🚀 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
> 
How come the Fed has never been audited, then, like outher Federal
agencies?  since its inception, it hasn't been audited by the GAO or anyone
else.  Why not?

John