28
Nov
2011
The Fed and Big Bank Nexus
A reader sends me this interesting Bloomberg piece. It is a familiar story, but armed with some FOIA data, it spells out just how much the Fed bailed out the major banks and kept it all from Congress.
I wonder, if you have the time, if you might be willing to respond to this (extraordinarily stupid and vacuous) Op-ed from Time about how the Fed “saved the world” with these loans? A Mises daily, perhaps?
http://swampland.time.com/2011/11/28/newsflash-the-fed-saved-the-world/
A couple of choice quotes:
“But the Fed saved the world economy through all this lending without losing a penny in the process.”
“[L]ending money to banks in a crisis is the whole point of the Fed: saving the world economy by flooding the system with money when it is about to freeze up is exactly what the central bank was created to do. If you don’t like it, then vote for Ron Paul and see what a world without the Fed looks like.”
A lot of people unfortunately take this nonsense quite seriously.
On second thought, you probably have bigger fish (Brad DeLong) to fry than this Calabresi joker. Just wanted to bring it to your attention. It’s annoying when people cite pieces like this with approval.