Dallas Fed - seems to have a heart for the Middle Class .. doesn't fully grasp Fiat Currency Operations. Can We Work With This?

Commentary by Roger Erickson

Dan Flemming has compiled a representative list of statements from Richard Fisher (see at bottom) that seem to oppose official Fed policy, and wonders if Fisher's appointment in Texas reflects regional politics ... or a pre-emptive move influenced by outsiders, to keep the Dallas Fed divided and conquered?

It's a provocative question. I'll ignore the conspiracy aspects as something not usefully answerable, and instead ask if Middle Class pragmatists can leverage Richard Fisher's momentum? Can we treat these events as one of many options for pursuing meaningful Public Purpose?

The Dallas Fed under Fisher does seem to have a heart for the Middle Class, even if Fisher himself doesn't fully understand currency operations. Can we work with that? It sure seems worth a try. Unfortunately, we live in an epoch where even 1 out of 2 looks real attractive. :(

One view is that Fisher seems to represent the oil & other industrial lobby, more than the Wall St. lobby. Such variance is to be expected of regional Fed offices.

Can such variance be used to divide and conquer the TBTJ banking lobby?

Possibly. Politics is the USA is still a recruitment and mobilization process. Many people have been predicting an eventual showdown between the F500 and the cowboy financiers who USED to work for them. Ironically, the "cowboys" are no longer in Texas, and flat out have unlimited access to (and control of?) OUR fiat currency. Yet the F500 lobby can still put far more people in the streets. Wall St knows - or should know - that they can't win an actual democratic confrontation, just yet. Might they get trigger happy though, and a bit reckless?

Meanwhile, the US Middle Class may feel a bit like the average family in Syria ... caught as minor pawns being fought with, and over, by self-styled Great Power lobbies. Could the US Middle Class actually organize, and act forcefully in their own interests? Coherently? And adaptively? Why not? It requires only the 5 classic steps of campaign organization.

1) Consensus on a shared, accurately visualized, Desired Outcome worth achieving.

2) Enough interaction to achieve alignment of efforts to the common goal.

3) Maintaining enough interaction to maintain alignment (the harder part).

4) Build up training and practice at organizational momentum (team improvement).

5) Figure out changing ways to usefully ASSESS changing measures of changing progress. GDP just ain't cutting it. Only agile, common sense reliably generates success through any changing context, but we've been convinced - by diverse Luddite idealogues - to NOT use common sense.

Where could we start? With one, simple rallying cry?

Rich peoples war, poor families' blood? Real as well as nominal.

Same old story.

So what will happen? Will some "political assassination" [of some Biz Duke Ferdinand] trigger another all out war between our masters and their masters? And are WE dumb enough to get up on stage and do the re-enactment for either or both sides .... yet again?  Really?

Or, can the Middle Class nominally "belonging" to both US political parties surprise everyone, make their own deal and union, and throw ALL da bums out? One and all? Like we threw out King George? Why not? Today seems as good a time as ever, now that even the Nobel Prize Committee is taken over by Control Frauds using Liars Loans to pre-dispense prizes without any documentation whatsoever - and despite subsequent evidence to the contrary. Shouldn't we start directing our own investments in our own cultural future? Why don't we just foreclose on the Control Fraud political mortgage? Call in our own notes and repossess our democracy? It could easily happen. None of us is smarter than all of use, but ONLY if all of us are smart enough to actually put our heads together, by any means possible.

This time we don't even need to wait on a "traitor to class" like Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt. We can just send one of our own. Outsource the distateful job to ourselves. Face it, the vast majority of both Wall St and Washington DC could be run by Automatic Stabilizer, as simply as a cell-phone app.

Android for President? :) A succession of Siri's as "it's" running mate - or one night subscription plans? The Stepford Plans? Swap Open Farce for OpenSource? It could be even more mundane than gay marriage. Better yet, it could leave us all with more free time to do insanely interesting things, rather than acting unemployed for those currently hoarding all OUR fiat in insanely boring ways.

Is continuous cultural marriage an institution ... reserved for a continuously changing, ever more perfect union between Middle Class and diversity? I could vote for that.

There are more "points of flickering light" to leverage than just the Dallas Fed and Richard Fisher, but these and all other flickers are things which agile, American ingenuity can embrace and extend, and then use, as we guide ourselves through all the Control Fraud shadows.

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Dallas Fed Statements in Opposition to Fedspeak

   (nothing the MMT community hasn't been saying for 17 years - nor Marriner Eccles 80 years ago, but it represents tangible momentum we can align with)

June 26 2013
"I implore the members of this important committee and the Congress to not succumb merely to the illusion of hope. Don't listen to the siren song of the megabanks and their lobbyists. Take action to deal with the unfair advantages that these institutions enjoy… Leveling the playing field is a just cause for 99.8 percent of American banks and for all Americans."

May 16, 2013
http://dallasfed.org/news/speeches/fisher/2013/fs130516.cfm

March 16, 2013
"The aim of our three-step proposal is simple: All banks would be subject to the same regulatory oversight—and most important, they all would be subject to the market discipline exercised by owners and creditors."

January 16, 2013
"... we recommend that TBTF financial institutions be restructured into multiple business entities."

"... a proposal to end the problem of too-big-to-fail banks by rolling back government guarantees so that they apply only to the commercial banking business of mega-banks."

"Without a budget deal, the cheap money the Fed has made available will not be put to use ... Until then, I argue that the Fed is, at best, pushing on a string and, at worst, building up kindling for speculation”

A Break Away from Wall Street Leadership
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101022718
http://www.dallasfed.org/research/eclett/2013/el1307.cfm

"If the effects of the crisis are permanent, the path of consumption observed since 2007 suggests that the cost of the crisis may be more than double the $6 trillion to $14 trillion estimate" ... ... Some of the numbers the central bank branch cites are startling: a loss of 8.7 million nonfarm payroll jobs; a peak of 14.7 million unemployed, labor underutilization that remains "intractably high" and 10.6 million underemployed.