For the first time in History the Federal Reserve held a press conference today.. Chairman Ben Bernanke says he wants the Federal Reseve process to be more open. It's about time, for the better part of 100 years the Federal Reserve has controled the American Economy. Generally they've done it in a way that benefits the Big Wall Street Bankers and often at the expense of ordinary people.
The bank originally was set up in a way designed to prevent it from becoming victim to partisen politics.. The arrangement also gave it the power to control the money supply and the economy in secret.. Not even Congress can question the actions of the bank.
Here's some of what Bernanke had to say
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The following are highlights from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's press conference on Wednesday after the central bank's monetary policy committee meeting. This is the first regularly scheduled press conference by a Fed chief.
In a statement following the meeting, the Fed said it would finish its $600 billion bond-buying program in June as scheduled, and repeated its plans to keep interest rates low for an "extended period."ON RECOVERY BEING SLOW: Read it here
ON FED TRANSPARENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY:
"It used to be that the mystique of central banking was all about not letting anybody know what you're doing. As recently as 1994 the Federal Reserve didn't even tell the public when it changed the target rate for the federal funds rate.
"Many central banks do press conferences -- we have some experience with them -- and it does provide a chance for the (Fed) chairman to provide additional context and color for both the meeting and the projections provided by the committee.
"The counter-argument has always been there was a risk that the chairman speaking might create unnecessary volatility in financial markets or may not be necessary given all the other sources of information coming out of the Federal Reserve.
"It was our judgment that at this point the additional benefits from more information, more transparency, meeting the press directly, outweigh some of these risks."
IMO the reason for the press conference is simple. In recent years, as more people have become aware of the tremendous power the Federal Reseve has over the economy people they've questioned how one organization, responsible to no one, can control the entire economy. More recently they've come to realize that while personal incomes have shrunk and the cost of living has increased the Big banks are making a ton of money.. Some people still blame this on the republicans... but the truth is the Reserve has effectively GIVEN the big banks trillions of dollars over the last couple years.
That money has been used to prop up the Stock Market and more than likely has gone into Oil Futures, driving up the price of gasoline.. It's not hard to make money, if like Goldman Sachs you have 800,000,000,000 in zero interest loans you don't really have to worry about paying back because you're to big to fail.
