The notion of “Auditing the Fed’’ has been around for awhile. Technically, the Federal Reserve is audited. On Tuesday, with little to no fanfare nor media coverage, there was a press release announcing the completion of the 2020 Audited Financial Statements. Digging deeper, each of the 12 Reserve Banks received their own independent audit.
Bureaucracies always benefit from political hysterias. A big one today is that police forces are being infiltrated by white supremacists. Pursuing this bogeyman will fill bureaucratic coffers, while public security services get worse and more expensive.
It’s a cliche now that big government never lets a crisis go to waste, but the same dynamic often holds at the bureaucratic level with regard to public manias. These crises and manias are not uncommonly caused by the very institutions claiming to be the only ones capable of solving the matter.
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If there is anything Wall Street banks crave is relief. Primarily relief from the potential for failure and, next, relief from holding much, if any, equity capital. These banks like their capital tiny and their profits huge. Losses should be socialized. After all, we want the ATMs to keep spitting out cash.
If we looked at most investment bank outlook reports for 2021, one of the main consensus themes was a strong conviction on a rapid and robust eurozone recovery. They were wrong.
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The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense
by Gad Saad. Regnery, 2020
xvi + 240 pages
