WatchSo you want to destroy the Federal Reserve. You know you are not the only one.
Ron Paul is the new Chair of the Monetary Policy Subcommittee. Okay, you say that's a good start - but it won't get anywhere if Bernanke stonewalls the committee with a smirk on his face.
Where do you start? Put a bumper sticker on your car? Lynch an inflatable Bernanke-doll from a tree in your front-yard? Okay, that felt good - but then what do you do next?
What organizations/movements/websites do you know that are working on this? What are they doing, and which one do you think shows the most promise?
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Atherton, CA
I know about endthefed.us already, btw. Any other ideas?
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Bellingham, WA
Bumper sticker sounds good:
"BRING BACK THE 19TH CENTURY NOW"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Gold_speech
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There is absolutely nothing you can do to end the Fed. Silly conversation.
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Bellingham, WA
It's perfectly possible. We're dealing with radical conservatives here. Pretty much nutjobs, but if they get their people in power, they make the rules.
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The Mouths of Sauron are loud. And winning.
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Atherton, CA
Well, now that the brain-trust has graciously bestowed their opinion on this, I officially open the discussion to all the less lofty individuals.
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Well the problem with ending the Fed is, there's bound to be a few people that want to abolish the FED that also want the right to Screw live stock and Shot Illegals on their property. So there for, all of the people that would want to end the fed would be two toothed Uncle Kooter. And there's plenty of random pic of trailer trash to prove their undisputed point, that Fed Abolishers, are inbred retards, floating around on the internet.
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I vote to abolish indoor plumbing too
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I hope we can go back to the goat barter standard.
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47 male
Lafayette, CA
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The Federal Reserve no longer represents economic overlords controlling our destiny.
They are in big trouble. Not only are they hiding trillions in toxic debt, but they are struggling to keep the banking system viable during nearly impossible times. Interest rates? WHAT interest rates?
Getting rid of the Fed now is suicide. I'd rather have a student driver at the wheel as the car flies down the mountain out of control without brakes than nobody at all.
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Atherton, CA
Okay, so basically no one has any good ideas then? Good to know.
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47 male
Lafayette, CA
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The best answer is to print our way out of this mess and try to do better next time.
Anything else is the worst answer. The fed is pretty much irrelevant whatever happens.
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Native,
Try this: Nathans's economic hedge.
http://economicedge.blogspot.com/2010/03/most-important-chart-of-century.html
Also Swarm USA the American party PAC
http://www.swarmusa.com/vb4/content.php/291-Renaissance-2-0
And ignore IWOG, he still thinks we can tax and print our way out of this mess.
He must think we, John Taylor and Thomas Jefferson are all fools...
"And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, May 28, 1816
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mtj:@field%28DOCID+@lit%28tj110172%29%29
Seeing as how big banking has brought us to our knees repeatedly who is the real fool?
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47 male
Lafayette, CA
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AdHominem says
Thomas Jefferson was not a fool and certainly wouldn't have let the nation get into this state if he was in charge. It's far too late to worry about banks being dangerous, now we have to pick up the pieces.
The best way to pick up the pieces is to print our way out of it. Every other way is the worst way.
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Bellingham, WA
iwog says
I was alive throughout the 1970s, the dollar lost half its purchasing power. Wages went up (eg. minimum wage went up from $1.30 to $3.10, 1969-1980) and everyone survived.
The 1970s was immensely different from the condition we find ourselves in now, but 50% inflation will help many more people than it hurts. Arguably. iwog is right that the alternative paths have their own difficulties.
Like if we don't want to print and we want to keep the tax cuts, then we have to cut spending by a trillion dollars a year at the Federal level and probably that at the state and local levels too.
$2T/yr at $100k/job is twenty million gov't jobs. Add in local communities dependent on these incoming Treasury paychecks and you get thirty or forty million jobs gone.
That doesn't seem preferable to a can of coke costing $2 from the vending machine later this decade.
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You know what the solution is to the problem of powerful strains of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics ?
