[throwaway5947]

It’s a cynical take, but I always thought the real reason for central bank independence is so the finance sector can exercise more political leverage and be safer during busts, for politicians it was mostly a technocratic headache they happily remissed. People always talk about independence as some high minded ideal but I don’t see the benefit in practice.

[lazide]

You saw that Trump was explicitly trying to print cash like crazy, right?

Even without the ability to directly fire folks and nominal ‘independence’ that definitely delayed rate hikes and made inflation much worse.

If politicians had direct control, the whole countries economy would be whipsawed by whatever directly benefited the current office holder.

As-is, it’s indirectly the case, hah.

[corbulo]

Not sure which is better. Ownership of regional feds is private.

It's not like democracies take a long view of things very frequently, but neither does the fed, at least not directly (maybe through said regional ownership).

[lazide]

Cite?

[https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm] disagrees.

They’re a weird semi-governmental entity.

[corbulo]

Thats the national fed.

The regional feds are privately owned by 'member banks'

https://www.stlouisfed.org/in-plain-english/who-owns-the-fed...

It's actually a really ambiguous topic to research, as ownership stakes are basically never published. Someone supposedly did a FOIA and got the list of ownership shares for the NY fed, but its sourcing was dubious though it seemed legit enough. The names made sense and it lined up with a lot of verifiable historical facts. Banks of ownership for the NY Fed were systemically important banks like Citi, JP Morgan and BNY Mellon, few others iirc.

Read and evaluate for yourself: https://wallstreetonparade.com/2019/11/these-are-the-banks-t...

[lazide]

* The first link points out,

1) Those shares are not controlling in any way, but they do pay dividends. And those shares are for all member banks.

So it is a way for the Federal reserve to push any 'profit' from lending to the banks who paid the interest in.

2) They do vote for some directors (6 of 9) for the sub-banks, but those directors do not control things like interest rates or other policy decisions. That is done by the Board of Governors, which is controlled by the US Gov't.

* For your second link, that website looks like infowars had it's head explode all over the room. I'll pass.

[corbulo]

It's unlikely that they have shares for the hell of it. Advisory capacity or not, there is some influence however you want to phrase it. Why not publish them if its totally innocuous? If you read the history of banks those are the ones that were there at its founding.

I agree that website looks like shit, but what it says is sourced and lines up with the public history of the fed.

[landemva]

> Not sure which is better.

How about neither. The Fed was created in 1913 and can be abolished.

[lazide]

We could also get rid of the Air Force, Space Force, etc.

The only constitutional federal military is the Army and Navy! (Article 1, Section 8)

Or just recognize that it was created because of a long history of severe painful crises, and considered the 'least bad' option compared to JP Morgan having to bail out the US Economy (and hence wielding incredible power). [https://www.crf-usa.org/images/pdf/jpmorgan.pdf]

The devil you know, or the devil you don't.

[landemva]

Distrust of king's standing armies led Constitution to allow army for two years.

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C12-1...

"To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years"

Maybe we could amend the Constitution if we want the standing army.

[lazide]

Good luck with that!

[askin4it]

Nothing like a "long history of severe painful crises" to excuse throwing out the rules...

[corbulo]

For sure. The treasury is the most morally correct decision maker for economic policy in every facet. It really comes down to a question of sovereignty, which should be in the hands of the people through elected officials.

But what are the consequences? Do those consequences make us vulnerable?

[hindsightbias]

What McCulley said in 2017:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnYZwxzxd9Y

[landemva]

While Trump advocated for spending, the spending bills come from House of Representatives. Trump helped reduce expenditures by starting the withdraw process from two-decade Afghanistan quagmire. The Fed helps the government with deficit spending.

[lazide]

I was pointing out that Trump kept threatening to fire the Fed Chairman if he didn't drop interest rates.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-trump-tweets/trum...]

This wasn't that many years ago!

[landemva]

The Fed was raising rates first couple years of Trump. And the economy was doing okay with higher rates.

[lazide]

Oh, I never said Trump was doing what he was because of any concern about the economy.

The fed wasn’t in his crosshairs at first, but when they started to raise rates…

Trump and his family has extensive real estate ties, and those were having trouble due to the rising rates.

So then he started threatening them, and miraculously, they took a break. Which seems to have helped his son in law avoid bankruptcy at the minimum.

Weird, huh?