Just go read Matt Taibbi’s new article “The Real Housewives of Wall Street“. Do it now. If you don’t read it, then you should lose your right to complain about any government spending.
The article details how the Fed has given out more than a trillion dollars in welfare to the rich. Free money, but only if you are stinking rich and have friends in high places. They even gave money to the wives of rich people, who then sheltered this money in the Cayman Islands.
And you don’t even have to be an American. They threw $5 billion at foreign automakers, at a time when we were trying to save US automakers, $9.6 billion to the Central Bank of Mexico, and $35 billion to the Arab Banking Corporation of Bahrain, whose majority shareholder is the Central Bank of Libya. That’s right, your tax money went to Muammar Gaddafi, the murdering tyrant of Libya.
Why didn’t you know about this? Because until now, the Fed has operated with almost complete secrecy and no oversight, even though it controls a budget almost as big as the rest of the government combined. But a new law has forced the Fed to open their books for the first time, and what we are finding is stunning. Says one senator’s aide “Our jaws are literally dropping as we’re reading this.” Yours will too.
If the Tea Party ever wanted something real to scream about, this is it.
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Read it. Some of it was familiar, other parts new. We should be surprised, why? I’m pretty sure that some of these people had a hand in raping the pension funds of public workers, I know IPERS (Iowa Public Employ…) took a beating.
What’s new is the hard evidence. What is really surprising to me is why nobody is going to jail.
Thanks IK, many have long thought what the “FED” does is questionable, but there was relatively little evidence since even congress was not allowed. What we should also charge them with is counterfeiting. Last year, without any approval and just moderate debate in the media, they essentially printed 600+ billion in US currency. We are now experiencing some first signs of inflation. More money chasing the same amount of poducts = inflation. It has the second side effect of artificially lowering the debt on paper. Translation = currency manipulation, exactly what we are charging the Chinese with. I wonder what else they don’t tell us.
It’s terrible that this kind of financial pillaging is going on while the rest of us watch helplessly as lawmakers quibble over the tax rate for the wealthiest Americans. Of course, it wouldn’t matter in this case since the FED is sending all this money to tax havens.
Thanks to Ron Paul and his version of tea party.
When the Koch brothers send the Tea Partiers the memo, then they’ll scream (but not till)
So, pardon this ignorant schmoe, but can someone help me understand if what the Fed doles out is included in the budget shortfall we hear so much about or if all the money they’re playing with is off the books. Is their largess included in the $1.3T deficit this year or is the deficit really a pile larger?
As I understand Don their money is not included in the budget. It’s like their own pile of cash, but since they are suppose to exist for the benefit of the country’s financial system it actually is our money.
That is my overly simplistic 2 sentence synopsis of the following link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Act
Doesn’t surprise me at all.
I expect that congress will make a big fuss and establish a commitee that will investigate this until the American people are distracted by something on YouTube.