[HN Gopher] A Bill to Abolish the Board of Governors of the Fede...
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       A Bill to Abolish the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve
       System [pdf]
        
       Author : hggh
       Score  : 13 points
       Date   : 2024-06-14 20:05 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.lee.senate.gov)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.lee.senate.gov)
        
       | gigatexal wrote:
       | This seems unwise.
        
         | dadjoker wrote:
         | Why? Ever since the Fed was created - to supposedly avoid the
         | problems that created the Great Depression - they have polluted
         | the buying power of the dollar to where it is much less than it
         | was pre-Fed.
        
           | gigatexal wrote:
           | Are you thinking about the dollar leaving the gold standard?
        
           | bediger4000 wrote:
           | The Federal Reserve system was created in 1913, the Great
           | Depression kicked off in late 1929. Your comment seems like a
           | non sequitur.
        
             | gigatexal wrote:
             | Where does this end? No central bank and all dollars are
             | backed by bitcoin?
        
               | bediger4000 wrote:
               | I personally think this is all very poorly thought out.
               | There are weird superstitions around the Federal Reserve.
               | Separate from that, "bankers" in general, and
               | "international bankers" in particular have inherited all
               | the medieval anti-Jewish prejudice. Then there's the
               | modern finance system that occasionally dumps unsavory
               | customers, like Alex Jones. This leads to a desire for a
               | currency that exists outside of banks and bankers, where
               | you can sell dietary supplements and scam people without
               | having your account seized.
               | 
               | Unfortunately for those folks, Bitcoin is a weak vessel,
               | and cannot, in reality, meet all the requirements. It
               | takes tons of compute to create a Bitcoin, much less to
               | process a transaction 'on the block chain'. It's not as
               | anonymous as claimed, either, and should it be a
               | currency, it's deflationary. Not all the implications of
               | this are accounted for in the common knowledge about
               | Bitcoin.
        
           | mrguyorama wrote:
           | The success of Russia's central bank at managing the economy
           | in the face of sanctions, war, and loss of trade should show
           | you how good central banking is to a country.
        
             | shsjszbxhcixb wrote:
             | Nobody is saying central banking is unwise. It's that the
             | fed is run by private individuals (who are very cozy with
             | the banks) with no accountability who don't really care
             | about the American people outside of how much wealth they
             | can extract from them.
             | 
             | A central bank with a goal to serve Americans would be a
             | great institution.
        
               | toomuchtodo wrote:
               | You're confusing the Fed with Congress. The Fed controls
               | monetary policy (via the benchmark rate, a blunt tool),
               | Congress fiscal policy (a surgical tool). Because
               | Congress is effectively failed governance to deliver for
               | the citizenry is in no way a reason to drag the Fed, who
               | is arguably executing effective monetary policy.
               | Unemployment is very low, and price stability has almost
               | been reached. The Fed is doing all that it can while
               | remaining within its dual mandate.
               | 
               | Who controls healthcare policy? Congress. Who controls
               | food supplements? Congress. Who controls the minimum
               | federal wage? Congress. Who controls taxes (both rates
               | and incentives)? Congress. Entitlements? Congress. If you
               | want better governance, vote for competent
               | representatives, although I understand this is out of the
               | hands of most and we're being held back by the emotional
               | and unsophisticated who vote against their own interests
               | (broad strokes, lots of nuance and caveats).
               | 
               | The Fed could've even offered FedAccounts, free demand
               | deposit accounts at the Fed to eliminate the unbanked and
               | apply downward pressure to fees at commercial banks. But
               | a certain party recently passed legislation to prevent
               | that. Hard to avoid politics when they are driving
               | suboptimal outcomes at scale.
        
         | duskwuff wrote:
         | That's certainly an understatement. The bill wouldn't just
         | abolish the Board of Governors as mentioned in the title; it
         | would repeal the Federal Reserve Act in its entirety, leaving
         | the US with no central bank.
         | 
         | It's hard to overstate just how wildly irresponsible and self-
         | destructive of an act this would be. It's not even clear what
         | it would _mean_ , given how dramatically the US financial
         | system has grown and changed since 1913.
        
       | pwndByDeath wrote:
       | https://archive.org/details/pdfy--Pori1NL6fKm2SnY I can't finish
       | this book without dire risk of losing my mind. I'm good with
       | abolishing the FED
        
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       (page generated 2024-06-14 23:03 UTC)