Danielle DiMartino Booth: Fed-Up!

Danielle Dimartino-Booth, author of Fed Up! presents at the 2017 Economic and Investment Summit. She discusses her deep look inside the Federal Reserve and her opinions on where the Fed has likely go wrong.

[glennt]

1. The Fed is privately owned.

Its shareholders are private banks. In fact, 100% of its shareholders are private banks. None of its stock is owned by the government.

2. The fact that the Fed does not get “appropriations” from Congress basically means that it gets its money from Congress without congressional approval, by engaging in “open market operations.”

Here is how it works: When the government is short of funds, the Treasury issues bonds and delivers them to bond dealers, which auction them off. When the Fed wants to “expand the money supply” (create money), it steps in and buys bonds from these dealers with newly-issued dollars acquired by the Fed for the cost of writing them into an account on a computer screen. These maneuvers are called “open market operations” because the Fed buys the bonds on the “open market” from the bond dealers. The bonds then become the “reserves” that the banking establishment uses to back its loans. In another bit of sleight of hand known as “fractional reserve” lending, the same reserves are lent many times over, further expanding the money supply, generating interest for the banks with each loan. It was this money-creating process that prompted Wright Patman, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1960s, to call the Federal Reserve “a total money-making machine.” He wrote:

“When the Federal Reserve writes a check for a government bond it does exactly what any bank does, it creates money, it created money purely and simply by writing a check.”

3. The Fed generates profits for its shareholders.

The interest on bonds acquired with its newly-issued Federal Reserve Notes pays the Fed’s operating expenses plus a guaranteed 6% return to its banker shareholders. A mere 6% a year may not be considered a profit in the world of Wall Street high finance, but most businesses that manage to cover all their expenses and give their shareholders a guaranteed 6% return are considered “for profit” corporations.

In addition to this guaranteed 6%, the banks will now be getting interest from the taxpayers on their “reserves.” The basic reserve requirement set by the Federal Reserve is 10%. The website of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York explains that as money is redeposited and relent throughout the banking system, this 10% held in “reserve” can be fanned into ten times that sum in loans; that is, $10, 000 in reserves becomes $100, 000 in loans. Federal Reserve Statistical Release H.8 puts the total “loans and leases in bank credit” as of September 24, 2008 at $7, 049 billion. Ten percent of that is $700 billion. That means we the taxpayers will be paying interest to the banks on at least $700 billion annually – this so that the banks can retain the reserves to accumulate interest on ten times that sum in loans.

The banks earn these returns from the taxpayers for the privilege of having the banks’ interests protected by an all-powerful independent private central bank, even when those interests may be opposed to the taxpayers’ — for example, when the banks use their special status as private money creators to fund speculative derivative schemes that threaten to collapse the U.S. economy. Among other special benefits, banks and other financial institutions (but not other corporations) can borrow at the low Fed funds rate of about 2%. They can then turn around and put this money into 30-year Treasury bonds at 4.5%, earning an immediate 2.5% from the taxpayers, just by virtue of their position as favored banks. A long list of banks (but not other corporations) is also now protected from the short selling that can crash the price of other stocks.

[toddmurphy]

Great story about Mr. Tiffany and Mr. Morgan concerning the pen! The rest is all brilliant Danielle!

[ajfan]

thank you Lance, didn’t realize book wasn’t recent

[catpisssniffer]

I have nothing against her but g Edwards the creature from jeckyl island is the only book you need to read to learn how the internal workings of fed works.

[omega]

as beautiful as she is smart. I pray she has Jesus in her heart.

[crocodile]

What a pleasant voice & you appear to be beautiful on the inside as well as the outside.

[fisherus]

I imagine that although it is flattering to hear that you are physically beautiful, it probably is far more enjoyable to hear how valued you are for what you bring to the economic table with the knowledge and education you bear on your resume. For that I commend you however, most of what you are dispelling is rhetoric as it has no solutions proposed to delineate the problems you expose.I do commend you for at least taking a stand in exercising hope for future generations.

[omega]

Read book of Revelation and Mecca I believe is the "City" in ch. 18. 666 in Greek most closely translates in Arabic to "In the Name of Allah"

[virgiliomontano]

What do we do now ? Will the Fed listen to you and the people !

[williamlgolub]

I'm Fed up too! Let's get back to some sound money policies, ie. hard money!