, too many are relying on counter risk to keep these dirivitives up valued.
"Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk like robot..."
You, sir, are a bag of douche.
You SIR, haven't the presense of mind to contribute to a meaningful discusion.. is what your saying (talk talk talk). If you want to work outside the system fine, good luck, we'll notify your relatives, lol.
Talk always comes first, you seem to want to jump to the end... here's your rope..
anony, do yourself and everyone a favor and replace ron paul with your name in your first sentence. repeat 15 Trillion times and then come back when you're done.
That's some act of contrition. Still might need to throw in a few Hail Mary's and an Our Father, though.
You're not very good at trolling. It's gonna take a much greater effort than that around here.
@ anony: Howzat? I lost your point in the midst of all the swearing and vituperation.
I gather it had something to do w/Glass Steagal...really? How quaintly monocausal. Now disentangle the effect of GS repeal from the conversion of the big investment banks from true partnerships to incorporated businesses (roughly contemporaneous). And while you're at it, be sure to consider the effects of securitization with limited or delayed recourse, and portfolio insurance (e.g., CDS) w/o an insurable interest. In case you missed it, all these factors worked to encourage excessive risk taking via risk shifting, and if you think GS would have stopped any of these "innovations" you are beyond mistaken, you're delusional.
But disentangling those effects is hard work, and indeed it is. Im sure it's much easier to dwell in the 2-dimensional world of a simpleton.
Monocausal, I like that.
Yes, WS, Glass Steagall was torn down to permit all the activity that you so blithely dismiss as multitudinal. Nothing you have written would have been possible because banks could never interchanged themselves,like GS did to become a bank for access to the discount window and other attractions when it was clearly headed for bankruptcy. Glass would never have allowed it to take mortgages for seucritzation because the banks that sold off their mortgages as MBSs would have been prevented from packaging them. The MBS would never have existed in its complexity or its size with Glass Steagal intact
But, I've learned here that you guys are pimps for the banksters, masquerading like you care about the economy.
That's quite a trick you have pulled to downplay the enormity of Glass-Steagal, and pretend that it has no teeth, that the fact that it was dismantled was the primary cause of ALL the shenanigans that are still going on.
Nice work, but your propaganda doesn't fool.
Clearly the dismantling of Glass Steagall was a pivotal moment. It was partly about necessary leverage to keep the system from rolling over. And there have been many other "steps" along the way allowing more and more leverage to be created by the banking industry to keep the game alive. We are now in full bubble-blowing mode... endgame shit.
Damn, son, get your facts straight. Glass Steagal I (there were 2 or didn't you know that?) authorized the Fed to purchase US Treasuries (which had been barred for the first 20 years, though the Fed ignored that like they usually do). In the wake of the '87 meltdown, GS (or the The Banking Act of 34 and the Federal Reserve Act of 1913) were subsequently amended to allow the Fed to purchase ANYTHING from practically anyone.
Please provide the citation from GS that would have prevented mortgage securitization? Securitization appeared first in scale during the 1980s, when GS was fully in force (courtesy of another government monstrosity from the Great Depression, the GSEs). And it was actually cooked up first by Salomon Bros (and IB that was "walled off" from the depsoitory banks by GS).
You debate like an 8 year old. When confronted with the facts, change the subject. When pressed, resort to name calling. And when all else fails, whip out your big brush and paint with it all who disagree with you. I amend my previous description, you are not only delusional but comically misinformed.
BTW, I have no book for the bankers OR the government. They are flip sides of the same coin in my view.
BTW, repealing Glass Steagal happened a year after the illegal merger of Travelers/Citibank...the banksters just had their hand maiden politeers make it official with the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act.
Keep consenting to (D) & (R) Free Crap Empire™ fools, keep getting change you can bleed in...
Exactly. Congress changes the law after an administration does an illegal act. The constitution actually prevents congress any ex post facto law, congress is not to change a law after an event to make it legal (or the corollary of not passing any law that makes a previous legal act retrospectively illegal). Eg. Bush and the telecom's immunity for illegal wiretapping.
No one other than Ron Paul actually looks for constitutional authority before proposing a bill.
Glass Steagal is just minutia in the grand scheme of things anyway. It is our corrupted MONETARY system, run by a USSR-style economic Central Presidium otherwise known as the Federal Reserve, with the insidious and evil Ponzi-esque tool of fractional reserve banking, that is fundamentally to blame for our current economic misfortunes. Arguing about the effects of the repeal of Glass Steagal is like trying to count exactly how many raindrops are battering you per second in the middle of a hurricane --- meaningless in the bigger picture. Our economy, and financial and monetary systems, were doomed by the creation of the Fed; all else is mere details.
