1999 NY Times Article Foretells Current Economic Meltdown

thanks for the comments Rory- my loyalties are to truth, justice, the Constitution and the human race, not political parties, and certainly not the hacks from both main parties whose main interest seems to be serving an elite economic agenda, regardless of whether they're violating their oath of office by doing so.

"The FRB was originally supposed to be a relatively autonomous organization, concerned mainly with preventing bank failures and maintaining price stability and  free from political interference."

That's certainly how it was sold to Congress and the American People, and as you observe, that doesn't seem to be how it works. I linked to G. Edward Griffin's book The Creature From Jekyll Island in my article; the power brokers who actually came up with the idea certainly understood the Fed could be used to regulate some market conditions and swings, but also to consolidate power and profit in their own hands, and reduce competition.

We don't have a "free market" in the U.S.; we have markets that are rigged to favor the most powerful players. They operate in their own perceived profit interest, and are often unnaccountable- corporations break laws, but they also write laws and elect pols who'll pass them, and drive out ones that threaten them. The majority of MSM in the US are owned and controlled by just 6 mega-corps, and the news is generally reported in ways that do not question basic assumptions, i.e. there's no alternative to capitalism, and any alternative is "communism".

Corps often work to eliminate competition, and collude to fix prices, and the best ideas that serve the public interest are frequently not theirs, and don't always serve their interest- so they seek to kill them. Free markets do have the potential to generate more wealth for everyone, and I agree capitalism is better than Stalinist Communism, but private ownership and property will often corrupt and destroy things that are part of the commons, like money, public health, air, water, land in many cases, the air waves, the internet.

Transparency is the key, i think. Some of the Socialistic systems of Western Europe are achieving better results than the U.S., such as health care, and productivity in some areas- people do perform better when we have a stake in what we produce and receive- Communism, as it's existed, is like monopoly capitalism, in that it destroys incentive and creativity, accrues benefits to a privileged class, and doesn't serve the public interest.