Yes, Obama should appoint Matt Taibbi Fed Chairman. All meeting records should be published on wikileaks.
We need an actual national bank run by government employees. WE can unelect federal employees. The Fed as a private bank despite its phony name is an example of corruption in the private sector, something libertarians can't seem to understand. I know 'Imagine there is no government; it is easy if you try". Imagine the gold standard when economic life was perfect.
No, I completely understand the Fed's nature. And I'm not calling for a gold standard. I'm of the opinion that there shouldn't be legal tender laws, and that people should decide which currencies to use in a market free from the manipulation of coercion, whether the perpetrator is big business or the state. Where we disagree is on whether the state should have the authority to control/manipulate currency, regardless of whether that authority is delegated to a private bank or otherwise. Why would government employees do any better than those working at the Fed today? When there are people trusted with unchecked power, I don't think it really matters whether or not they're employees of the state, or whether or not they are elected and can be unelected (especially when you consider the appalling lack of knowledge our elected officials display about the Fed). The incentive to abuse that authority for personal gain is still there.
Unfortunately, this market-based portfolio currency would seem even more prone to fallacy and cronyism than the legal tender monopoly promotes. If, for example, bank notes were permitted to be printed a la HSBC in Hong Kong---the private "near banks" being unfettered and allowed to print their alternative currencies, it occurs to any rational individual that while politicians may have agent-principal conflict insomuch as their short-term horizons are focused on re-election, the agent-principal conflict is ever more present in the moral hazard debacle that the current private banking model represents. Consumers and the rational expectations model have been tricked before, and it is likely they would be tricked again.
But I'm not talking about a "market-based portfolio currency." When I say that which currency people use should be determined by markets, I'm considering what characteristics make good money; a good medium exchange, a good store of value, etc. If private banks simply print more of their money, it isn't a good store of value, and thus doesn't satisfy the function that people use it for. Besides, I'm of the opinion that, if a bank agrees that to hold your deposit on the condition that you can withdraw that deposit on demand, it would be fraudulent for them not to be able to provide your deposit on demand, and that it would be embezzlement for them to lend your deposit. In my opinion, those are the sort of regulations we should have against banks. But instead, we allow them to practice fraud and embezzlement, allowing for "the moral hazard debacle that the current private banking model represents."
....wait, like we did back in the 19th century before Lincoln introduced greenbacks? That's what you want to go back to. If I'm correct, you're stating that banks shouldn't lend money, and are dangerously close to anti-fractional-reserve banking woo. And I can go to my bank and withdraw all my money tomorrow. It may not be the same bills, but whatever.
You misrepresenting what I want doesn't make it so. Lending still takes place under full-reserve banking.
