A Federal Reserve Rant that won’t fit on a notepad
November 15th, 2011
I did an occupy-style notepad rant recently as an example for our notepad rant contest announced yesterday, but after reading this article, it was time to put down the sharpie and start typing. This rant will not fit on a notepad:
The title of the article mentioned above is “Bernanke Says That Any Criticism Of The Federal Reserve Is Based On ‘Misconceptions.’” Oh really? So the Federal Reserve is absolutely perfect then? There is not a single thing wrong with it or how it’s run? Every act of the Federal Reserve during its century-long history has been a 100% success without blemish or flaw, and anybody who says otherwise just doesn’t understand?? It is precisely this mentality, and the public’s general acceptance of it, that has allowed the Federal Reserve and a complicit government in Washington to continue to perpetrate the central banking fraud against the American people.
It is the mentality that economics is some sort of esoteric discipline shrouded in the aura of an untouchable scientific expertise. Its arcane wisdom is the purview of a privileged (and of course, well-credentialed) few who understand what the rest of us cannot. Men like Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, and Paul Krugman are modern oracles, unquestionable and irrefutable. They understand and we do not. If we disagree with them, that just shows that we just don’t understand. Never mind trying to help us understand. Never mind explaining, with plain reason, just how the policies of the Federal Reserve are economically beneficial to us (much less how its policies are not morally dubious). “Just trust us. We’re really smart guys. We have economics degrees.”
The infatuation with graduate degrees in this country has become some kind of modern, intellectual feudalism, and a living example of that logical fallacy ad hominem at work. A man’s arguments aren’t necessary or relevant. His degrees are his arguments. His prestige is his argument. His Nobel Prize is his argument. The validity of the assertions he makes have no bearing. A graduate degree in economics confers nobility on the privileged man who holds it. Whether he’s right or not, whether the words coming out of his mouth or his New York Times blog make sense or not– these are irrelevant. He’s a really smart guy. He understands. You don’t.
I would like to hear Bernanke elaborate on his claim. I would like to understand just what it is that I don’t understand when I criticize the Federal Reserve Bank. How are my conceptions actually misconceptions? The Federal Reserve Bank was created to stabilize prices and hold down unemployment. That’s a fact. I don’t know what there is to misunderstand there. Since its creation, the dollar has lost over 95% of its value to inflation. A dollar today will not buy a tenth of what it could buy one hundred years ago. This is also a quantifiable fact and a matter of record, not a misconception. With these two facts in mind, would you say the Fed has successfully accomplished its goal of price stability? Would you call that a valid criticism of the Fed or a misconception? Does Bernanke owe Americans a substantive answer to that criticism, or is he really an oracle?
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