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Friday, March 30, 2012

Welcome To The United States Of Orwell, Part 4: "Consumer Protection" Just Another Federal Reserve Power Grab

How to mask yet another Federal Reserve power grab? Call it "consumer protection."

This is truly Orwellian: the latest and greatest Executive Branch/Federal Reserve power grab is labeled "consumer protection." I am indebted to correspondent Jim S. who seems to be one of the few Americans to have actually sorted through this monstronsity and gleaned its true nature: an unprecedented extension of Executive (i.e. Imperial Presidency) and Federal Reserve power.

Let's start by recalling that the Federal Reserve is a consortium of private banks. Calling a private consortium of banks the "Federal Reserve" is the original Orwellian misdirection, for there is nothing "Federal" about the Federal Reserve. It is not a government agency.

Now guess who will fund and control this vast new bureaucracy of "consumer protection"? Yes, the private consortium known as the Federal Reserve. "The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) [13]will be an independent unit located inside and funded by the United States Federal Reserve. It will write and enforce bank rules, conduct bank examinations, monitor and report on markets, as well as collect and track consumer complaints."

Since managing the money supply and interest rates is the ultimate "consumer protection," we can ask how well the Fed managed those tasks in the past 15 years: alas, their management has been catastrophic for the nation and the middle class, which has been gutted by their policies of serial bubble blowing, leveraged speculation and bank predation.

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2 comments:

Pat said...

Consumer protection bureau under the Federal Reserve makes sense if indeed all the money produced in the U.S. belongs to them anyway, by the rules of the Star Chamber.

If it belongs to them, aren't they entitled to watch over it?

If it doesn't belong to them, why would they be involved anyway?

Sometimes things that don't make sense make sense if the whole truth is known, and then it makes perfect sense.

If the Federal Reserve is in a position to use Consumer Protection laws to get some of its money back, it obviously has a vested interest in doing that, so power over makes good sense, as practical.

The real question is whether the Federal Reserve or the Supreme Court are anything but the modern day Star Chamber? That is the question answered which confirms and endorses the pre-existing condition of whether the rule of law exists at all, or whether it is simply the term used for Legal Club Law, i.e., rules made for the convenience of the Legal Club whose membership is created, sustained, and enforced by the Legal Club itself. Sounds a little like fascism through law, doesn't it?

lmclain said...

So, the banks get to write their own rules, investigate themselves, and decide who actually gets punished for crimes and who gets a "pass"? Sounds very similar to the "police review boards" that 99.99% of the time find that Joe Cop, who shot a man in the back 16 times from 30 yds away was "justified". And the banks are supposed to be worried, and the people should rejoice? Keep dreaming. And believing "the system" works fine....