The Federal Reserve - Our Old Friends

Now here is something that looks a lot like a conflict of interest to me.

Denis Hughes, president of the New York state branch of the AFL-CIO, has been named the chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. He replaces our good friend Stephen Friedman.

Now that the AFL-CIO and the government have split ownership of General Motors, and the Federal Reserve is supposed to be separate from the government, how does this all play out?

In other Federal reserve news, Our other good friend Ben Bernacke will stay the main man. Since Mr O's speech to renominate him was pre-released, for whatever reason, I will share my favorite parts.

Ben approached a financial system on the verge of collapse with calm and wisdom, with bold action and outside-the-box thinking that has helped put the brakes on our economic free-fall

Our auto industry is showing signs of life. Business investment is showing signs of stabilizing. Our housing market and credit markets have been saved from collapse

So much smoke up my dress I have never seen.

The auto industry has shown signs of life for two weeks, thanks to government, I mean tax payer subsidies to encourage everyone to buy a new car. Sadly GM and Chrysler were in the last two places as far as car sales go. Government can't even bribe anyone to buy them. Ford was the big American winner. Now that the deal is over, I would expect sales to slag back into the toilet again.

The credit markets may not have completely collapsed, but they sure aren't loaning much. In fact, the credit card folks jacked all their interest rates right before the new law went into effect. Nothing like taking your tax money to save their company, then screwing the tax payer on top of it.

And the housing market is far from being saved from collapse. The banks with the blessing of the government have created a shadow inventory to hide foreclosures and keep the banks looking solvent, and to artificially keep prices higher than they really should be right now.

I guess business investment means Goldman Sach's profit margin. Because everywhere I look, I see companies folding for lack of investment credit.

Yes, old Ben and his friends have done an outstanding job, of accounting tricks, devaluing the Dollar, manipulating the Markets, and most likely prolonging the misery and making the final collapse all the more disastrous.

Not to mention he was in on seizing a few private companies, and forcing them on TARP recipients, forcing banks to take TARP FUNDS against their will, so the government could gain a controlling interest, and picking and choosing which companies will get saved and who would die. I am sure all his friends at Goldman Sach's had nothing to do with the decisions to let their competitors crash and burn, and Goldman winds up making Billions

Seizing banks and selling their assets to JP Morgon for pennies on the Dollar.

And I almost forgot, 2 Trillion some odd Dollars he handed out and refuses to say who received it, and hiring a Lobbying Firm to kill the Audit the Fed Bill in Congress.

Yes, he gets my vote for another term. He is doing a lovely job.