2012-01-13

Audit the Fed, then End the Fed

Just released transcripts from a Federal Reserve Board meeting held five years earlier:
I really believe that the drop in housing is actually on net going to make liquidity available for other sectors rather than being a drain going forward, and that will also get the growth rate more positive,” Ms. Bies told colleagues at the committee’s June meeting. Ms. Bies could not be reached for comment Thursday.
/
And even Ms. Yellen did not believe that the problems in the housing market would have broader consequences. “Of course, housing is a relatively small sector of the economy, and its decline should be self-correcting,” she said.
/
I would say that the capital markets are probably more profitable and more robust at this moment, or at least going into the six-week opportunity, than they have perhaps ever been,” Kevin Warsh, the Fed governor who watched Wall Street most closely, said at the meeting in September 2006. Three months later Mr. Warsh said almost exactly the same thing. He did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment Thursday.
/
For the Fed 2006 began with the departure of Mr. Greenspan, who presided in January over his final meeting as Fed chairman and was then widely regarded as the epitome of a central banker, a master who had guided the American economy through almost 20 years of remarkably consistent growth.
“I’d like the record to show that I think you’re pretty terrific, too,” Mr. Geithner said in adding his voice to the chorus of tributes at that final meeting. “And thinking in terms of probabilities, I think the risk that we decide in the future that you’re even better than we think is higher than the alternative.”
/
Ms. Yellen said: “It’s fitting for Chairman Greenspan to leave office with the economy in such solid shape. The situation you’re handing off to your successor is a lot like a tennis racquet with a gigantic sweet spot.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/business/transcripts-show-an-unfazed-fed-in-2006.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp

Though little Timmay and the silver fox Yellen could not of been more wrong, both were promoted to postitions of higher authority and power with Yellen often mentioned as next in line for Fed chair.