Criticism of the Federal Reserve

The Federal Reserve System (also known as the Federal Reserve, and informally as the Fed) has faced various criticisms since its inception. The system was established on December 23, 1913 as a third attempt at central banking in the United States. The Federal Reserve Act was considered to be the solution to the money trust even though elements of the system were conceived by Nelson Aldrich and banking executives.

Creation

Main article: History of the Federal Reserve System

An early version of the Federal Reserve Act was drafted in 1910 on Jekyll Island, Georgia, by Republican Senator Nelson Aldrich, chairman of the National Monetary Commission and several Wall Street bankers. The final version, with provisions intended to improve public oversight and weaken the influence of the New York banking establishment, was drafted by Democratic Congressman Carter Glass of Virginia. The Jekyll Island theme repeatedly appears in the conspiracy literature, as typified by the writings of G. Edward Griffin and others.

Congress

Congressman Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency from 1920–31, accused the Federal Reserve of deliberately causing the Great Depression. In several speeches made shortly after he lost the chairmanship of the committee, McFadden claimed that the Federal Reserve was run by Wall Street banks and their affiliated European banking houses.

Many Congressmen who have been involved in the House and Senate Banking and Currency Committees have been open critics of the Federal Reserve, including Chairmen Wright Patman, Henry Reuss, and Henry B. Gonzalez. Congressman Ron Paul, Chairman of the Monetary Policy Subcommittee in 2011, is a staunch opponent of the Federal Reserve System, and routinely introduces bills to abolish the Federal Reserve System, although these have been unsuccessful, garnering neither cosponsors nor hearings.

Ron Paul also introduced H.R. 459: Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2011, which passed the House on July 25, 2012. This act required an audit of the Federal Reserve Board and the twelve regional banks, with particular attention to the valuation of so-called toxic securities.

The Great Depression (1929)

Main article: Causes of the Great Depression

Crowd gathering on Wall Street after the 1929 crash.

Perhaps the most widely-accepted criticism of the Fed was first proposed by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz – that the Fed exacerbated the 1929 recession, sparking the Great Depression. After the stock market crashed in 1929, the Fed continued to contract (decrease) the money supply and refused to save banks that were struggling due to bank runs. This mistake, critics charge, allowed what might have been a relatively mild recession to explode into catastrophe. Friedman and Schwartz believed that the depression was “a tragic testimonial to the importance of monetary forces.”

Before the establishment of the Federal Reserve, the banking system had dealt with periodic crises (such as in the Panic of 1907) by suspending the convertibility of deposits into currency. In 1907, the system nearly collapsed and there was an extraordinary intervention by an ad-hoc coalition assembled by J. P. Morgan. The bankers demanded in 1910-1913 a central bank to address this structural weakness. Friedman suggested, however, that if a policy similar to the Panic had been followed during the banking panic at the end of 1930, it might have stopped the vicious circle of the forced liquidation of assets at depressed prices, just as suspension of convertibility in 1893 and 1907 had quickly ended the liquidity crises at the time.

Essentially, in the monetarist view, the Great Depression was caused by the fall of the money supply. Friedman and Schwartz note that "[f]rom the cyclical peak in August 1929 to a cyclical trough in March 1933, the stock of money fell by over a third." The result was what Friedman calls the "Great Contraction"—a period of falling income, prices, and employment caused by the choking effects of a restricted money supply. The mechanism suggested by Friedman and Schwartz was that people wanted to hold more money than the Federal Reserve was supplying. People thus hoarded money by consuming less. This, in turn, caused a contraction in employment and production, since prices were not flexible enough to immediately fall. Friedman and Schwartz argued the Federal Reserve allowed the money supply to plummet because of ineptitude and poor leadership.

Many have since agreed with Friedman and Schwartz's theory, including current Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, who said:

Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again.

Friedman has said that ideally he would "prefer to abolish the federal reserve system altogether" and replace it by a computer. He would prefer to replace the organization with a mechanical system that would increase the money supply at some fixed rate, and thought that "leaving monetary and banking arrangements to the market would have produced a more satisfactory outcome than was actually achieved through government involvement."

Global financial crisis

Some economists, such as John Taylor, have asserted that the Fed was responsible, or at least partially responsible, for the United States housing bubble which occurred prior to the 2007 recession. They claim that the Fed kept interest rates too low following the 2001 recession, The housing bubble then led to the credit crunch. Then-Chairman Alan Greenspan disputes this interpretation. He points out that the Fed's control over the long-term interest rates critics have in mind is only indirect. The Fed did raise the short term interest rate over which it has control (i.e. the federal funds rate), but the long term interest rate (which usually follows the former) did not increase.

