The Fed As God

If there were no God, it would have been necessary to invent him.

Most of us are familiar with this quote from the great French philosopher, Voltaire.

I thought of that yesterday when I was watching The Dylan Ratigan Show and they were interviewing John Hofmeister, author of Why We Hate The Oil Companies: Straight Talk From An Energy Insider. After seeing Mr. Hofmeister interviewed on several occasions (he was an in-demand guest during the BP Oil Spill), I get the feeling that he really is essentially a straight-shooter. There are going to be liberals who find him too pro-business and conservatives would find him too pro-environment. That, of course, should not be construed as an endorsement of everything he says; I just mention that to provide some context to his thoughts.

Anyway, what was interesting was that he indicated that he wanted something set up for national energy policy that was not unlike how the Federal Reserve is responsible for monetary policy. He believed having someone appointed to 14-year terms as the head of this Board would be a good way to keep politics out of policy. That is, of course, a large reason the Fed is set up like that. It would considered VERY bad if a President was able to manipulate interest rates for the sake of elections like the way George W. Bush reportedly did with his silly "Terror Alert" system. (Many pundits smelled something fishy as each election neared during the Bush administration, there would be an alert - which caused fear - which led people to vote for the supposedly stronger national defense party.)

His thoughts reminded me of how former Senate Majority Leader, Tom Daschle (D-SD), was basically advocating for that (an independent board) for national health care policy in his 2009 book, Critical: What We Can Do About The Health Care Crisis.

And, yet, there are lots of citizens (and they're actually not all teabaggers) who want to "end the fed" (as presribed in Ron Paul's book).

I don't really claim to know the ideal solution here, but I get the feeling this is a case of - I don't recall the term, it's apparently something you learn in Poli-Sci 101 - where one side of a debate is extremely passionate and the other side (which may, in fact, be the majority) just does not match the intensity of the other side. I think it is a phenomenom often associated with gun-control. I think most of us believe some reasonable restrictions on gun rights is appropriate - but the NRA has consistently won because of the consistent passion and political pressure they bring to the debate.

That said, while I don't have any reason to believe that the Fed is going to be ended any time soon, it is clear that the teabaggers have the balls of the GOP in a stranglehold and it's leading the country down a dangerous path.