You guessed it. Ban germs. If that doesn't work, I guess we will have to ban antibiotics.
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Tenouncetrout says
It's not that so many of the people who blame the Fed are stoopid.
But it would be nice if more people had a better understanding of the Fed. Most of the anti Fed pieces I have read, and a couple of the Videos I have seen, are filled with outright untruths and many half truths.
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AdHominem says
Unfortunately, this is a typical and dangerous mindset. Dissenting opinion should be embraced and considered rather than ignored.
The rigidness and close-mindedness of ideological thinkers generally leads to disaster. Most of the worlds most brutal dictators were staunch ideologists who not only ignored, but punished dissenting though.
Are you afraid of freedom?
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Iwog, I'm happy for you that you feel prepared for a few serious rounds of inflation. Here is why it scares the hell out of me.
I'm going to make some numbers up about the 70s to make my point. Let's say that from 1970 to 1980 prices went up 70% but wages went up 55%. That represents a drop in everyones standard of living.
As Troy said, things are way different now, and not just because the fed is "pushing a string" in their attempts to stimulate. We also have global competitors who are in a much different place with respect to their average standard of living.
That is the part of this that the wackos are right about. IF we inflate our way out of this, then the middle class, working class and poor will be fucked much worse than they were in the 70s. But the Federal reserve is not the problem, they just run the machinery that keeps complex (global) finance running. To say that ending the fed is the solution makes about as much sense as saying that ending money is the solution.
I think that if the republicans have their way, we get taxes that are too low, and a postponement of the problem until it is a choice between defaulting and inflating. And maybe then inflation will be the default "solution."
That's why I find it so amazing that there are so many relatively low income people that wanted republicans back in there. MAybe the complexity of the federal reserve and complexity in general is the real problem.
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By the way, if you missed this on 60 minutes, or when Patrick posted it, you have to see what David Stockman says.
It makes way too much sense (yes, same Stockman that worked for Reagan).
http://dailybail.com/home/60-minutes-fixing-the-deficit-by-taxing-the-rich-video.html?utm_source=patrick.net#siteTitleWrapper
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iwog says
The spirit of the Weimar Republic is alive and well on Iwog Pond. If Iwog and his ilk get their way, we'll all be buying wheelbarrows to haul our worthless money in order to buy our hyper inflated food at the store.
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Burbank, CA
Before we "end the Fed," how about the long awaited audit first? Ron Paul pledges it's coming:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6A35QB20101104
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47 male
Lafayette, CA
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marcus says
High inflation or hyperinflation is terrible and will hurt a lot of people.
It's still better than the alternatives. I do not wish to see this country turn into Mexico.
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How about pre-privatizing one of the Big Four. Patrick has an interesting link that would make a case for BofA (plenty of Countrywide goodwill to go around). I bet that would make everyone happy... (except, of course, the shareholders). I bet the Feds, though, would be hard pressed to handle anything at that scale.
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Davis, CA
I don't see how the goal of "END the Fed" is plausible.
Let's put aside for a moment the economic CHAOS that would result both nationally and globally, and assume it wouldn't result in the reigns of "reserve currency" and benefits therein immediately passing to someone else.
In a purely practical sense, few of your fellow citizens care about this. And the people virulently opposed to it have most of the wealth. You'll be swimming uphill through a molasses flood.
Keep tilting Sancho.
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marcus says
No it does not.
Anyone with large amounts of debt has their standard of living improve substantially.
I'd be way better off in such a situation, for instance. I laid some numbers out in another thread that assumed 100% / 80%, which is more or less the same that you laid out. (80 x .7 = .56). The end result was that I'd have a larger percentage of my income left over at the end of the month than I do now.
And I only have a modest debt level relative to the rest of the country, with a single mortgage and a single car payment. The rest of the country has a much larger mortgage (relative to income) than I do, bigger car payments, and credit card debt.
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Kevin says
Okay, it's more complicated than what I said. But what about people who rent ? More importantly, what about the long run ?
