Ron Paul And The Fed on truTV.com Video

Ron Paul And The Fed on truTV.com Video
FED and housing crisis

Big, Fat and Bailed-Out: Your Personal Banker

The Great No Inflation Hoax

Kevin Phillips, HuffPost

Americans are now beginning to understand that the government's vaunted Consumer Price Index has its own share of gimmicks not unlike a sub-prime mortgage or the six pages of fine print that accompanies your credit card agreement.

Wall Street Socialism

I am talking, of course, about the collectivization of financial risk being promulgated by the Federal Reserve Board and the U.S. Treasury Department and applauded in pin-striped precincts from Park Avenue to Pacific Heights. Described as Wall Street Socialism by the gauche and more precisely identified as the "socialization of risk" by sophisticates, the new fashion leaves the profits of finance in private hands as of yore. It is only the "risk" -- of collapsed currencies, flawed speculation, busted hedge funds or the greedy misjudgments of large banks or brokerage firms -- that is quietly taken up by government entities and all too often shifted to taxpayers who do not understand the pompous phraseology but know full well that Washington will never bail out their hardware store or the widget plant where their son works.

This has been going on for decades -- a major reason why finance has grown and prospered so much compared with most other industries. But it's only been so boldly and shamelessly embraced in the last few weeks. The Federal Reserve insists that "inter-connections" require rescuing large institutions that might knock down other entangled financial dominoes. However, these would not have been so cocky or so inter-connected in their web-spinning if the Fed had not allowed so much greed and gamesmanship for so long. Ex-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan is often singled out as a culprit, but most of what he did was what most of the financial sector wanted. They, too, loved making 4th of July speeches about the glories of free enterprise and free -- market profits while counting on the government to collectivize the perils of risk. Big, fat and dumb financial institutions could count on being big, fat and bailed-out.

Panic Time at the Fed

Steve H Hanke, Forbes

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's blundering is becoming more breathtaking with each passing week. At the end of March he rolled out a grand plan to crown the Federal Reserve as the nation's new financial stabilizer. The Fed a stabilizer? That's who created the financial mess we're in.

If this wasn't bad enough, Secretary Paulson then donned his cheerleader's uniform and encouraged Beijing to let the Chinese yuan appreciate against the greenback. All the while favoring in this fashion a debasement of the U.S. currency, Paulson proclaimed that we should remain calm and confident because the economic fundamentals are sound. He reminds me of the stockbroker who performed a valuable service to his partners by always being wrong.

We Should Attend Issues Not Personalities

Does Bill O'Reilly pay any attention to you? To me? To anybody?
We give him publicity, so why should the public attend to us?
Does the State Department market our nuclear secrets to the Middle East?
Does the CIA supply heroin to Europe?
What does the Federal Reserve do for us?
What is the IRS reason for being?
Why do the five major news networks continue to operate?
We focus on the personalities involved rarely the issues.