In addition to recklessly manipulating the money supply and causing boom-and-bust cycles for more than ninety years (including the Great Depression and the current one), the Fed "has supervisory and regulatory authority over a wide range of financial institutions and activities." That’s an understatement if ever there was one. Among the Fed’s "functions" are the regulation of:
- Bank holding companies
- State-chartered banks
- Foreign branches of member banks
- Edge and agreement corporations
- U.S. state-licensed branches, agencies, and representative offices of foreign banks
- Nonbanking activities of foreign banks
- National banks
- Savings banks
- Nonbank subsidiaries of bank holding companies
- Thrift holding companies
- Financial reporting procedures
- Accounting policies of banks
- Business "continuity" in case of economic emergencies
- Consumer protection laws
- Securities dealings of banks
- Information technology used by banks
- Foreign investment by banks
- Foreign lending by banks
- Branch banking
- Bank mergers and acquisitions
- Who may own a bank
- Capital "adequacy standards"
- Extensions of credit for the purchase of securities
- Equal opportunity lending
- Mortgage disclosure information
- Reserve requirements
- Electronic funds transfers
- Interbank liabilities
- Community Reinvestment Act sub-prime lending demands
- All international banking operations
- Consumer leasing
- Privacy of consumer financial information
- Payments on demand deposits
- "Fair Credit" reporting
- Transactions between member banks and their affiliates
- Truth in lending
- Truth in savings
All of this financial market regulation and regimentation was in full force during the Greenspan era. None of it could conceivably be considered to be "libertarian" or "free market" in any way. The Fed is a government central planning agency, period.
Free market? What free market? There is no part of the markets which are free of the control of the Federal Reserve System. Thomas DiLorenzo counts the ways.
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