How would you rate the job being done by The Federal Reserve? That's what just over a thousand people were asked in a poll about the FED and some other government agencies. How badly did the FED do? Well, let's just say the IRS ranked higher.
But before you go asking for the FED's heads, ask yourself what you really know about the Federal Reserve. Could you give a coherent sixty second statement about what it does and why? Probably not.
Sorry, but I think this poll is a measure of how well the agencies' Public Relations folks are doing rather than a real measurement of the agencies' actual performance.
Short of a major scandal breaking, most folks will give high marks to agencies like the FBI, the CDC and NASA...and in fact all three ranked at the top in the poll. That's because we know what they do.
- The FBI catches bad guys.
- The CDC catches bad germs.
- And NASA send stuff up into space.
But the FED? Hmmmm kinda suspicious, lots of money dealing...right in the center of the bailout in which huge buckets were used to move cash from taxpayers pockets to the boardrooms of insurance companies and banks. Can't be good, can it? If only the FED PR folks could convince the public the buckets were made by NASA and inspected by the CDC and given a background check by the FBI.
Hey Tim! Great article, I quite agree that the Fed doesn't seem to be working for us. However, we should not be surprised. The Fed is actually not a government agency, but a system of shareholder-owned banks who do business with limited government supervision in exchange for special market controls. They are for-profit corporations, not government agencies. Their behavior makes more sense when you consider this fact. More information is available at the Federal Reserve's web page, federalreserve.gov. See particularly the text of the Federal Reserve Act law of 1913, which established this system.
ReplyDelete-Herodian