Audit the Fed? What would that accomplish?

[Tippit]

That is 100% WRONG.

The plan that the bankers dreamt up on Jekyll Island WAS NOT THE FED. What they came up with, and wanted passed, was something called the Aldrich Plan. This is a plan that would have put the national currency in the hand of bankers, not the government. In essence, the Aldrich Plan would have given bankers exactly the power that the "audit the Fed" crowd are currently claiming they have.

That's funny. The Aldrich plan doesn't differ from what became the Federal Reserve Act in any material way. Namely, the Fed gets to create money out of thin-air in secret. That's all that matters. The fact that the Aldrich plan was worse was used to sell an ignorant public the "good alternative".

This never got far, as the Republicans lost a ton of seats in Congress in the 1912 elections, resulting in a Democratic majority. The Democrats were not very happy with the plan, and it was subsequently dropped for what would become the Glass-Owens Act. Yes, some parts from the Aldrich Plan came in (such as a decentralized national bank), but what did pass was not what was proposed by Aldrich.

Again, what passed is the essence of every other corrupt central bank, the ability to create vast sums of money out of nothing in secrecy, and manipulate the supply, all while maintaining some pretense of beneficial independence. This only fools the stupid among us, apparently.

Quit it with the conspiracy theory ****.

Fact, not theory.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

That's funny. The Aldrich plan doesn't differ from what became the Federal Reserve Act in any material way. Namely, the Fed gets to create money out of thin-air in secret. That's all that matters. The fact that the Aldrich plan was worse was used to sell an ignorant public the "good alternative".

And yet, oddly, the Feds actions are all over the news. Perhaps you should turn off Faux News or whatever "news" source conspiritards use, and try reading a real newspaper.

Again, what passed is the essence of every other corrupt central bank, the ability to create vast sums of money out of nothing in secrecy, and manipulate the supply, all while maintaining some pretense of beneficial independence. This only fools the stupid among us, apparently.

Fact, not theory.

 

[TriskettheKid]

That's funny. The Aldrich plan doesn't differ from what became the Federal Reserve Act in any material way.

Yes, it does.

Unless you think that the populist Democrats that came into the majority after the 1912 elections were somehow secretly in cahoots with the Republicans who were there previously, only changing the name from the Aldrich Plan to the Glass-Owen Act.

Namely, the Fed gets to create money out of thin-air in secret.

Yeah, and it's not like the actions of the Fed are in anyway predictable. In all my life, I've never heard of analysts expecting the Fed to do something like drop or raise interest rates, or anything like that. Nope. Not once.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Unless you think that the populist Democrats that came into the majority after the 1912 elections were somehow secretly in cahoots with the Republicans who were there previously, only changing the name from the Aldrich Plan to the Glass-Owen Act.

They're all Jews. Of course they're in cahoots.

 

[WildCat]

You're only looking at one aspect of an enormous issue. IMHO more input is needed to make a decision. Drkitten said that the President or Congress could manipulate the currency during an election year (I've heard people say just this about gasoline prices). There are mechanisms in place that prevent this very thing from occurring

Yep, and Ron Paul wants to eliminate those mechanisms.

 

[WildCat]

The only job it has done, is debase the dollar by some 97% since its inception. This of course amounts to a massive tax, which few people seem to understand.

Maybe because this only affects a few people, those who keep all their money stashed under their mattress to keep it out of the filthy greedy hands of the joos who run the banks.

 

[Tippit]

The "Pittance" I referred to was the lending of last resort.

The context for your "pittance" claim was apparently that the amount of money the Fed creates as a "lender of last resort" pales in comparison to "public bailouts". By "public bailouts" I can only imagine you were referring to TARP, since we don't know exactly how much money the Fed has counterfeited to pay its Wall Street cronies with TALF, and all its other dealings. This indicates that you don't really have a grasp of the situation. First of all the NY Times can't know how many bad assets the Fed bought, because the Fed isn't transparent. It can only estimate. Second of all, almost everything on that page that *isn't* TARP is funded by monetary inflation at the Federal Reserve. The stuff that is actually funded by Treasury, including TARP, is also funded by inflation at the Federal Reserve to the extent that it represents monetized US Government debt, which is a not-insignificant amount.

The information on that page has $1.4 trillion, $528 billion of which has been spent, for "Government Lending." How much of that total stems from the confidential last resort lending?

All of it. Every dollar the Fed lends at the discount window, and every dollar that it creates out of thin-air to purchase the garbage that Wall Street wants the public to subsidize represents monetary inflation - a regressive tax. This includes every dollar that is created by the Fed to monetize US Treasury bonds, which are then used to purchase more garbage (TARP). So the $1.4B figure is hardly all-inclusive of the Fed's dealings. In fact, compared to what the Fed has done, the Treasury bailout via TARP is small potatoes.

