Federal Reserve seeks to protect U.S. bailout secrets

Rare or precious metals are not the answer. Look at where greed has already taken us. Northern California lands were ripped to shreds and many waterways poisoned for a yellow rock. Instead of reverting to old behavior, we need to reimagine our way of life so as to leave something for our grand-children.

little do you know. this is in favor of the public. it is in your best interest that these banks are not punished for needing help that they did not originate. those banks that originated the bad mortgage deals are already public. other banks got pulled in. when the next financial crisis occurs, as it will, you don't want banks delaying when they want help. as trouble comes, you want them able and willing to ask for help. making too much public will cause them to hesitate and have longer harm than good.

Maybe making this public will encourage them to run a legitimate business based on sound business practices and serving the customer rather then just the bottom line.

it is the correct thing to do to an extent. the next time there is a financial panic, do you want lenders to not ask for help making the recession more severe and the depth more widespread? it's like asking for a list of all americans who applied for a credit card, where, how much, and what for. it is not necessary. repercussions for individuals, like the banks who applied for the loan whether they got it or not, are punishable.

If the Fed is going to spend taxpayer money to bail out businesses then the taxpayers have a right to know. Besides if they have nothing to hide why are they fighting this so hard?

Banks will comeback for loans the way crackheads look for a rock.

Hey! Crackheads have feelings too! (I think.)

@MJ, crackheads are saints compared to the bankers, stockbrokers, politicians, and economists that fnucked up our economy!

now you need to do your research and see where the balance sheet stands now. how much of that money have they gotten back and how much was due to their lending scheme? get with the times.

you're looking over the fact the Fed needs to be an independent entity and LOLR (lender of last resort). if you force them to reveal these details, the entire banking industry has reason to postpone the next time they need help. yes, it's bound to happen again. is that want you want (longer times of country-wide economic recovery, more instability, longer periods of unemployment)? conspiracy theories are just that.. theories.

and when you say who gained with the taxpayer lost? we're all taxpayers brother. the recession is no boom for anyone. sure, banks got bailed out, but if they hadn't you'd be farther up shit's creek without a paddle along with millions more.

That's not true -- the Fed's involvement ends up distorting the market and, as a result, yields a longer recover time.

here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czcUmnsprQI, and
here: http://mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf (you might find chapter 4 especially interesting)

it is true. no youtube videos. i have a masters in econ. study why the Fed was created in the first place and why it is independent and why every economy can be ranked by growth and stability by the degree to which the central bank is independent. you can't say they simply distort. you have to look at the alternative without the bank. you set monetary policy by different priorities, ours is inflation and unemployment. other countries have other priorities. also, to argue that the fed distorts the market is like saying the government distorts the market as well as the variation in year to year taxes. nothing is exactly predictable due to the plethora of distortions. in the long run, you need to look at stability and recovery. without the central bank, we'd be back in the days of much larger volatility. it's all in the history books. no one simply created the central bank out of thin air for the fuck of it.

So no to Thomas Woods? Even though the House Financial Committee called him in as an expert witness? And what about Rothbard? He sucks too? If you're not going to listen to other arguments, then there's really no reason to debate, right?

So monetary policy is based on both inflation and unemployment? Let's look at the Fed's track record...

Well, the free market unemployment rate is approaching 21% and worsening; maybe they did better on the inflation side...

Inflation (Graph of M0):

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?s[1][id]=AMBNS

I guess not.

lol. this is why i don't debate. your 21% unemployment rate is absurd. it's well known and published that the going unemployment rate is a little over 10% and that people are appalled by it. our regular unemployment is around 5% and steady. this is what i mean by targeting. it's a recession so unemployment is up. look historically and you'll realize unemployment is steady and lower than other industrialized countries. europe would be happy with 10% where they usually hover around that level. we don't.

scroll to the bottom of this link (Table B) for unemployment levels
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

also, your inflation graph is a joke. is that what you call inflation? because what it looks like to me is a level of the monetary base which does not equal inflation my friend. increases in prices not justified by growth is inflation. i cannot argue with a non-economist that is fooled by rhetoric.

look at the graphs for inflation - we've had deflation lately
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Economics/Inflation-CPI.aspx?symbol=USD

I'll leave the insults aside. The term "inflation" is not agreed on by any means. I (like Mises, Rothbard, Hazlitt, Hayek, etc...) say inflation is any increase in the money supply. Students with even a BS in econ should be familiar with that -- or, at the very least, that the term isn't agreed upon. Rising prices are just a consequence. You obviously associate inflation with only rising prices (cpi). Great. I just don't see how you can get around the idea that if the money supply doubles, eventually prices will double. In any case, the Fed has by no means kept the value of the dollar stable. Look at the graph of M0 again and tell me what you think. Relative to Zimbabwe...maybe.

Dude, you say the free market unemployment rate at 21% is absurd? Why? The Bureau of Labor Statistics' criteria is completely out of touch with economic reality. What would the unemployment rate be if we calculated it the same why we did (without "fluffing" it) back in the depression of 1929? Yeah, that's what I mean by "free market unemployment rate" -- the real number of people unemployed. I see figures anywhere between 17-21% all the time. Use google, and you will too.

If the unemployment rate decreases when the criteria are changed, that doesn't mean any less people are unemployed; it just looks better on paper.