I'll look at it more closely but my instincts tell me it wouldn't have been repealed, if it was a minor note in the financial scheme of things.
Three repubican senators and a democratic POTUS with a partisan split on the issue is a fairly big deal.
The wall between the banks and the investment banks prevented a great deal of what occurred afterwards that has caused even larger banks to emerge since 2008. That cannot be anything but horrific.
The banks getting involved with MBSs, their ability to do those transactions would have been prevented. While the Ibanks would be able to get away with it, I believe that the Ibanks ability to then do a chameleon change overnight to become a bank, to get access to FDIC would also have been prevented.
I'm not saying that the FED is a good thing, but that G-S would have been a restraint on much of the activity that deposit banks got involved in to the detriment of their customers.
It was an important link in much of the dereg that went on between Clinton and Bush years in the WH.
You don't think cutting $1 Trillion in year one and phasing out 5 cabinet level departments is big? Explain to us who else is going big? All these other candidates are introducing is gimicky tax plans and alternaative ways to carve up the ponzi-berry-pie that is the federal budget.
Read the plan. http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/ron-paul-plan-to-restore-america/
He can't cut one single cent from the Budget. Not one. He can't pass a tax increase or lower them.
And you who buy into that are beyond help, you don't even know how our goverment works.
Only CONgress can raise and spend money. And in CONgress, only the Senior Committee Chairmen have the Power to do it.
Oh, and I had a plan to meet, date and have Sofia Vergara ask me to marry her.
Sooo...you want Rick Perry then? And how is that better, exactly?
ME????? Where did I EVER say that?
It seems the only way some people think is in partisan, rabid partisan terms.
I have no interest in any republican occupying any seat in government.
I just don't want others telling me that their candidate, of any party, especially one who has done absolutely nothing in his entire career. is some kind of savior, when he is nothing but a windbag.
PERRY??? Hah! The guy pretends to believe in god, and is Evangelical to boot. Nev-uh!
The Commander-in-Chief can order hundreds of thousands of troops home with the stroke of a pen.
Yes, he CAN do that.
But he can't buy them one pair of boots. And the only reason anyone gets that job is keep the Department of War in high dudgeon, spending nearly a trillion dollars a year. NOT to cut it.
You do realize that the POTUS can eliminate CABINET positions/departments, don't you?
Reading comprehension FTW buckeroo...
I know what he can POTENTIALLY, do. I have the ability to cheat on my income taxes, but that doesn't mean I'll do it.
He STILL has no control of the most important function in Government: SPENDING MONEY, RAISING MONEY.
Eliminating Cabinet positions?? You really are a dreamer and an idealist, aren't you?
You have no comprehension of what can actually get done.
Hating Ron Pual won't get your precious Glass-Stegal reinstated. You are either trolling or projecting your furstration on the wrong guy. Pretty typical behaviour pattern of folks who are in denial about the fact that the Fed and our entire chrony capitalist system is in decline.
He's done a lot, considering the vast majority of Congress has been against him (or ignorant of the issues) for much of his political career. Personally, I wouldn't be all that happy if he were to turn full-on Machiavellian just to 'get something done'.
I would. What he can do with just one or two of his ideas would be worth the price of going Machy.
THEN, I would be behind him 100% and I haven't voted in an election since 1990.
Wait, so you're saying YOU haven't done anything (voted) since 1990.
Hi pot. This is the kettle calling.
Lib how much has your vote done for you?
You need to see more videos of George Carlin and stop thinking that you matter.
Until you pick up a gun, a suicide bomb jacket, or set off a ton of explosives, until THEY fear you, your vote is a useless as my not voting.
And if you think by voting in a kleptocracy, you are changing things, look around you. IT has never been worse.
anony,
Ron Paul has been the lone voice of one, crying in the wilderness for 30yrs.
And, treated like a leper, by ALL.
No one man can push thru anything, and with the Senate under control of the Marxists, fat chance it even got thru the House, NO WAY in hell the Senate.
So, your point is?
Carter Glass himself thought Glass-Steagall was a mistake.
Historian John Steel Gordon pointed this out recently:
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/76319354/
End the non-Federal non-Reserve and all the other privately owned central banks around the world. JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are big shareholders in the non-Federal non-Reserve but the general public will never be offered a share. Their website in section 7 states that stockholders receive an annual dividend of 6% as a profit for providing a paper currency. (
http://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/section7.htm) Teach yourself about the Austrian school of economics and you will understand we have centrally planned economies not free market.
