marctomarket.com/2015/11/democratizing-fed-or-politiczing.
Even the title of the article, "Democratizing or Politicizing the Fed," is disingenuous. Any notion that members of the Fed are not political appointees put there by politicians is laughable. And what stirs the ire of the Fed's apologists is folks are finally beginning to get it.
We don't think the Fed has abused its power, we know it has. And nearly anything that ruffles the ire of the current White House occupant and Fed Chair Yellen is a move toward more liberty, not the reverse. As far as more transparency goes and the Fed's denial of purposely obfuscating, one need only check out Robert Woodward's Maestro book on the Fed during Sir Alan's reign.
Woodward quotes Sir Alan when asked how Sir Alan will address the media over a possibly thorny
issue. Sir Alan, without any hesitation, calmly replies he will say this, then that to keep them confused. It pretty clear from the confidence of his remark, this is not something new or foreign to him.What the author proposes is more weekly Fed media meetings. Some people are gluttons for punishment. Being a glutton for pain is for now still permitted in a semi-free society.
Rumor has it that when they were interrogating prisoners at Guantanamo, the most effective method, notwithstanding media reports, wasn't water boarding, but piping into the inmate cells 24 hours of uninterrupted Fed speak. Even when they experimented with piping in periodic commercials, it's effectiveness only dropped one percent.
Economists profess to have a particular understanding of and body of knowledge. The more supercilious ones refer to themselves as experts. The article claims, "Monetary policy is not a technocratic process." If so then you might find this quote from Wikipedia interesting.
Technocracy is an organizational structure or system of governance where decision-makers are selected on the basis oftechnological knowledge. The concept of a technocracy remains mostly hypothetical. Technocrats, a term used frequently by journalists in the twenty-first century, can refer to individuals exercising governmental authority because of their knowledge.[1] Technocrat has come to mean either "a member of a powerful technical elite" or "someone who advocates the supremacy of technical experts".[2][3][4] Examples include scientists, engineers, and technologists who have special knowledge, expertise, or skills, and would compose the governing body, instead of people elected through political partiesand businesspeople.[5] In a technocracy, decision makers would be selected based upon how knowledgeable and skillful they are in their field.
Econometric models, in fact all data today, is based on computers, highly technical ones run by people who claim a certain technological know how and understanding. If that sounds like a cadre of economists trying to connect the dots around a large table in the Eccles Building in Washington, you might be onto something.
Data itself is a technocratic process and who more the Fed lives by and sings the kudos of data more than economists. One could argue econometric modeling is the new addiction or slavery afoot. Then there is the now infamous Fed dot-plot; it's pretty simple, so much so one could suggest the author undermines his own argument about simple rules, something he accuses others of suggesting.
The author cites another example that is little more than a subtle subterfuge that the complexity of today is different from the past. The truth is the steamship, the automobile, the telephone, the television and the airplane all ushered in drastic changes of their time as did the advent of credit early in the last century.
Interstate highways destroyed old businesses and created new ones just as America's railroads did earlier. The Internet is an international information highway, nothing less, nothing more. That's the only real change here. People have more and in many cases better information to judge incompetence, partisanship and the like, not a venue entrenched MSM relishes.
The fear about tying the Fed's hands is a semantical scapegoat. These bureaucrats are about as dangerous as handing a loaded pistol to a four-year old. What they do effects millions of peoples' lives. The phony, triumphed up Fed data to claim there is no inflation that the Obama administration just used to screw the COLA crowd is a classic example.
Apparently, the only inflation around around today is over at the U.S. Senate where policy makers recently voted themselves a raise. We could go on, but you need to do your own homework, decide for yourselves because after all that's really what true liberty is about.
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