I think that's it.

yeah you're going to have to take the fall on this one. inflation is no abstract term. inflation is widely agreed upon as growth in prices and definitely is not a simple increase in the money supply. sure, ceteris paribus, if you increase the money supply, then any BS in Econ will tell you inflation has to occur, but as you know, it is not a ceteris paribus world. you do know that a lot of this money has been for long term investments, correct? you also know that inflation is not a short-term effect, correct? you also know that as long as we act to take the money back in, which happens all the time and which you can see on the Fed balance sheet right now, that the risk of inflation decreases. in fact, there were more worries about deflation than inflation recently. that's the problem with your chart on MO, SUPPLY is only once factor, you need also money DEMAND.

your unemployment measure is the type that is not connected to reality. have you ever actually taken any college course that measured unemployment the way you are? if so, i would get a refund. the definition of unemployment is the number of people willing and able to work but cannot find work. yours brings into account all types of other people like those that aren't working by choice and those between jobs but have one secured. it would be ridiculous for any academician to use that type of employment in any journal publishing. it's not for the hell of it that this unemployment rate has been used for decades upon decades.

Read any of the well-known/respected economists I mentioned from the Austrian School and then tell me the term inflation is agreed upon. And I'm not saying any BS in econ can tell you that rising prices are only a symptom of an increase in the money supply; I was saying any BS exposed to, say, Hayek, will be able to tell you that economists disagree on the definition on the term inflation. I use Hayek because he won the Nobel Prize in 1974.

Your sacred unemployment rate doesn't include discouraged workers, those who are self-employed, involuntary early retirees, those on disability who still want to work someplace suitable for their medical condition, those who work part-time who want to work full-time, those who are underemployed, etc... Use whatever measure you want though, it's still unacceptable and the monetary policy of the Fed is only making it worse.

i would update your winners.. try Krugman, Stiglitz, Sen, Mundell, Engell and Granger...

abolishing the fed and reverting to the gold standard is the reason why the Austrian School is such a minority. the winners of the past 20 years or so have updated and confirmed this thinking of central bank necessity.

You've listed economists who have contributed a lot of helpful ideas to economics, however, I have my disagreements. When a currency is debased enough, the economy collapses. When that happens, the state goes with it. It's happened with the Greek Empire, Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, etc... and more recently the Soviet Union. Keynesians have steered us onto an unsustainable path. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Also, I think most members of the Austrian School would argue for something other than the gold standard. If a free society ultimately chose gold, then so be it, but the Austrian School is based on free-market principles. That is to say, we would have competing currencies. And as for the Fed, yeah, let's ditch it.

outtheinside
"the recession is no boom for anyone"
Really? then how can you explain this?

"Goldman Sachs is expected to pay its employees an average of about $595,000 apiece for 2009, one of the most profitable years in its 141-year history. Workers in the investment bank of JPMorgan Chase stand to collect about $463,000 on average."

I guess it is. It represents the combined July and August GDP of the entire USA. You could buy 2 Million ounces of Gold with that load of dead Presidents. It would probably take a fleet of 18 wheelers just to deliver it.

presscore, and without it, that July and August GDP would be much smaller than it was.

@outtheinside. Yes, it would be smaller. But for the sake of rational argument, lets look at it from a relativistic perspective. In the 1800s, long before the advent of fiat money,the Federal Government was still Constitutional and coined money. For the first 63 years, the USA had a system of weights & measures guaranteeing an ample money supply, qand equality of the classes, from farmers owning solid Copper 1/2 cents the size of quarters, to the millers owning large cents the size of Kennedy half dollars, to affluent merchants owning Silver, to the wealthy owning Gold coins. By 1856, the Gummint abandoned their Constitutional duty, and made it a lot easier for the wealthy to exploit the common man. By 1896, the economic imbalance became so extreme they called for fiat money, which they implemented in 1914. But instead of keeping both Constitutional standard of coined money with U.S. Treasury Notes to promise redemption of the bullion coins, and maintain a fiat money system running its parrallel course, each to accomplish its own function, guess what happened ? Constitutional money was abandoned when the FRS ate the Treasury. JFK issued his Executive Order 11100 to make the Mints continue to produce Silver coins. And 10 days after he announced he had a shocking expose of a diabolical plot to undermine the USA from within to reveal to the Amercian people, he was Murdered. Then Congress passed the Silver coinage act, which was unConstitutional. Ronald Reagan saw the last vestige of Constitutional money destroyed in 1983 with the introduction of copper coated aluminum slugs. So yes, the hyperinflated value of $2 Trillion must be divided by a factor of 50, to measure it in terms of what the average human can sense. The point is the real value will always be smaller because our "money" is only 2 % real money and 98% toilet paper for the Banksters to wipe their butts with. My point has always been that the system got out of control with "Fed" fiat "money" because the sheer enormity of the hyperinflated Zimbabwe style numbers is so mind boggling, that all the average person can do is look at it and see nothing because they're embezzeling our time and labor-the real money- into nothing but something to wipe their asses with with as they buy the real money-Gold with it. Don't forget that back in the 1800s, there were fractional promisory notes issued for Silver dimes, quarters, and half dollars. And that $1 Gold coins were issued when Silver dollars weren't. It wasn't a perfect system, but it was honest. The Government wasn't where the Corporations were, and vice versa back then, because they weren't trading places trying to accomplish each other's function.
When people had precious metals in their own hands, they were savvy enough about
business that they didn't need the Rothchild's "business development company" aka THEIR "fed" to usurp our Treasury.