LibertyMage
07-27-2009, 06:37 PM
Most people have seen the Washington Post's "Focus on the Fed" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/23/AR2009072303004.html) article in regard to H.R. 1207 and S. 604, both of which are bills to audit the Federal Reserve. Here is a small taste:
Which brings us to the proposed Federal Reserve Transparency Act, sponsored by anti-Fed crusader Ron Paul (R-Tex.) in the House and socialist Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) in the Senate. In the name of open government, it would subject the Fed's decisions to a full-blown audit by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Though the bill has attracted 276 co-sponsors in the House and 17 in the Senate, it is wrongheaded in the extreme. By opening up the Fed's most sensitive interest rate and credit policies to public second-guessing, the bill would create a risk -- real and perceived -- of monetary policy bent to suit congressional overseers. This would destroy financial markets' faith in the Fed and, by extension, the value of the U.S. dollar, just as surely as a political "audit" of the Supreme Court's deliberations would undercut public faith in the justice system.
This article makes comparisons that are utterly dissimilar. Not only does our justice system make available verdicts and vote counts the same day that the court votes on the issue, they also make public the dissenting parties with the articulated minority opinion. This is a a world of difference from the transparency policy of the Federal Reserve, who graciously offers us meeting transcripts five years after the meetings occur. The transparency policies of these two groups are in no way similar and making such a comparison is disingenuous at best.
But that isn't the real problem with the article.
If you look again (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/23/AR2009072303004.html) you will see that the article has no author. As Glenn Greenwald has stated (http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/29/anonymity/index.html) in a recent article, anonymous comments "are often worse than nothing: they're inherently unreliable because they're made without accountability". Here we have the Washington Post, which has been been labeled in the past "Pravda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravda) on the Potomac" for its lack of journalistic integrity and tendency for political coddling, writing an article which nobody is accountable for, which advocates the continuation of non-accountability in government. Does anything feel odd to you about this situation?
We continually hear, as the Washington Post's regurgitates, that H.R. 1207 and S. 604 would bring politics into managing monetary policy. However, as it has been stated in the Financial Services Committee hearings (http://tinyurl.com/lup52z) the bill would have no impact monetary policy nor would it give anyone authority to sit in on its hearings. The article advocates the continued secrecy of the Federal Reserve based on this premise. Unfortunately we have no source for this article and therefore there can be no dialog as to the accuracy of this claim or of the credentials of its author. I don't want to lead anyone into assumptions but the proximity of the Washington Post to Washington DC makes me wonder about the motivations of this article. So much for the standards (http://www.newseum.org/news/news.aspx?item=nh_CRON090714_2) Walter Cronkite wanted to establish.
When we see an anonymous article in the future we should immediately throw it in the trash like the unscrupulous, irreverent garbage that it is.
http://www.libertymage.com/
Which brings us to the proposed Federal Reserve Transparency Act, sponsored by anti-Fed crusader Ron Paul (R-Tex.) in the House and socialist Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) in the Senate. In the name of open government, it would subject the Fed's decisions to a full-blown audit by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Though the bill has attracted 276 co-sponsors in the House and 17 in the Senate, it is wrongheaded in the extreme. By opening up the Fed's most sensitive interest rate and credit policies to public second-guessing, the bill would create a risk -- real and perceived -- of monetary policy bent to suit congressional overseers. This would destroy financial markets' faith in the Fed and, by extension, the value of the U.S. dollar, just as surely as a political "audit" of the Supreme Court's deliberations would undercut public faith in the justice system.
This article makes comparisons that are utterly dissimilar. Not only does our justice system make available verdicts and vote counts the same day that the court votes on the issue, they also make public the dissenting parties with the articulated minority opinion. This is a a world of difference from the transparency policy of the Federal Reserve, who graciously offers us meeting transcripts five years after the meetings occur. The transparency policies of these two groups are in no way similar and making such a comparison is disingenuous at best.
But that isn't the real problem with the article.
If you look again (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/23/AR2009072303004.html) you will see that the article has no author. As Glenn Greenwald has stated (http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/29/anonymity/index.html) in a recent article, anonymous comments "are often worse than nothing: they're inherently unreliable because they're made without accountability". Here we have the Washington Post, which has been been labeled in the past "Pravda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravda) on the Potomac" for its lack of journalistic integrity and tendency for political coddling, writing an article which nobody is accountable for, which advocates the continuation of non-accountability in government. Does anything feel odd to you about this situation?
We continually hear, as the Washington Post's regurgitates, that H.R. 1207 and S. 604 would bring politics into managing monetary policy. However, as it has been stated in the Financial Services Committee hearings (http://tinyurl.com/lup52z) the bill would have no impact monetary policy nor would it give anyone authority to sit in on its hearings. The article advocates the continued secrecy of the Federal Reserve based on this premise. Unfortunately we have no source for this article and therefore there can be no dialog as to the accuracy of this claim or of the credentials of its author. I don't want to lead anyone into assumptions but the proximity of the Washington Post to Washington DC makes me wonder about the motivations of this article. So much for the standards (http://www.newseum.org/news/news.aspx?item=nh_CRON090714_2) Walter Cronkite wanted to establish.
When we see an anonymous article in the future we should immediately throw it in the trash like the unscrupulous, irreverent garbage that it is.
http://www.libertymage.com/