The Federal Reserve's role as a supervisor and regulator has been criticized as being ineffective. Former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, then-chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, remarked about the Fed's role in the present economic crisis, "We saw over the last number of years when they took on consumer protection responsibilities and the regulation of bank holding companies, it was an abysmal failure."

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman seconded the advice of Paul McCulley of Pimco, who urged Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble. A bubble which was then created through artificially low interest rates and which then burst, at a minimum contributing to the Great Recession

"The basic point is that the recession of 2001 wasn’t a typical postwar slump, brought on when an inflation-fighting Fed raises interest rates and easily ended by a snapback in housing and consumer spending when the Fed brings rates back down again. This was a prewar-style recession, a morning after brought on by irrational exuberance. To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble."

"The big question: did then Chairman Alan Greenspan actually fuel a housing bubble? You bet your bottom dollar."

Assistant Secretary of Housing Catherine Austin Fitts responding to Alan Greenspan's denial that the Federal Reserve caused the Housing Bubble.

"Alan Greenspan is a liar. The Federal Reserve and its long standing partner, the US Treasury, engineered the housing bubble, including the fraudulent inducement of America as part of a financial coup d’etat. Our bankruptcy was not an accident. It was engineered at the highest levels."

According to Forbes magazine The Federal Reserve caused the Great Recession by fostering an inverted yield curve and then by engaging in excessive money printing. An inverted yield curve is created when long term interest rates are lower then short term interest rates. This environment fosters loans for the short which are mainly for consumption, such as credit card loans, over long term loans for business investment which improve economic growth.

How did Bernanke create this horrible morass? First, in 2006-2007 he deliberately inverted the Treasury yield curve, even while knowing it would cause a recession and credit-financial crisis. Second, he imposed on the reeling economy a $1.7 trillion flood of “quantitative easing” (QE), euphemistic for the hazardous policy of money-printing. His first policy caused economic stagnation, his second policy caused monetary inflation, and combined, his policies have generated “stagflation” — the corrosive mix last seen in the 1970s. It’s the direct opposite of the supply-side polices (pro-growth, sound-money) that made the 1980s and 1990s so prosperous.

Conservative criticism

During the 2010 midterm elections, the Tea Party movement made the Federal Reserve a major point of attack, which was picked up by Republican candidates across the country. Mike Lee (R) of Utah accused the reserve of trying to “monetize the debt” by printing money to buy government bonds, which the reserve denied. Unsuccessful Senate candidate Ken Buck (R) of Colorado said that Congress should be "shining a light on the Federal Reserve" because it is too cozy with private interests. Senator Rand Paul (R) of Kentucky, son of Congressman Ron Paul, has long attacked the Federal Reserve, arguing that it is hurting the economy by devaluing the dollar and that its monetary policies cause booms and busts.

Non-mainstream economics

See also: Austrian Business Cycle Theory

One criticism of the Fed, typified by the Heterodox economics Austrian School, is that the Federal Reserve's control of interest rates is an unnecessary and counterproductive interference in the economy.

Private ownership or control

According to the Congressional Research Service:

Because the regional Federal Reserve Banks are privately owned, and most of their directors are chosen by their stockholders, it is common to hear assertions that control of the Fed is in the hands of an elite. In particular, it has been rumored that control is in the hands of a very few people holding "class A stock" in the Fed.

As explained, there is no stock in the system, only in each regional Bank. More important, individuals do not own stock in Federal Reserve Banks. The stock is held only by banks who are members of the system. Each bank holds stock proportionate to its capital. Ownership and membership are synonymous. Moreover, there is no such thing as "class A" stock. All stock is the same.

This stock, furthermore, does not carry with it the normal rights and privileges of ownership. Most significantly, member banks, in voting for the directors of the Federal Reserve Banks of which they are a member, do not get voting rights in proportion to the stock they hold. Instead, each member bank regardless of size gets one vote. Concentration of ownership of Federal Reserve Bank stock, therefore, is irrelevant to the issue of control of the system.

Transparency issues

Another objection is the Fed's lack of transparency. In particular, many believe that the public should have a right to know what goes on in the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings.

Public opinion

According to a Bloomberg poll taken in 2010, "Americans across the political spectrum say the Fed shouldn’t retain its current structure of independence. Asked if the central bank should be more accountable to Congress, left independent or abolished entirely, 39 percent said it should be held more accountable and 16 percent that it should be abolished. Only 37 percent favor the status quo."

See also

• Austrian business cycle theory
• Criticism of fractional-reserve banking
• Federal Reserve Police
• Free banking
• Gold standard

External links

• New monetary target, Financial Times Registration Required