The Fed Turns 100: A Survey Of The Critics

End America’s central bank because it caused the crashes of 2008, 1987, and 1929 and will blunder again.

That’s what many critics are saying about the Federal Reserve System (the Fed), which turns 100 on December 23. They note that on the Fed’s watch America has endured numerous bubbles, crashes, and inflationary cycles that have greatly devalued the dollar. The Fed, they say, has caused or aggravated several crashes.

“The Fed’s performance over the century has been abysmal, no matter how you look at it,” says Professor Joseph Salerno, a business professor and monetary expert at Pace University.

“If you say the goal of the Fed was to prevent calamities, then you have to say that it has been a failure,” says William A. Fleckenstein, a hedge fund manager and the author of Greenspan’s Bubbles.

Fleckenstein says he’s seen two bubbles over the past quarter century. He also believes that, under the Fed’s system of easy money, of interest rates of close to zero percent over the past few years that, “the Fed is once again creating a bubble.” The Fed should be abolished, he adds, because it has no accountability for its mistakes.

The length of the Fed’s charter is indefinite, said Fed sources, who would only speak on background. And that is generally the only way Fed sources will speak when asked about the bank’s current policies or historical record.

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