This is a few days old but I’m just catching up on news after PorcFest and this goes well with “Fed engaged in “cover-up” of BofA-Merrill deal-lawmaker.”
NEW YORK, May 26 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury debt prices weakened further on Tuesday after the Federal Reserve bought $1.55 billion of the $8.52 billion of Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) dealers had submitted.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury note’s yield, which moves inversely to its price, rose to 3.46 percent <US10YT=RR>, from 3.45 percent shortly before details of the Fed operation. (Reporting by John Parry; Editing by Leslie Adler)
What?! The FED bought inflation proof treasuries. Price inflation that they primarily create through monetary inflation. Is this normal? I’ve not noticed it before.
Extraordinary times require extraordinary actions. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the bold policy moves undertaken by the Federal Reserve over the past two years. The financial crisis forced the Fed to be aggressive and creative in its attempts to provide liquidity to credit markets that had frozen up. These were necessary steps, and mostly applauded.
But the very boldness of its actions has put the independence of the Fed at risk. Congress is now clamoring to audit the Fed, and some of the policy proposals currently under discussion at the Federal Reserve will only increase the threat to its independence.
Without independence, the political cycle would subject the central bank to political pressures that, in turn, would impart an inflationary bias to monetary policy.
On this view, politicians in a democratic society are short-sighted because they are driven by the need to win their next election. This is borne out by empirical evidence. A politically insulated central bank is more likely to be concerned with long-run objectives.A variant of the argument for central bank independence is that control of monetary policy is far too important to put in the hands of politicians. As a group, they have repeatedly demonstrated the lack of political will power to make difficult economic decisions. But now they want to assert control over the Fed. The bill, HR 1207, introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (who brought you the “Employ Americans First Act”) and Rep. Ron Paul, would assert greater control over the Fed. As Ron Paul writes on his Web site: “Auditing the Fed is only the first step towards exposing this antiquated insider-run creature to the powerful forces of free-market competition. Once there are viable alternatives to the monopolistic fiat dollar, the Federal Reserve will have to become honest and transparent if it wants to remain in business.”
Great! Obviously, monetary policy is so falling-off-a-log simple that your elected representatives can insert themselves via the demand for transparency into decisions of true complexity and subtlety. Why am I not feeling reassured?
I believe cy_cy says it all:
Quoth Cooley- “Without independence, the political cycle would subject the central bank to political pressures that, in turn, would impart an inflationary bias to monetary policy.”
Is this sentence for real? Perhaps you could summon a grad student to investigate the “inflationary bias” pre-Fed and post-Fed. (I realize you’re too busy.)
Since the Fed’s inception, the dollar has lost over 98% of its value. Before the Fed, the dollar would actually GAIN value as time passed (thanks to productivity gains.) Are you implying that the so-called “independent fed” should be patting itself on the back for (so far) preventing hyper inflation?
You clearly imply that Ron Paul wishes to bring transparency to monetary policy so that he himself can make macro monetary calls (manipulating interest rates, reserve rates, etc.) You imply that he is not qualified to be making these decisions. I am sure he would agree: his entire point is that no individual or small group can centrally determine interest rates.
The fact that you would so horribly misstate Paul’s monetary thesis suggests you either have not bothered to research his thesis (yet have the audacity to write an article about it anyway), or you do know what he is trying to say, but you grossly misconstrued his message so that you could shout it down. Either option is an overwhelming suggestion of both intellectual bankruptcy and, in light of your career choices as a writer and an educator, severe moral bankruptcy as well.
Tags: The Fed, HR 1207, Intellectual Cowardice
The Federal Reserve has been hobbled by at least two major shortcomings that were primarily responsible for the current and several previous credit crises. Its failure to spot the importance of changing financial markets and its commitment to laisser faire economics were big mistakes and justify a fundamental overhaul of the Fed.
Bill Bonner puts it well over at FleetStreetInvest.co.uk:
How about that? America’s largest car company is going to be state-owned… nationalized… presided over by the federal bureaucrats.
It’s just a part of the shift away from the free market and towards an un-free market. Free market capitalism has failed, say the pundits. Let’s give the feds a chance.
Even Henry Kaufman, writing in today’s Financial Times, says that the Fed’s “libertarian dogma” prevented it from controlling the banks properly.
But the Fed is hardly a libertarian organization. It’s a banking cartel. As a cartel, it looks out for its member banks – and doesn’t hesitate to use state power to do so. There is nothing libertarian about it… and no dogma associated with it – except as Greenspan’s eyewash – that is even vaguely libertarian.
The Fed colluded with member banks to fix interest rates. In so doing, it helped create the biggest bubble in credit the world had ever seen. It was a terrible thing for the average fellow – who was lured deep into debt by rising house prices and cheap credit. But it was a great thing for the members of the Federal Reserve cartel. Profits in the financial sector – notably, the big Wall Street investment banks – soared.
But bankers are vulnerable to too much of a good thing – just like everyone else. Soon, they made the classic Wall Street mistake – they came to believe their own hype. Not only did they gin up trillions of dollars’ worth of preposterous financial instruments… they actually bought these debt bombs from each other.
This posed a grave danger to the nation’s economy… and to the banking system. Henry Kaufman claims the regulators dropped the ball because they put too much faith in the free market. But the regulators were little more than front men for the banks themselves. After Alan Greenspan came Henry Paulson as head of the Fed. He was probably still replying to messages at his old address when the crisis began. And the head of the New York Fed – now, US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner – was elected to his post by the very institutions he was supposed to be overseeing.
Neither of them was about to stop the party; they and their friends were having too much fun.
I agree it was inconsistency which helped lead to this. You can’t supercharge an industry and remove the governors (regulations) and not expect shit to hit the fan eventually.
Let’s be consistent. Remove the supercharger. Remove the governors. Stop tweaking with a system you can’t possibly control and leave it be. Get rid of the Federal Reserve and it’s monoply on interest rates and money and credit creation. Remove it’s monopoly on legal tender. Treat fractional reserve banking as the fraud it is (in its current form anyway). Allow the bubble created “too big to fail” failures to fail and go into bankruptcy. Oh and stop handing out our grandchildren’s future tax dollars on failed institutions.
Speaking of which… yesterday Obama said that the government should spend as much on R&D as on the military. On Slashdot someone asked why when we are already in debt would we be spending money on something that would help us but costs would be placed on our children. A response was that it would more likely help them because the advancements would come out later.
My question is… what moral authority does this guy have spending future generations money (which will be forcefully taken from them) regardless of who it will directly effect? Is that not taxation without representation? They have had no say in the matter. Why not let the bureaucrat tyrants of their own time decide how best to steal from them?
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