Rapid Increase In Knowledge & Technology

In Defense of Transparency

The Daily Reckoning Presents

Why Central Bank Secrecy is Detrimental to Free-Market Capitalism

Bernanke vehemently resisted making these disclosures...for obvious reasons. The disclosures reveal the Fed's too-cozy relationship with Wall Street. They also reveal a kind of institutionalized arrogance: the Federal Reserve knows what's best for us, even if we don't know it ourselves...or believe it.

During the last several months, Chairman Bernanke frequently and persistently asserted the need for secrecy at the Federal Reserve. Transparency, he argued, would compromise the Fed's independence. The argument is ridiculous. Secrecy facilitates corruption and abuse. Transparency prevents it. A couple of free-thinking politicians recognized this reality early in the credit crisis.

As early as February, 2009, Senator Bernard Sanders, the Vermont Independent, complained to Bernanke, "Given the size of the [Fed's] commitments, it is incomprehensible that the American people have not received specific details about them."

Bernanke tersely replied: "The Federal Reserve does not release specific information regarding the borrowings of individual institutions from our lending facilities. The approach is completely consistent with the long-standing practice of central banks."

As it turns out, this approach is also completely consistent with promoting deceptions and conducting crony capitalism...like doling out enormous bailout checks to Wall Street banks without ever disclosing the timing or size of these bailouts to the general public.

This is not a healthy circumstance for an economy that purports to practice "free-market capitalism."

"Since its inception," Congressman Ron Paul griped in a February 2009 speech, "the Federal Reserve has always operated in the shadows, without sufficient scrutiny or oversight of its operations. While the conventional excuse is that this is intended to reduce the Fed's susceptibility to political pressures, the reality is that the Fed acts as a foil for the government..."

But now that the Fed has lost its "right" to non-disclosure, the American public is learning some very ugly truths, like the ugly truth that several large Wall Street banks received much greater assistance from the Fed than anyone had ever disclosed during the crisis of 2008- 9. The bailout recipients and the Fed were both as silent as starfish about the spectacular scale of the Fed's bailout activities.

"Almost two years ago," Senator Sanders recalled recently. "I asked Chairman Bernanke to tell the American people which financial institutions and corporations received trillions of dollars as part of the Wall Street bailout. He refused. [But now], as a result of an audit-the-Fed provision I put into the financial reform bill, we finally learn the truth - and it is astounding."

During the crisis, most Wall Street banks admitted to receiving a few billion dollars in TARP lending (after which they all made a big to-do about re-paying it). But they never uttered a peep about the billions of dollars they obtained secretly.

Goldman Sachs borrowed billions from the Fed's Primary Dealer Credit Facility, but never bothered to mention this fact in any of its SEC filings. Goldman was equally silent about its borrowings fro

m the Fed's Term Securities Lending Facility. Only now - nearly two years later - do we learn what really happened.

"Morgan Stanley sold the Fed more than $205 billion in mortgage securities from January 2009 to July 2010," The Huffington Post reports, "while it's much bigger rival, Goldman Sachs, sold $159 billion. Citigroup, the nation's third-largest bank by assets, sold the Fed nearly $185 billion in mortgage bonds. Merrill Lynch/Bank of America sold about $174 billion. It's not clear how much these firms profited, but it's abundantly clear that they did turn a profit."

These obscenely large taxpayer-funded bailouts are not merely reprehensible for being conducted secretly; they are reprehensible for having deceived taxpayers, dollar-holders, investors and all other individuals who deserve honest and transparent financial markets.

Regards,

Eric Fry,
for The Daily Reckoning

WikiLeaks is grabbing the headlines, but your California editor considers the "Icky-Leaks" issuing from the Federal Reserve to be much more intriguing - like the icky leak that the Fed doled out trillions of dollars in clandestine bailouts and guarantees during the crisis of 2008 and early 2009.

Thanks to a nifty little provision in the Dodd-Frank reform bill, the Fed published an exhaustive and detailed list of bailout recipients, along with the sums each received.

"The document dump confirms," The Nation reports, "that the $700 billion Treasury Department bank bailout...signed into law under President George W. Bush in 2008 was a small down payment on an secretive 'backdoor bailout' that saw the Fed provide roughly $3.3 trillion in liquidity and more than $9 trillion in short-term loans and other financial arrangements."

Coming to a town near you!

