Finished reading Secrets of the Temple by William Greider

(C) 1987 (Click on book cover pic for NYT 1988 book review)

Never stated so briefly in the book, but I came away from this monster of a book (over 750 pages) with the idea that what the Fed is supposed to do and what it does in practice are not necessarily the same thing. Protecting big fat greedy piggy bankers that are "too big to fail" from their own stupid mistakes is what the Fed does. Protect the investor class is what the Fed does. Can't have an ugly thing like inflation increase the real estate value of middle class homeowner's investments by making them pay back a loan in dollars of less value, right? Ben Bernanke may give a crap about the little guy, but the Fed as an institution sure hasn't proven that to me. Actually I hate the bankers and Wall Street in general more than I hate the Federal Reserve for bailing their big sorry asses out, but only slightly less.

p.155 "..it took real chutzpa for banks to complain about "taxes" since they paid to little compared to other business sectors. In 1980 the effective federal income-tax rat n financial institutions was only 5.8 % compared ti 34.1% for retailing, 24.5% for electronics and appliance manufacturing, 16.4% for aerospace, 10.9% for utilities..."

I do understand now that the Fed is supposed to be apolitical, and stabilize the money supply. Though created by an act of congress, congress has no real power over it and neither does the White House other than appointing the board members and the Congress confirming them, or not. If you think about it that makes sense because money doesn't give a crap whether it's Democrats, Republicans or purple people eaters that allow it to flourish, you know, kind of like bacteria. At first I was confused as to why Paul Volcker was advising Obama with the current crisis, but he at least believed in regulation, unlike Greenspan. I don't know how anyone could come away from this book now and not think "Wow, if you're gonna fuck up in a gamble, make sure you're a really big banking or insurance institution, and just go for it, the 'little people' will pay off your debts."

Here is Steve Lendeman's take on the Fed from a 2006 article

There are growing slums around the world and yet we are witnessing things like this:

£14,000-per-night luxury resort planned for world's richest people
A billion-pound resort for the world's richest people to be named Dall House is being planned for a remote area of Scotland.
By Simon Johnson
Published: 9:30PM BST 31 Jul 2009

Members of the exclusive club would be expected to have minimum liquid assets of £100 million...

Mr. Greider recently wrote this article for the Nation magazine:
Dismantling the Temple

Banking Bandits Get Their Reward
By Robert Scheer
Posted on Aug 4, 2009

AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
Good luck with that: A protest sign is held up outside the Bank of America Tower, left, on April 28, 2009 in New York.

Goldman Sachs staff told to avoid big purchases


The Great American Bubble Machine
From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and they're about to do it again
MATT TAIBBI
Posted Jul 13, 2009 1:49 PM
Watch Taibbi explain on video here why supply and demand and all that "free market" stuff is bullshit.

When are we going to to rise up and quit asking for seconds on shit sandwiches?

Crapola, when the cold war was on were we borrowing from our cold war enemies?