On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 3:29 PM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: > It's not that the Fed has "turned left." Instead, its leadership > (mostly) knows that if they want to save their main constituency (the > banks, Wall Street) in the current situation, they cannot accept > right-wing bromides.
I think this is too simplistic. We cannot speak of the Fed as if it were one monolithic entity that has a completely, coherent and consistent politics. Specifically, Ben Bernanke and the Fed Board of Governors is a technocratic entity that seems eminently clear-headed and sensible when compared with, say the ECB. I think it is a mistake to suggest that Ben Bernanke serves Wall St in the way that Greenspan did. Bernanke is a right-wing Keynesian and has always been one fairly consistently. The NY Fed, on the other hand, is a creature of, by and for Wall St. But it too represents the Wall St aristocracy (JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs) rather than the Tea party loving hedge fund types like Peter Schiff. Their long-term greed may seem positively enlightened in times of crisis such as these. And finally there are the minor regional Feds, many of which are loaded with ideological right-wing types like Kocherlakota. What you end up with from the Fed as a whole is a variety of contradictory voices, some of which seem progressive in comparison with the rest of the power system. -raghu. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
