Danielle DiMartino Booth was a Dallas Fed Staffer. Her knew book – Fed Up: An Insider’s Take On Why The Federal Reserve Is Bad For America”, gives incite into the incestuous intellectual relationship Fed policy makers have with each other. She calls it “group stink”.
Dimartino Booth is interviewed by Jeff Deist of the Mises Institute in the video below.
Here are some excerpts from the video.
Deist: “The fed is almost exclusively staffed by academics, by phd’s. That wasn’t always the case. Could you summarize this impact of academization of the Fed for us?”
Booth: “I think the end result of all of this, which stands in direct contrast to the mandates of the original 1913 Act…to insure intellectual diversity and industrial diversity on the board and among the fed leadership. But is has created what I call “Group Stink”. It is the inability to decent, the inability to say no. Most people inside the Fed think the same. They don’t take the complications of a global and very modern financial system into account…… It is a lack of appreciation for anything that you and I would consider to be on planet earth. And it is what has made the Fed so very out of touch, and angered so many people. They might not know it’s the Fed. But they know something has gone very very wrong with their financial well-being and who is in control of their financial well-being.”
4:50 – Deist: “A huge percentage of these Fed economists are Ivy League graduates. So despite all thier book learning, do you think people in the Fed have read Austrian stuff…..have they read Mises and Hayek. Or is this just completely outside of their orbit?”
Booth: “You know I think it might have in the index of one of their economic text books. But I would bring up the word ‘malinvestment’ and their eyeballs would roll into the back of their head.”
My Take From 2013: Thomas Sowell calls it “credentialed ignorance”. He is being rather nice. I would call it an example of intellectual inbreeding. These Federal Reserve policy makers have earned their economic credentials from some of the “best” Universities. That fact means we should stand in awe of them? Unfortunately I don’t give my respect to people with “status” that easily. I think respect is earned. What I have observed is these people live in a continual feed back loop. They all think pretty much the same way because they were taught by professors who all think the same way. They are hired to work for people in Government who think the same way. They are very rarely challenged to think outside of their small tunnel of knowledge protecting them from their mountain of ignorance. A mountain that would crash down on them if their tunnel wasn’t there.
Deist: “Do you think they really in their hearts, believe that …..monetary policy can create economic growth in and of itself?”
Booth: “If they don’t believe it, they do a really good job of faking it…. Because it is clear that they do not understand the damage that’s been done to the social fabric of this country, to the culture, to have driven down multiple generations throats the idea that the only way to get growth is through the creation of debt. That is not the American was. It is not what capitalism is based on….. And it has crippled our middle class. Completely gutted it out. While at the same time corrupting all manner of institutions; corporations, banks, pensions you name it.”
6:58 – Deist: “Do you think that your average Fed economist would view what the Fed does in terms of interest rate targeting as something that’s not capitalism. That sounds like something out of a Soviet Politburo?”
Booth: “I think that… part of the problem……where a disconnect is born that the Fed leaders …..have to be on the receiving end of the policies they make. It is like congress not having to deal with the worst vestiges of Obamacare. They have platinum health plans….. So I think a lot of the leaders at the Fed can delude themselves into thinking that they are doing good-by the people whose financial situations they shepherd, when in fact they are not. But to your other point, they all study the same basic schools of thought and that is what is broken inside of our higher learning institutions.”
12:55 – Deist: “Do you think there is any way the Fed can really unwind all the $4 trillion treasury debt or worse on its balance sheet?”
Booth: “Unfortunately I think markets have become addicted to the notion, if you will, that every single bond that central banks, world-wide, have purchased. Every single bond has been expunged from the supply forever. Otherwise I don’t think we would have interest rates where they are. I think that the Fed can talk tough about reducing the balance sheet if it wants to play politics and push the economy into recession. But they consider that 4.5 trillion dollars to be their fortress, their power base. The balance sheet has gone to their head.”
13:42 – Deist: “Yellen is in a tough spot…..If she wants to raise interest rates the debt service for Congress can double…..But without raising interest rates, how does she continue to create a market for US treasuries…….She’s in a ship saw.”
Booth: “It is an absolute dilemma. But it is a corner into which the Fed has painted itself. There were people on the inside saying it’s a slippery slope if you go to zero. This will not end well. The market is not screaming for lower interest rates. The market is telling you there is a liquidity freeze going on and that it needs other things. If you go to zero, you’re going to introduce distortions and make it extremely difficult, one day, to ever exit. And guess what’s happened. It has become the Achilles heel not just of Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve, but I would argue the Bank of Japan, Bank of China, The European Central Bank, Mario Draghi. This is a shared global phenomenon.”
15:00 – Deist: “Who becomes the central banks banker? Is it some sort of IMF scenario if they can’t work their way out of this?”
Booth: “Yes but who funds the IMF. Again there’s nothing elegant I can suggest to you as a way out of this situation……If you speak to the academics who have the same school of thought they will tell you that we will just have to monetize the debt away. that there will be a gentleman’s agreement between the developed countries that have lots of debt ad that we will just walk off into the sunset and everything will be fine. I consider that the last stop on the currency war train and the next stop to be an actual world war…….I don’t think countries that don’t have high debt levels would stand still for it.”
Link to her web site – dimartinobooth.com.
EXPLAINING THE FED AND INTEREST RATES.
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