Daily Archives: 23 February 2012

And This from the Fourth Branch of the Federal Government

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Victoria McGrane and Jon Hilsenrath write in The Wall Street Journal:

The Federal Reserve has operated almost entirely behind closed doors as it rewrites the rule book governing the U.S. financial system….

Hmm….

Since the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul became law in July 2010, the Fed has held 47 separate votes on financial regulations, and scores more are coming. In the process it is reshaping the U.S. financial industry by directing banks on…what kind of trading they can engage in and what kind of fees they can charge retailers on debit-card transactions.

It’s hard to have such arrogance when the public is listening in.

But some would disagree with the secretiveness.  Sheila Bair, ex-Chairwoman of the FDIC, suggests

People have a right to know and hear the discussion and hear the presentations and the reasoning for these rules.  All of the other agencies which are governed by boards or commissions propose and approve these rules in public meetings.  I think it would be in the Fed’s interest to do so as well.

Naturally, the Fed insists that there’s nothing wrong with the secrecy.  Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo says with a straight face that open meetings aren’t always the most effective means to increasing public understanding, and they aren’t a gauge of regulators’ work.

You can have a scripted meeting that does not show any engagement at all….

But this is just a red herring.  Scripting is a hazard of all public meetings, not only the Fed’s.  But more to the real point, this argument elides the fact that there’s no increase in public understanding, either, from secret meetings, nor do such closed-door meetings provide any gauge at all of regulators’ work.

Open meetings could also strain the already busy schedules of top Fed officials. The Fed currently has 250 separate rule-writing projects under way.

There’s a hint there, and it has to do with all those regulations and regulation-writing exercises.

For whom do these guys think they work?

The New American Dream

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Don’t dream big, anymore.  Don’t reach for the stars, anymore.  Don’t even reach for the moon, much less Mars, or beyond.

Dream small.  Live small.  That’s the new American Dream, Obama style.

President Obama tells us to longer believe, for instance, our 50-year old dream “that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”  President Kennedy had gone on:

We intend to be first.  In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world’s leading space-faring nation.

No more.  Now we’re begging rides into earth orbit from our rivals.  And the viable Republican candidates for President aren’t any better than Obama in this; although Governor Romney at least would keep government out of the way of private enterprise pursuing these goals.

What President Obama says is this:

Folks don’t have unrealistic ambitions. They do believe that if they work hard they should be able to achieve that small measure of an American Dream.

“That small measure.”  Umm, yes, we do have large, even unrealistic, ambitions.  Most of us haven’t, in fact, given up.  We do still have—and work toward—large dreams.  That’s what entrepreneurialship is all about, for instance, as well as going into space.  Far out into space.  We’ve just given up on you, Mr Obama.

Your message, though, is made for the times as you would have us believe they are, permanently, with our country emerging, despite your policies and spending, from recession.   But most of us understand that it’s now three years since the end of the current recession, and you’re still telling us to think and play small.  Most of us understand that Kennedy made his articulation of the American dream just three months after the end of the 1960-1961 recession.

Vanderbilt University political science professor John Geer suggests

[Obama] can’t paint too rosy a scenario because things aren’t that rosy.  He’s got to come up with a theme that appeals to voters, especially middle-class voters, alleviates their fears and gives them reason to believe the future will be better.

And yet, Kennedy did just that—while suggesting that Americans had, and should expect to have, bigger aspirations.

No longer do our incumbent leadership inspire: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”  Now they promise: “Ask not you can do for your country; ask what your government can do for you.”

Of course, there were fewer demands on our dollar or on our tax dollar in Kennedy’s day.  When he talked about our aspirations, the modern welfare state of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Obamacare hadn’t been built yet.