Fed Up: An Insider’s Take on Why the Federal Reserve is Bad for America

Posted on April 30, 2017 by cgold

If you would like to know how and why our nation is in such dire economic straits, and you are not an economist, stock broker, CPA, or financial planner then Fed Up: An Insider’s Take on Why The Federal Reserve is Bad for America provides the answers you’ve been waiting for.

Author Danielle DiMartino Booth spent nine years inside the Dallas Federal Reserve as an advisor to Richard W. Fisher, former CEO and President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. She is a financial expert who Market Watch hailed as one of four economists to take note of in the Trump era.

By now I suspect that anyone paying the slightest attention to the economy knows that central banks manipulate rates, most importantly, interest rates. This is neither shocking nor news. What is news, and definitely shocking, is DiMartino’s revelations regarding the incompetence prevalent within the Federal Reserve and the unwillingness as far back as Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, and now Janet Yellen, to admit that what these academics worship in theory simply does not work in practice.

DiMartino Booth saw the crash of 2008 coming and tried to ring that bell. But, lacking the requisite PhD and peer published articles that seem to be the insider credentials revered over common sense, she could not get the Fed to take her warnings seriously. After the crash, she once again warned and watched, as did Fisher, the disastrous consequences of repeated quantifying easing (QE) by the Fed… disastrous only to pension holders, money market accounts, retirees and well…regular Americans. To the contrary, repeated QE combined with bailouts of the banks that should have been allowed to fail on the sword of their own greed and corruption, became the boon that have now made these “too big to fail” banks even bigger.

As a lay person who definitely falls within the category of “average American” who is most adversely affected by the Fed’s uncontrolled tampering with rates, the book is infuriating. It makes you want to scream that the same people who inflict so much pain through their hubris and incompetence are the very people who continue to profit from it. They keep making their millions, unaffected and outside the parameters of the conditions they create through the idiocy of their decisions.

The most recent example? Former President Obama, alleged champion of Main Street and abhorrent of income inequality, nominated Janet Yellen to succeed Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve when he could have done otherwise. Janet Yellin, who never saw a rate decrease she didn’t like and who lives in a theoretical bubble that is removed from all economic reality. Janet Yellin, who has said that if she could take the country to negative interest rates she would. Do you know what that means? It means banks charging you, rather than paying you, for the pleasure of holding your money.

So where does private citizen Barack Obama make his first stop to earn income? To a Wall Street firm who is paying him $400,000 for a one-hour speech. Yes, Wall Street.. the beneficiary of Barack Obama’s and Janet Yellin’s fiscal policies which, while pumping up Wall Street, devastated average Americans, exponentially increased national debt and exploded unemployment.

Really, it makes you want to scream. Which is disturbing because when the effects of this manipulation and debt come crashing down, as they must, I can see a dangerous level of collective rage emerging from those who have born, and continue to bear, the brunt of the pain inflicted by these arrogant and greedy people who care not a whit about average Americans. They care about themselves first and their cohorts in crime, in and out of government, second.

DiMartino Booth is no shrinking violet. She has a great deal of courage. She is taking on the most powerful people in this country. Fed Up is not the ravings of an unhinged conspiracy nut. To the contrary, it is a well-documented, factually substantiated expose of an incompetent group of individuals running a corrupted system. Most of the book relies upon actual quotes and minutes from Fed meetings which paint a picture of systemic failure and a stunning refusal by allegedly educated people to admit just how wrong they continue to be.

Combine the people within the Fed with the monetary policies coming out of it and you’ve got the classic definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

DiMartino Booth has done her job. She is once again ringing the bell. This time we can all hear it. Now it is up to us to do our part. I only hope we find a more constructive way of channeling the rage that will surface when all that she has exposed inevitably hits the proverbial fan.