The non-Federal non-Reserve welcomes you to your destitution after 100 years of paying out an annual dividend of 6% to their mega-bank owners while having a .gov website. When you consider that Americans, both ‘democratic/labour’ and ‘republican/conservative’, before 1913 were never subject to this transfer of their wealth to the mega-banks you have to ask yourself how much less poor would the American general public be today without it and how much less warfare the world would have been spared.
Associations between Wall Street international bankers and the rise of both Hitler and Naziism in Germany and Lenin and Bolshevikism in Ruusia.
http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_12.htm
The same guys profited from bankrolling both sides of the European theatre of World War 2 – that is really, really special.
Once the grassroots of both the ‘democratics/labourites’ and ‘republicans/conservatives’ recognise who their common enemy is, it’s all over for the oligarchial 0.01%
The scam has been going on for more than a century and us, our children, our grandchildren will all be debt slaves to Wall Street international bankers.
Check out
http://dev.republicoftheunitedstates.org/what-is-the-republic/history/
I've never seen that 6% before. But specifically, it says...
" annual dividend of 6 percent on paid-in capital stock"
so what is the "paid-in capital stock" of the Fed?
I found a list of the stockholdings that had been posted in 1983 I think on http://www.usavsus.info/
I took pictures from the video but ZH cannot accept files in its posts.
I am sure you will not be surprised to learn that it is exclusively international banks.
Bankers Trust Company.
Bank of New York.
Chase Manhattan Bank.
Chemical Bank.
Citibank.
European American Bank & Trust.
J. Henry Schroders Bank & Trust.
Manufacturers Hanover.
Morgan Guaranty Trust.
Thanks for that. I've seen that before. But I was curious what 6% of paid-in capital actually equates to? In other words, how much is paid out as dividends every year? I have a feeling it is not a huge number in the big picture, but I am curious to know the answer.
*Americans passivly accept extra-judicial murders of American citizens ordered by secret panels.
*Americans applaud the death of a seriously wounded man begging for his life.
*VIPR unwarranted traffic stops in Tennessee and Michigan.
Ron Paul or no Ron Paul.....we're all good Germans now.
White Rose.
True heros Crockett. Unfortunate that their story is not well known.
Gringo Viejo
There is an old saying,take it for what it's worth.
Fear not the night,fear what hunts in the night.
Dos....sound reasoning ...not sure how to take it. As my screen name implies, I'm an older man in his 60s and remember many vistas of freedom that have vanished in my lifetime. Not to bore you or anyone else but when I was a teen in Virginia, I could come home from school, pick up my rifle, walk 300 yards and go deer hunting without so much as a second glance from anyone. Now there would be reports of a man with a gun and a swat team response. My God how I love this Country; My God how I abhor what's become of her. Thanks for tolerating the ramblings of an old man.
well, at least ron will be happy to know that there will be no qe3, after all, promises to launch are probably more effective than actual implementation. just check out todays states unemployment numbers--better numbers in 25 states!!! amazing!!! and corporate earnings, up up up, and the market? up 200 points!!! and all of this only 24 hours after hints about qe3!!!!! unfulfilled promises are amazing!!!!!
go buy some stocks then, everythings rosy...
alternatively, I can think of another depth charge you could strap your life savings to...
Why don't you just go buy some gold and shut the fuck up...
how about i find out where you live and kick the shit out of you? would that worK for you?
While you are at it you should come over to my place. I need a new bitch.
sorry, im not the 6 year boy youre looking for....
You sure sound like a child.
...whatever bounce off me sticks to you like glue...... or something to that effect
Nah, he's the type of guy to buy Euro bonds.
Rumor is QE3 is coming, in the form of another "Mtg. relief plan", Enabling the FED to offload some RBSs,, it'll come under the guise of homeowner relief.....not sure that'll work with just another promotion @ 4% for MTGs, but it would help the overleverage the Fed is under:))))
It is being fully floated now. Market seems to be reacting accordingly. PMs, not quite so. Odd. Worth watching. Of course, it could just be the FX effect of an imploding EU coupled with the QE expectation as well. Interesting times.
kito,
Only problem with Corporate earnings being UP, is because the profits have come from their factories, and workers abroad.
Corporate earnings, are not doing AmericaN's pretty much ONE damn bit of good.
Tell that to the 401kers