Thanks again for allowing me the opportunity to participate in citizen action.

h/t to Alan Grayson. A responsible Congressman – and a Democrat – with a spine.

Yes, you can say that again. It’s great to be able to help him out with this.

AMEN!

Signed the petition awhile ago. Thanks to Grayson for all his work on this. I’ve seen him perform in at least one hearing. He deserves our support.

How do we convince Bernie Sanders to move on this? As Chair can’t he keep this from proceeding?

Why would Sanders want to prevent it?

Says Dean Baker: “It’s great that more Dems now care about what the Fed is doing with $2 trillion of our money.”

so – doing the math…

all it takes to get some people off their butts is $2T of public money – or – a campaign contribution of a coupla thousand dollars…

Thanks, Jane. That’s great news. Grayson is demonstrating how much can be accomplished in Washington with a little courage.

How do we convince Bernie Sanders to move on this? As Chair can’t he keep this from proceeding?

Why would you worry about Bernie Sanders?

He’d make a fine Democrat, except, ya know, for making all the other D’s look like pansies.

Maybe some day the D Party will actually deserve to have him.

Yes thanks to him also.

couple of quick notes:

I love Grayson, and I have signed the petition.

He was pretty outspoken when he was here too. What a breath of fresh air.

Bernie is sponsoring the bill in the Senate.

My bad, I was thinking of Barney Frank. (Bernie and Barney are not exactly the same name, but close enough that I should be on guard for the error).

Bernie is indeed sponsoring in the Senate.

I’m only half way through Greider’s Secrets of the Temple but that’s enough to know that the congresscritters are gonna have to be a lot smarter about how money, the political economy and the Fed really work than they are now. Right now Bernanke, or any successor, can dance circles around Congress. If Milton Friedman could convince them that the economics that led to the Depression was the right way to go the banksters aren’t gonna have any trouble leading them by the nose.

thanks.

I knew that there was something I liked about that guy. *g*

Grayson is a progressive firebrand, but not only that. On behalf of all citizens (including the ill-informed), he’s taking the fight to the entrenched and powerful – these anti-democratic keepers of monetary secrets.

The negative reviews on amazon seem to focus on the boring detail about Volcker’s interest rate decisions. Is that accurate? If so, I don’t need to read the book because I lived thru those years professionally.

Just signed. Thanks.

Here’s the link to the negative reviews of Greider’s book. I usually read only the negative ones, as they are more revealing than the positive ones.

I don’t think the discussion of Volcker’s term is boring at all. It’s not technical but detailed. He explains concepts as they arise in the narrative. More of a narrative of the condition of the economy, how the “monetarists” (Friedman advocates) were pushing for control of the money supply vs interest rates to control inflation are interesting as all get out. There are parts of it that read like a damn thriller. Economics is not my forte but I can’t put it down. He bounces back and forth, laying a groundwork for what’s coming. It’s definitely the Fed, warts and all.

I read some of those when you first mentioned them a while ago. I disagreed with the ones that I read.

Sounds like stuff I already know. Thanks.

It might be boring for a real monetary policy wonk.

BTW, Volcker’s embrace of targeting money supply was a convenient excuse for raising interest rates enough to cool inflation.

I’d say that’s not how Greider tells it. Seems it was quite the battle between the 2 camps, money supply vs interest rates. Volcker explained the policy as a car with 2 drivers. Greider devotes 2 chapters to it.

That sounds about right, but the outcome is as I stated. I never viewed Volcker as a died in the wool monetarist, but rather adopting that posture as the easiest route to the end he wanted.

I had worked in Citibank’s economics dept. in the early 1970s when it was dominated by hard core monetarists. Volcker never struck me as being anything like them.

It has been expressed in Congressional circles that a guy like Grayson may have trouble getting re-elected. He comes from a conservative district and he was elected (in part) on the momentum (and coattails) of a Democratic-house-cleaning (throw the bums out) phenomenon.

That’s a concise summary of the ‘inside baseball’ take on Grayson. It includes a huge dose of the requisite overly cautious (fraidy cat, ala Harry Reid) attitude with which we have become very familiar. While it has some merit, it can be argued that this perspective (strategy) is a big part of our current problems.

Democrats, fearful of being labelled soft on terra, had (still have) ceded control and ceded much of the terra argument and political ground to the R party. The D party having swallowed most of the BS whole, have to live with that mistake.

Grayson is taking the ball and running with it. He is showing strength and courage. There is no good reason for him the fail in this endeavor. Good for him. More Dems should take heed of his example.

He wasn’t and Greider writes about his “conversion” while still thinking adjusting rates was the way to cool inflation. The subject of inflation seems to be central to everything the Fed does. Nothing new to you but for me it makes our political economy more understandable. He mentions “Fed watchers” a few times and how they try to interpret what the Fed says and does for the benefit of their company/bank.

Someone asked him about reelection when he was here. His answer was something like: I guess we’ll see.

The Rethugs are really scurrying. We had one more Rethug, a woman, jump into the govenator race saying she balanced out the field. Dems are worried about primaries because of cost issues combined with the general. They need to get off their ass and start knocking on doors.

Oh goody, I don’t need to read the book from what you say. Nothing against the book, but I try to save 700 pages for subjects about which I know nothing. I knew Fed watchers. They spent inordinant time doing the kind of jerky stuff the Kremlin watchers did, whereas the broader direction of monetary policy was usually pretty clear. Turning points were tricky, but even Fed watchers didn’t do a good job of figuring that out.

Yes, central banks in the last few centuries were primarily concerned with inflation, and that puts them on the side of lenders at certain points in the business cycle. However, the broader argument is that inflation is destablizing (reductio ad absurdum: hyperinflation), and thus keeping it under control is pro-growth over the long term. I have a more nuanced view of that, but wouldn’t disagree with it.

The FRB may be the only central bank of the developed economies whose goal is both growth and inflation, the Humphrey-Hawkins Act. The ECU’s only policy directive is to control inflation, for example.

The impression I’m getting from the book is that the banks/banksters have purposely fostered the belief that monetary/economic policy is all mysterious black magick voodoo stuff. It isn’t if one is willing to take the time to understand how the system works. The folks who became the Populist Party, farmers, small businessmen, etc, in the late 1800s knew how the economy worked. Our 21st century population can’t even balance their damn check book.

Back to the cesspool.

Namaste

Can’t comment on that.

My problem with the financial sector, including monetary policy, is that it’s only purpose is to serve as a simple middleman. Between borrowers and lenders; between savers and investors. I don’t understand why it has to be so complicated. I understand the efficiency arguement, as eretail is more efficient for some purposes than stores, but that does not explain all the garbage that goes on in “high finance.”

BT is upstairs.

Ditto. Thanks for the heads up Jane.

Sent my Rep a note this morning!
Thanks for the reminder!