{"id":1763,"date":"2009-12-13T08:42:04","date_gmt":"2009-12-13T08:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/bernanke-on-the-fed\/"},"modified":"2009-12-13T08:42:04","modified_gmt":"2009-12-13T08:42:04","slug":"bernanke-on-the-fed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/libertarianism\/bernanke-on-the-fed.php","title":{"rendered":"Bernanke on the Fed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent op-ed, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2009\/11\/27\/AR2009112702322.html?hpid=opinionsbox1\">argues<\/a> that proposals in Congress to reduce the Fed's powers or increase Congressional oversight are misguided.&nbsp; My reactions to Ben's piece are&nbsp;as follows:<\/p><p>1. Given that the Fed exists, it probably made sense for it to lower interest rates in response to the financial crisis.&nbsp; The private sector expected this; had the Fed not undertaken these actions, the confusion generated might have been counterproductive.<\/p><p>2. The Fed should have argued vociferously against, rather than for, the bailouts of Wall Street banks.&nbsp; These bailouts probably made things worse rather than better in the short term by generating uncertainty and delaying appropriate adjustments in bank balance sheets.&nbsp; And the bailouts virtually guarantee increased moral hazard in the long term.<\/p><p>3. Granting more regulatory power to the Fed is silly.&nbsp; Regulation of large, complex, and constantly evolving finanicial market activities is not going to fix anything, since the financial sector will innovate around it.&nbsp; Worse, regulation gives some investors a false sense of security.<\/p><p>4. Giving Congress more oversight of the Fed is a terrible idea;&nbsp;libertarians, in particular, should be wary of fixing bad government with more government.&nbsp; The way&nbsp;to improve the&nbsp;Fed is to&nbsp;eliminate the Fed.<\/p><div><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/c1709_6379328854053402400-4958114495378858736?l=jeffreymiron.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent op-ed, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke argues that proposals in Congress to reduce the Fed's powers or increase Congressional oversight are misguided.&nbsp; My reactions to Ben's piece are&nbsp;as follows:1. Given that the Fed exists, it probably made &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/libertarianism\/bernanke-on-the-fed.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-libertarianism"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1763"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}