Monday, April 29, 2013

Gun-slinging Woman Takes on Effete Fed – and Makes It Better!


By Staff Report
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Fed's Esther George: speaking up for middle America ... Federal Reserve officials, as a rule, can expect a tough crowd when they visit places like Oklahoma where suspicion of big government runs deep. Esther George, president of the Kansas City Fed, is an exception. As she surveyed the cattle ranchers, energy bosses and other business leaders waiting to hear her speak at an event in El Reno, Oklahoma this month, she had a lot in common with her audience. – Reuters
Dominant Social Theme: Women can be great monetary leaders, too.
Free-Market Analysis: Presumably we are supposed to feel better because there is now a hawkish woman of integrity voting against accommodative Federal Reserve policies.
We're not actually especially impressed by her but we are always impressed generally with Reuters's endless efforts to adulate central bankers. If they are not comparing them to superheroes, they are showing us – in this article – that the Fed is a place where clear-eyed individualists like Esther George can shine.
It doesn't hurt for those who wish to defend the Fed as a most democratic institution that she is a woman. It shows that the boys' club of monetary control is actually a good deal more enlightened than we might think.
And Esther George is, too. She is characterized in this article as a maverick and a free thinker. She is tough, gutsy and resolute. We know this because she is a "hawk" while others on the Fed are "doves," including the biggest bird of them all, Ben Bernanke.
Of course, the reality of Ms. George's situation is actually glossed over. In reality, she is one of a privileged few that gets to determine the volume and value of the world's most important currency.
She helps decide how much of it is printed and how much it is worth from an interest standpoint.
We never learn, of course, how she makes these decisions.
And that's because Ms. George does not know, either. As Alan Greenspan admitted during his term as Fed head, there is no forward-looking instrument that is predictive.
It is all a guess, in other words. A kind of, well ... charade.
What is the point of the charade? To justify the creation and maintenance of a price-fixing mechanism that ultimately creates tremendous booms and terrible busts.
As economies collapse again and again, the ruins are swept up by the globalists that control central banking. And gradually, national economies are built into a single, international one.
Ms. George is now part of this exercise. We are meant, in this fulsome front-page Reuters article, to appreciate that the Fed is inclusive enough to provide space for a fearless, idiosyncratic woman who demands accountability and is in turn accountable to the flinty-eyed farmers who are watching her every move.
But apparently she is man enough – or woman enough – to take them on and win them over.
She is a terrific success story, Reuters tells us. Here's more:
Like many of them [the flinty-eyed farmers of her home state], George has become troubled that the dramatic measures the Fed has taken to restore U.S. growth might fuel inflation and asset price bubbles.
Raised in a similar farm community in neighboring Missouri, George was picked for the job for her ability to speak for the heartland, and she proved with her first vote on monetary policy that she would have no hesitation in doing so.
At the Fed's first meeting of the year on January 29-30, George dissented against a decision to buy $85 billion in bonds per month to push borrowing costs down. It was the first time in the Fed's 100-year history that a policymaker used their debut vote to dissent.
"She's got good Midwestern roots, a farm girl's common sense," said Dallas Fed chief Richard Fisher, who dissented against easy monetary policy twice in 2011. "Voices like Esther's prevent (the Fed) becoming locked into group-think."
... George has been president and CEO of the Kansas City Fed since October 2011, and in January she landed in a voting seat ... While America is still recovering from a deep recession, with the unemployment rate at a lofty 7.6 percent, this part of the country is doing relatively well.
... On the day before the April 4 Oklahoma speech, George bumped along muddy dirt tracks to visit a gas processing plant, and sampled El Reno's local delicacy - onion burgers - at Sid's, a popular diner. Along the way, she heard plenty from a community wary of decisions taken back East, and she made plain in her speech where she stood.
"I view the current policies as overly accommodative, causing distortions and posing risks to financial stability and long-term inflation expectations with the potential to compromise future growth," she told the 100-odd guests over a hearty beef-and-potatoes lunch.
Read that last quote over again, dear reader, and savor it. This is the modern version of Patrick Henry's famous quote, "Give me liberty or give me death."
Instead of those ringing words, we have this plainspoken wisdom from a plainspoken female banker who's keepin' them honest in Washington DC!

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