STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Track the Fed’s Unraveling
By Daily Bell Staff - January 26, 2016

The Fed’s phony mandate … How many times have we heard top Federal Reserve officials solemnly invoke the Fed’s “dual mandate” as the be-all, end-all justification for their monetary policy decisions? … But the so-called dual mandate was not exactly written in stone, it turns out. Rather, it has survived as a disturbing legislative artifact from some 40 years ago — when a congressional resolution was put forward to make the Federal Reserve answerable to the White House. – The Hill

Dominant Social Theme: The Fed needs to be reined in. Its actions need to be calibrated. Its results need to be further focused.

Free-Market Analysis: Here’s an analysis by The Hill that is half right. The part that is wrong we’ll mention later in this analysis. The part that is right we’ll discuss now.

The Hill is not exactly a muckraking publication but in this exposé it provides us with a good history lesson.

In fact, we learn the Fed’s dual mandate is actually a triple mandate and that the third part of the mandate is simply ignored by the Fed.

The Humphrey-Hawkins Act … decreed that the inflation rate should be brought down to zero by 1988; that the federal government should achieve and maintain a balanced federal budget; and that the United States should promote a “sound and stable international monetary system.”

The legislative language amending the Federal Reserve Act explicitly directs the Fed to aim its efforts at achieving not two, but rather three objectives, i.e., “to promote the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.”

The article points out that the Fed is obviously operating under triple mandate not a double one. Additionally, the reason the third mandate is not mentioned is because building and sustaining “moderate” long-term interest rates is not something the Fed has been able to accomplish – if it even wished to try.

Give the article credit. Having exposed the “third mandate,” the narrative becomes blunt and even savage. It uses the word “nonsensical” to describe the Fed’s actions and begins to pick apart the logic behind them.

The “maximum” employment that the Fed is responsible for doesn’t include something like 90 million adults in the US that have formally given up searching for employment.

And are prices stable? “It’s hard to be grateful to the Fed for stable prices when Yellen herself is constantly vexed that inflation is not considerably higher — despite her best efforts to pump up the money supply by suppressing interest rates.”

And what has the Fed done for seniors and savers by pinning rates to the zero-bound? So many have seen their retirements restricted or even vanish into the horizon.

The conclusion here, stated by the article, is that the Fed “is being revealed as not only less-than-divinely ordained, but supremely fallible in carrying out the ill-conceived tasks it was assigned so very long ago.”

The increasingly irritated tone of the article aligns with observations we’ve been making for years. As the Internet Reformation expands, the most high profile, illogical facilities are increasingly exposed. The media itself, military false-flag operations and central banking are among those receiving attention.

The article even makes the point that the Fed was developed at a time when the culture itself was more comfortable with government activism and then asks, ironically, “Central planning through central banking; what could go wrong?”

The answer: Much has gone wrong and this latest rate hike may go down as one of the worst mistakes the Fed has ever made. Now we may hear Janet Yellen explaining how the Fed’s upward rate direction has been pre-empted by events of the moment.

The article concludes, “You won’t find a commitment to sound money and free enterprise, but rather a government-knows-best mentality.”

Conclusion: Bear in mind this is an article in The Hill, and one that shows clearly that the central banking meme is leaking credibility throughout the media. Its crumbling is significant, indeed. Track it.

Posted in STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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