The View From 1776

As I have written several times since July, the only real beneficiaries of massive intervention by Obama and the Fed are Wall Street stock brokers and the giant banks.  A column in the August 27, 2011, New York Times by Gretchen Morgenson (one of the few Times reporters who has any understanding of financial markets and business) seconds that position.

Read The Rescue That Missed Main Street.

Quote:

Walker F. Todd, a research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research and a former assistant general counsel and research officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland [as well as a long time board member of the Committee for Monetary Reform and Education], said these details from 2008 confirm that institutions, not citizens, were aided most by the bailouts.

“What is the benefit to the American taxpayer of propping up a Belgian bank with a single New York banking office to the tune of tens of billions of dollars?” he asked. “It seems inconsistent ultimately to have provided this much assistance to the biggest institutions for so long, and then to have done in effect nothing for the homeowner, nothing for credit card relief.”

Mr. Todd also questioned the Fed’s decision to accept stock as collateral backing a loan to a bank. “If you make a loan in an emergency secured by equities, how is that different in substance from the Fed walking into the New York Stock Exchange and buying across the board tomorrow?” he asked. “And yet this, the Fed has steadfastly denied ever doing.”

Anyone interested in attending the October meeting of the Committee for Monetary Reform and Education (take a look at the program listing on the website link above) should telephone CMRE president Elizabeth Currier at 704-598-3717.