BEWARE
Armed bands are roaming the highways and marching through                     
Watch for these gang identifiers:                                                    

Vehicles: sports cars, four-door sedans, and vans, often painted

black and white, with sirens and flashing red and blue lights.

Clothing: Well kept dress uniforms, usually blue or black (typical

gang colors), and adorned with patches and badges. Head gear

varies. Other accessories include gun belts, handcuffs, hand-held

radios, and large flashlights.

 

Armaments: handguns, shotguns, assault rifles, tear gas rifles,

pepper spray, billy clubs, shields, bullet-proof armor, helmets,

and face shields.

These gangs are highly organized, well armed, and

potentially violent. Warn your friends and neighbors!

Do not provoke them !

do not let them corner you !

Organize and protect yourself  and your property !

Top 10 Dumbest Sarah Palin Quotes of 2010

The Most Laughable Gaffes and Memorable

Misstatements by Half-Gov. Palin

By Daniel Kurtzman, About.com Guide

1. "Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn't it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate." --a Tweet by Sarah Palin, which she quickly removed after being ridiculed for inventing the word "refudiate," July 18, 2010

2. "'Refudiate,' 'misunderestimate,' 'wee-wee'd up.' English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!'" --a follow-up Tweet by Sarah Palin, proudly mistaking her illiteracy for literary genius, July 18, 2010

3. "But obviously, we've got to stand with our North Korean allies." --Sarah Palin, after being asked how she would handle the current hostilities between the two Koreas, interview on Glenn Beck's radio show, Nov. 24, 2010

4. "Energy," "budget," (crossed out), "tax cuts" and "lift American spirit." --crib notes written on Sarah Palin's hand while she spoke at a Tea Party convention

5. "I didn't really had a good answer, as so often -- is me." --Sarah Palin, on writing notes on her hand during her Tea Party convention speech, March 5, 2010

6. "We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada. And I think now, isn't that ironic?" --Sarah Palin, admitting that her family used to get treatment in Canada's single-payer health care system, despite having demonized such government-run programs as socialized medicine that will lead to death-panel-like rationing, March 6, 2010

7. "Extreme deep water drilling is not the preferred choice to meet our country's energy needs, but your protests and lawsuits and lies about onshore and shallow water drilling have locked up safer areas. It's catching up with you. The tragic, unprecedented deep water Gulf oil spill proves it." --Sarah Palin, blaming the Gulf oil spill disaster on "extreme environmentalists," Facebook note, June 2, 2010

8. "I think it's appalling and a violation of our freedom of the press." –Sarah Palin, speaking about the negative media coverage of Republican congressional candidate Vaughn Ward, Boise, Idaho, May 21, 2010

9. "Go back to what our founders and our founding documents meant -- they're quite clear -- that we would create law based on the God of the Bible and the Ten Commandments." –-Sarah Palin, arguing that Judeo-Christian belief was the basis for American law and should continue to be used as a guiding force for creating future legislation, interview with Bill O'Reilly, May 6, 2010

10. "I want to help clean up the state that is so sorry today of journalism. And I have a communications degree." --Sarah Palin, Fox News interview with Sean Hannity, Nov. 22, 2010

Read more of Sarah Palin's craziest quotes of all time...
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~Compiled by Daniel Kurtzman

The Fall of an Empire, Part Six?

EDUCATIONAL WELL-BEING

Components ranked by the gap between

the child at the 10^th percentile and the child

at the 50^th percentile (as a percent of  the 50^th

percentile) with 1 being the smallest gap

                                                                TOTAL     MATH        SCIENCE

                                                                RANK    LITERACY  LITERACY

DENMARK

FINLAND

NETHERLANDS

SWITZERLAND

ICELAND

IRELAND

NORWAY

SWEDEN

AUSTRIA

CANADA

FRANCE

GERMANY

POLAND

PORTUGAL

BELGIUM

BRITAIN

CZECH REPUBLIC

HUNGARY

LUXEMBOURG

SLOVAKIA

SPAIN

GREECE

ITALY

UNITED STATES

4	3	10
1	1	1
8	6	13
12	14	17
10	7	15
2	2	5
11	11	12
7	9	6
22	23	18
3	4	4
23	21	23
20	18	19
5	5	3
14	17	9
24	24	22
13	8	21
17	22	11
6	10	2
16	16	20
15	15	8
9	12	7
18	19	14
21	20	16
19	13	24

                                                                         HOW CAN THIS BE?

  

 Source: “The Children Left Behind”, UNICEF