Search Results for: Federal Reserve

By Pam Martens: January 2, 2014 Each business day, the President of the United States makes his daily schedule available to the press. The President is the Commander in Chief of the military, the man who signs or vetoes legislation, the individual with the power to initiate military action against another nation.  To most Americans, he is viewed as the most powerful individual in the country. If such a powerful individual involved with so many delicate negotiations can share his daily appointment calendar with the American people, why can’t the Washington money men whose mandate is also to serve the country’s interest. The U.S. Treasury Secretary’s daily appointment calendar is posted on the Treasury’s web site. The web site tells us that the calendars “are generally posted every quarter.” However, the last six months of Jack Lew’s schedule are missing from this archive. What we do know from Jack Lew’s … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: December 22, 2013 PBS promised a “debate” this past Friday night on the “benefits and dangers” of the Federal Reserve as the Fed marks its 100 years of existence tomorrow. Instead of a debate, two famous stock market historians made the same stunning announcement – that the Fed has decided its job is to push up the stock market. Consuelo Mack’s Wealthtrack program on PBS had invited James Grant, Editor and Founder of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, and Richard Sylla, the Henry Kaufman Professor of the History of Financial Institutions and Markets at NYU’s Stern School of Business. The opening scene for the program shows Sylla in a party hat lighting the candles on the Fed’s birthday cake while Grant snuffs them out – suggesting that Sylla would be making pro-Fed statements while Grant would take the opposing view. What happened during the program, however, was that … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: November 27, 2013 Fortunately for our readers, the rest of the Federal Reserve system is far more transparent than the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; in fact, they’re down right helpful to the press. Both the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia (Philly Fed) have released educational videos to help the public understand the workings of our Nation’s central bank.  And, of course, there is the unparalleled digital research available to the public through FRASER, the Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research, made available by the St. Louis Fed. FRASER has recently provided access to new documents detailing the banking emergency of 1933 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a banking holiday to assess which banks could be reopened safely and which were insolvent and had to close their doors. The 1933 banking calamity stemmed from the same type … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: November 26, 2013 Unless you’ve been lost at sea since 2008, you’ve likely heard time and again that the Federal Reserve is creating money out of thin air. Type the words “Federal Reserve creates money AND thin air” into the Google search engine and you’ll find about 2.4 million people weighing in on the subject, including folks at PBS. There’s no reason for the debate. The Federal Reserve has put out its very own video explaining how it creates money. It prefers the phrase “newly created electronic funds” to the colloquial “out of thin air.” The video is narrated by Steve Meyer, a Senior Advisor to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, who explains how the Fed has been paying for those trillions in bond purchases since the 2008 crash. Meyer says on the video: “You may wonder how the Federal Reserve pays for the securities it … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: April 18, 2013 The past week has delivered revelation after revelation suggesting that the foreclosure frauds perpetrated against the American homeowner by the too-big-to-fail (or prosecute) banks, have been deviously matched with a corrupted settlement that has members of Senate hearings shaking their heads in astonishment. Yesterday brought the latest example of Federal bank regulators serving as lapdogs of their charges. The Senate Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation and Community Development held a hearing titled: “Helping Homeowners Harmed by Foreclosures: Ensuring Accountability and Transparency in Foreclosure Reviews, Part II.” Senator Merkley delivered the fireworks of the session. Early this year, when the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and Federal Reserve Board (Fed) announced that they were abruptly halting the Independent Foreclosure Reviews they had ordered 13 banks and mortgage servicers to have conducted by independent consultants, the party line was that it was … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: September 17, 2012 By mid morning today, as Occupy Wall Street protesters marched around the perimeter of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, all signs that an FRPD (Federal Reserve Police Department) existed had disappeared.  The FRPD patrol cars and law enforcement officers had been replaced by NYPD patrol cars and officers.   That decision may have been made to keep from drawing attention to a mushrooming new domestic police force that most Americans do not know exists. Quietly, without fanfare or Congressional hearings, the USA Patriot Act in 2001 bestowed on the 12 privately owned Federal Reserve Banks, domestic policing powers. Section 364 of the Act, “Uniform Protection Authority for Federal Reserve,” reads: “Law enforcement officers designated or authorized by the Board or a reserve bank under paragraph (1) or (2) are authorized while on duty to carry firearms and make arrests without warrants for any offense against the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: July 13, 2012 In unusually swift fashion (unlike the long court action to obtain details of the secret trillions in loans the Fed lavished on domestic and foreign banks) the Federal Reserve Bank of New York today handed over emails and other documents showing that Barclays, the first firm to be charged in rigging the interest rate benchmark known as Libor, was using the New York Fed’s stately offices as a confessional.  In one email, an unnamed confessor from Barclays tells Fabiola Ravazzolo, a Senior Financial Economist at the New York Fed with a sexy British accent (sort of like that comforting voice on your car GPS) that, yes, he’s sinned. FR is Fabiola Ravazzolo;  the colon represents the Barclays employee. FR: And, and why do you think that there is this, this discrepancy? Is it because banks maybe they are not reporting what they should or is it um…  … Continue reading →