Even if you assume every penny comes from that Fed duty, it would account for about 1/5th of the expense, and only a little over 1/10th of the projected cost.

But again, that page says nothing specific about the program I was referring to.

I can't know what program you're referring to unless you are specific. When most people refer to the bailout, they're referring to TARP. This represents the amount of money that was actually allocated by Congress for the purposes of bailing out Wall Street.

Then there's what the Fed does.

 

[WildCat]

the inherently unstable fractional reserve system.

Elminating the fractional reserve system is a great idea... if a nation of subsistence farmers living hand-to-mouth is your goal.

 

[Tippit]

Maybe because this only affects a few people, those who keep all their money stashed under their mattress to keep it out of the filthy greedy hands of the joos who run the banks.

At what point does constant bigot-baiting in-lieu of argument become as vile as bigotry itself? Probably when it's used to drown out legitimate criticism of corrupt institutions. But don't let that stop you.

 

[TriskettheKid]

Elminating the fractional reserve system is a great idea... if a nation of subsistence farmers living hand-to-mouth is your goal.

Well, we could go back to the way things were prior to the Fed, but after the Second National Bank.

After all, the dollar wasn't devalued by the mysterious, secret, and evil entity that is the Fed. And we wouldn't have much to worry about with the dollar no longer being debased so horridly.

You know, just minor things to worry about. Like.....

The Panic of 1837 and resulting 5yr depression
The Panic of 1857
The Panic of 1873, and the joyous time known as the Long Depression
The Panic of 1884 (more minor than the others)
The Panic of 1893, which had the interesting effect of being made worse due to a run on the gold supply
The Panic of 1907

But it's all worth it. Why have a stable economy?

 

[WildCat]

At what point does constant bigot-baiting in-lieu of argument become as vile as bigotry itself? Probably when it's used to drown out legitimate criticism of corrupt institutions. But don't let that stop you.

Oh please. All the anti-fed conspiracy theories have their roots in anti-semitism.

Just look at Henry Ford's favorite book "The International Jew" for the roots of the current anti-fed sentiment.

eta: Chapter 57. Jewish Idea in American Monetary Affairs
Chapter 58. Jewish Idea Molded Federal Reserve Plan
Chapter 59. Jewish Idea of Central Bank for America
Chapter 60. How Jewish International Finance Functions
Chapter 61. Jewish Power and America's Money Famine

All Ron Paul does is disguise the anti-semitism by substituting "banker" for "Jews".

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

At what point does constant bigot-baiting in-lieu of argument become as vile as bigotry itself? Probably when it's used to drown out legitimate criticism of corrupt institutions. But don't let that stop you.

You refer to our currency as "counterfeit" and you want to be taken seriously? Oh that's rich!

 

[Tippit]

Yes, it does.

Unless you think that the populist Democrats that came into the majority after the 1912 elections were somehow secretly in cahoots with the Republicans who were there previously, only changing the name from the Aldrich Plan to the Glass-Owen Act.

It's apparent that there are no material differences between the Aldrich Bill, and what became the Federal Reserve Act. The best way to pass some controversial legislation, is to propose the most egregious conditions and then concede all of the irrelevant points. Frank Vanderlip, a banker who attended the 1910 Jekyll Island meeting wrote in his 1935 autobiography From Farmboy to Financier :

I was as secretive, indeed I was as furtive as any conspirator. Discovery, we knew, simply must not happen, or else all our time and effort would have been wasted. If it were to be exposed that our particular group had got together and written a banking bill, that bill would have no chance whatever of passage by Congress…I do not feel it is any exaggeration to speak of our secret expedition to Jekyll Island as the occasion of the actual conception of what eventually became the Federal Reserve System.”
​

Evidently Vanderlip, co-author of what became the Aldrich Plan, wasn't too disappointed with the Federal Reserve Act.

Yeah, and it's not like the actions of the Fed are in anyway predictable. In all my life, I've never heard of analysts expecting the Fed to do something like drop or raise interest rates, or anything like that. Nope. Not once.

This is relevant how? It's predictable that if I go to a certain area of town waving $100 bills that I will get robbed. That changes the actuality of being robbed how?

 

[Tippit]

Well, we could go back to the way things were prior to the Fed, but after the Second National Bank.

After all, the dollar wasn't devalued by the mysterious, secret, and evil entity that is the Fed. And we wouldn't have much to worry about with the dollar no longer being debased so horridly.

You know, just minor things to worry about. Like.....

The Panic of 1837 and resulting 5yr depression
The Panic of 1857
The Panic of 1873, and the joyous time known as the Long Depression
The Panic of 1884 (more minor than the others)
The Panic of 1893, which had the interesting effect of being made worse due to a run on the gold supply
The Panic of 1907

But it's all worth it. Why have a stable economy?

