Our Awful Situation

When the Fed Goes into the Investment Business

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 13th, 2008

“The power to determine the quantity of money… is too important, too pervasive, to be exercised by a few people, however public-spirited, if there is any feasible alternative. There is no need for such arbitrary power… Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes - excusable or not - can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic - this is the key political argument against an independent central bank.”

-Milton Friedman

From TheNewAmericanEmpire:

In so doing, the Fed has nationalized a portion of the portfolio of Bear Stearns, and become an “investor of last resort” rather than a “lender of last resort”, besides facilitating the take-over of this investment bank by JP Morgan Chase. A private company, BlackRock Financial Management, was also hired to administer the new Delaware-based corporation and will attempt to liquidate the acquired securities gradually over time. The Fed could then recuperate part or all of its non-recourse “loan” to JP Morgan Chase, and would retain any excess amount on its unusual “investment”, in the event there is a profit.

There you have it. For the first time since its creation in 1913, the Fed has turned itself into a government of the banks, and has invested risky public capital in a business that was in need to be saved quickly from bankruptcy and liquidation. Thus, the Fed has not only decided that it is its duty to solve “liquidity crises”, but also “solvency crises” in the regulated and non-regulated banking sector. In other countries, such public investments to resolve a solvency crisis are decided and handled by the Treasury and the Government, and are later voted into law. Even in the U.S., that is the way the Resolution Trust Corp. was created by the Reagan administration in the late 1990’s. In fact, the current banking crisis is very reminiscent of the U.S. Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980’s and 1990’s, although this time the banking crisis is much more severe and much more widespread.

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Our Awful Situation

When the Fed Goes into the Investment Business

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