Jim Grant Accuses Fed of "Lethal" Intervention And Manipulation Of US Economy

     

Yesterday Jim Grant gave an interview to Bloomberg’s Pimm Fox, which was as usual informative and entertaining, and thus must see. Yet the section which is most relevant for our post-capitalist society (one is unsure what defines it best: communism? socialism? fascism? farcism? idiocy?) is Grant’s discussion of H. Parker Willis, one of the founders of the Federal Reserve in 1913, who in a book written two decades later laments the very existence of the Fed. As Grant says: "Willis was present at the creation of the Fed, he was one of the draftsmen of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Willis was also the first secretary of the Federal Reserve Board – he knows this institution. He wrote a book in 1936, which was a lamentation about the low estate of Central Banking in America, the Fed had lost its way in 1936. It had opened its doors in 1914 and by 1936 it had eaten the forbidden fruit, it was in the business of guiding the economy, of managing the economy, of manipulating this aggregate and that, and Willis said: "For Pete’s sake. You can’t know that – the GDP data are not reliable enough for you to do what you think you are doing." It’s a wonderful tract against the tendency of the Fed to do what it has so lethally done to this economy in my opinion, which is to steer us, in the interest of raising the GDP it presses interest rates to zero, pouring out immense volumes of econometric studies in support of this dubious enterprise. Hey Fed: just attend to the dollar, that’s it, no inflation, just do one thing! You’ve heard of mission creep, these guys are the mission creeps par excellence."

When even cool, calm and collected pundits like Jim Grant fall into murderous paroxysm of blind rage when discussing the Fed, you know it is only a matter of time before the world’s most destructive organization is eliminated. And yes, it won’t go without lots of blood.

Reprinted with permission from ZeroHedge.

October 4, 2010