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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 5/31/16

The Fatal Flaw of Our Fiat Monetary System

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Smoke and mirrors
Smoke and mirrors
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Our fiat money system was flawed from the beginning. Glass-Steagall was the only impediment to achieving what we now see--a corrupt government run by Wall Street crooks. There is no audit of the Fed, and secrecy is the watchword. The crooks justify this by citing examples in which theoretical actions by the Fed would give some speculators an unfair advantage if secrecy was not enforced. They apparently don't think that effects on the hoi polloi are worth considering. They also see no reason why there should be any public accountability of their operations. The original powers granted to the Fed were intended to be used to maintain price stability by manipulating the size of the fraction of the money supply that fuels commerce (M1), and not to control or avoid controlling speculation.

We have seen questionable activities of the Fed in recent years--the weekly plane load of $100 bills that was sent from the NY Fed Reserve Bank into Russia during the transition when the USSR collapsed, the huge stashes of Benjies found in Iraq, the statements by senior CIA officials that cash was indispensable in getting things done. There is no available explanation as to how these phenomenal amounts of cash were accounted for, because of the secrecy. The most logical explanation is that this cash was created out of thin air and not debited from any existing account at the Fed. This all seems out of control, but the kicker is...we can't prove any story about the cash.

Glass-Steagall (in the Banking Act of 1933) prevented banks from engaging in any other form of business than banking. When it was repealed through the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, a series of crises began, and finally the devastating crash of 2007-2008 and the "Quantitative Easing" solution (on the backs of the taxpayers) resulted in a widespread conviction that the system was rigged to exploit the public for the benefit of the rich. Even now, in 2016 no one outside of Wall Street, the US Treasury, and the Fed knows enough to explain the details of the transactions that took place, and those who know are not talking.
The "toxic assets" the Fed bought from the Wall Street crooks...where did that pile of worthless paper go? What us outsiders do know about this exchange certainly is stunning however. For the Fed to purchase $3.5 trillion worth of Treasury bonds on the open market and $1.75 trillion in "toxic assets" and see no expected result in the economy implies that the money didn't go into the high velocity fraction of the total money supply (M1). It only benefited those who got us into this mess. Some authorities said these purchases were made with loans from the Fed, and that now they have been paid off. So...where is that pile of toxic assets? And what is the Fed going to do with it? It's all smoke and mirrors.

The Federal Reserve System was designed to ignore the fact that predators will always concentrate in any system where there is money and/or power to be had. And that has been its fatal flaw.
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I am a retired physicist and hold a B.S. in Ch. E. as well. I have been an environmental activist since the early 1970s. I was a founding member of the Save Barton Creek Association in Austin, TX. In 2006 I was a member of a select (more...)
 

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