Federal Reserve: Inflated Reputation
18th November 2010
The Great Depression occurred on the Fed’s watch, as have several other recessions. As for price stability, from the Fed’s creation (in 1913) to 1945, the dollar lost 45 percent of its value; between 1945 and 1980 it lost another 78 percent of its value; and between 1980 and today yet another 62 percent of the dollar’s value was inflated away. All told, during the less than 100 years that the Fed has been charged with keeping the value of the dollar stable, the dollar has lost 95 percent of its value. This shrinkage in the dollar’s value since 1913 is especially striking in light of the fact that, between 1790 and 1913, the dollar’s value declined by only about 8 percent.*
November 18th, 2010 at 12:55
Ja, the Fed is one miserable institution, and one so obviously a colossal failure as to boggle the mind. If there were three wishes I could apply to the US government, the first would be dump the Fed and go back to a Gold standard; the second would be to shred Interstate commerce clause as currently misinterpreted; and the third would be to cut out the legs from under the federal government with the nullification of the Federal Income Tax.
November 18th, 2010 at 13:08
I second that emotion.