🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3hb2il$lvs@crl12.crl.com>, Bruce Tomlin <btomlin@aol.com> wrote:
>Cliff Woods (Cliff@arcmusic.demon.co.uk) wrote in alt.2600:
>> 
>>Give us a break!  I thought the Feb res Bank was a PRIVATE bank - what's 
>>this "the nation" stuff????
>
>It's a sad fact that more non-US citizens know that the Fed is a private
>(and monopolistic) bank than US citizens.  At least Federal Express was
>honest enough to refer to themselves as "not a part of the US government". 

I think the Fed is actually one of those semi-public hybrids.  It's
not a "private" bank because the officers are named by the President
and confirmed by the Senate, but it's not "public" because it's 
independent of the normal bureaucracy and the President can't fire
the officers once confirmed.  He has to wait until their term expires,
and then simply replaces them.  (Or there's an impeachment process,
but it's ungainly and rarely/never used.)

The central bank in other countries is generally part of the government,
but there's a lot to be said for an organization which keep it fairly
independent.  For instance, we don't have to worry about a President
drastically increasing M1 so everyone feels "rich" prior to the election...
and is unemployed due to hyperinflation a few months later.

Considering the events around the start of the Great Depression, it's
hard to fault the desire to keep the Fed fairly independent.

"Federal Express", in contrast, is a purely public corporation.  The
President can no more name officers of FedEx than he can of GM, or Ford,
or IBM.

BTW, was "Cliff Woods" a sly pseudonym?  I seem to remember "Clifford Woods",
or something similar, being the name of an important monetary treaty.
I think it might have been the one that took the U.S. and Europe off
of fixed exchange rates... aka the "gold standard."

-- 
Bear Giles
bear@cs.colorado.edu/fsl.noaa.gov