The fact that there were recessions and depressions before the ones that came after the Fed's inception isn't a valid argument for the Fed. The ability to manipulate the money supply or various aspects of a market existed before the Fed. The Fed merely institutionalized the manipulation and broadened the scope.

 

[TriskettheKid]

It's apparent that there are no material differences between the Aldrich Bill, and what became the Federal Reserve Act.

That's funny, because it's wrong.

The Aldrich Plan called for what was essentially a single central bank controlled by bankers, completely independent from the government.

I mean, where the hell do you read this alternate history ****?

 

[TraneWreck]

The context for your "pittance" claim was apparently that the amount of money the Fed creates as a "lender of last resort" pales in comparison to "public bailouts". By "public bailouts" I can only imagine you were referring to TARP, since we don't know exactly how much money the Fed has counterfeited to pay its Wall Street cronies with TALF, and all its other dealings.

[...]

Then there's what the Fed does.

Almost nothing contained in that response was accurate. That link detailed where the money went, people can read it for themselves.

By the way, what is inflation at right now? And what has it been since the crisis started?

 

[TriskettheKid]

The fact that there were recessions and depressions before the ones that came after the Fed's inception isn't a valid argument for the Fed. The ability to manipulate the money supply or various aspects of a market existed before the Fed. The Fed merely institutionalized the manipulation and broadened the scope.

What are you on about?

If I was making a point about recessions and depressions, I would have said so.

What I was pointing out, and rightly so, were the number of banking panics that took place in the interim. There was almost a banking panic every decade from the end of the Second National Bank to the start of the Fed.

 

[Tippit]

Oh please. All the anti-fed conspiracy theories have their roots in anti-semitism.

Just look at Henry Ford's favorite book "The International Jew" for the roots of the current anti-fed sentiment.

eta: Chapter 57. Jewish Idea in American Monetary Affairs
Chapter 58. Jewish Idea Molded Federal Reserve Plan
Chapter 59. Jewish Idea of Central Bank for America
Chapter 60. How Jewish International Finance Functions
Chapter 61. Jewish Power and America's Money Famine

All Ron Paul does is disguise the anti-semitism by substituting "banker" for "Jews".

The only person who's said anything in this thread about jews, up until now, was you, and another troll. It's a pathetic attempt at ad hominem, but it's even worse, because I don't even resemble a bigot. So you're attempting to discredit the arguer based on a presumption that isn't even true. The "jew is code word for banker" argument is ridiculous, because that would prohibit any legitimate criticism of "bankers". It's doubly ridiculous because it presumes that the Fed is "run by jews".

The fact that Henry Ford was an anti-semite and decided to use hateful rhetoric in his condemnation of the Fed doesn't have anything to do with the argument against the Fed, it just provides useful idiots the ability to distract from the substance of the issue, which is the fact that the Fed is a corrupt institution.

 

[Tippit]

Almost nothing contained in that response was accurate. That link detailed where the money went, people can read it for themselves.

Really? What was accurate, then? My response was about where the money came from, and the answer is "thin-air", and it's not a pittance.

By the way, what is inflation at right now? And what has it been since the crisis started?

That depends. How do you define inflation, by an increase in consumer prices? What index of consumer prices do you want to use? The government CPI is cooked. If you define it by the money supply, the Fed decided to stop publishing M3, so we have to estimate it.

But, as I've pointed out before, focusing on consumer prices to measure inflation is exceedingly myopic. That would ignore all of the Fed-induced asset bubbles throughout history. The already vastly-wealthy wall streeters who received the bailouts aren't really going to ramp up their consumption of food and energy, were these actually accounted for in CPI. They might add another Bentley to their car collection. What they're sure to do, however, is buy assets like stocks and bonds, to increase their relative share of the production pie. This will undoubtedly allow them to consume more than their fair-share in the future.

Of course it's worth pointing out, again, that monetary inflation is a tax, and even if the CPI weren't understated and indicated a price change of 0, you would still be paying a tax in the form of an opportunity cost. You see, in a robust and technologically advanced society such as ours, prices for goods and services will be in a constant state of decline - things get cheaper as we produce more. It's only the persistent debasement of our money that keeps prices stable, or going up.

It's not my fault that most people don't understand this, it's akin to how people perceive taxes withheld much differently than taxes paid.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I mean, where the hell do you read this alternate history ****?

Conspiracy sites, especially those involving Jewish conspiracies.

What's funny is that Tippit keeps posting this nonsense, and gets nothing but ridicule in return. I think he doesn't realize this is a skeptics site and he has not, and will not, convince anyone that our money is counterfeit. You'd think eventually he'd figure it out.