Even in the short run, say that after a serious wave of inflation, one is only just then ready to buy their first home. While you are enjoying your payments that are lower relative to your income than they used to be, this person or family is going to pay a record breaking amount of their income for housing.
(and a higher percentage of their income for many or most consumables)
After each wave of inflation, it will be a record breaking high percentage of income that will go toward housing (at least for renters and for new home buyers). I guess since it is sort of the American way though to be myopic and to only worry about how it effects me, you are right.
But I am also right. There is a longer term way of framing it, where you can see that our standard of living does in fact decrease when wages don't keep up with inflation. It did happen in the seventies, but at least then we were transitioning toward more frequently having two wage earner families.
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Saint George, UT
elliemae's website
One way to end the Fed is to rename it. For instance, let's call it the fluffy pillow, and then the connotation will be that it's there to ensure we have a soft landing should we fall down.
Other great ideas that need tweeking:
marcus says
We need to ban bad germs. Not good germs (good evening, ladies & germs...)
Kevin says
Discriminatory toward goats. Why not barter with our talents? Nomo could barter with snark, Iwog with "controversial" statements that gets everyone's panties in a wad, and I could barter with my classy repartee. (please note that I do have an interest in the rather substantial goat lobby...)
tatupu70 says
It obviously doesn't snow where you are... this one is just plain silly and leads to butts freezing on outhouse seats.
You're welcome. ;)
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Kevin says
What you are saying is really only going to hold for mortgage payments (and even there, property taxes can go up in many states - without a new transaction - they are often assessment based). Maybe car payments slightly, but that's just 4 or 5 years, so the inflation isn't going to make that big a difference, unless you are looking for some sort of instant devaluation.
As for credit card debt, virtually all people who hold much credit card debt are going to be paying interest rates higher than the inflation. Remember inflation happens over a period of time. Their credit card situation would not be getting better over that time. Maybe you could argue that the lower percentage of income going to mortgage will help them pay down credit card debt. But that's a stretch.
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marcus says
Yes, clearly if we had wage inflation that did not keep up with price inflation indefinitely things would get really bad for everyone.
But that's not really what we're talking about here.
And, yes, thinking about the short term is pretty important right now, because if we don't address our current problems then we won't be around to address the long term problems.
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Oakland, CA
Yeah! Let's unilaterally default on our debt creating a world wide currency crisis that will spawn the worst world wide depression ever. That will fix everything for good.
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Kevin says
It doesn't have to be indefinitely.
Just one round of bad inflation for several years, even if it ends, with wages not keeping up (how can they given the global market for labor), would make things permanently more expensive (as a percentage of average income) forever in to the future, with the exception being people who currently have debt that they get to pay back in dollars that worth less.
And then, considering that our economy is largely based on our own consumption, and given that most people would have less money to spend after paying their bills (at least later generations who don't have a mortgage yet), it would be just one more way that we are screwing over the future generations, and our entire future (domestic) economic prospects.
I'm not saying it won't happen or that defaulting would be better. I just think (long term) we are royally screwed as a country if we have another big round of inflation.
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Bellingham, WA
marcus says
The key thing is analyzing what is going to inflate in this notional environment of sticky, at best, wages.
This is kinda my hobby horse so apologies if I'm beating it into the ground here.
Food prices are going to go up. That's a given. Gas too. Health care. Electricity. Everything that doesn't have substitute goods.
The producers of these goods will therefore have more money, subject to the fact that consumers will have to moderate their consumption, just like we've stopped driving as much:
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/09/dot-vehicle-miles-driven-increase.html
but I can't really understand the follow-on effects of certain sectors of the economy raising prices. It seems to me that the lower tiers of the economy -- the primary sector -- ag and mining will be inflation-protected, as will certain service sectors fields with pricing power like health care ("your money or your life!").
But the big variable in all these equations is home rents. If living costs go up, can't rents on existing stock go down?
The LLs will fight this of course, but theoretically I think there is immense adjustment from current rents possible.
But I could be wrong here. Perhaps discretionary income will just vanish as the LLs take what they will.