"The Fed's top priority is making sure the cards remain stacked against wage and salary earners."

[kpete]

For more than three decades, the pace of productivity growth has exceed that of real compensation:

Catching up with Richmond Federal Reserve Jeffrey Lacker's speech. His dismissal of low wage growth numbers:

Some argue there must be excessive slack in labor markets if wage rates are not accelerating. But real wages are tied to productivity growth, and productivity growth has been slow for several years now. Wage growth in real terms has at least kept pace with productivity increases over that time period, which is perfectly consistent with an economy from which labor market slack has largely dissipated.

Real wage growth is consistent with productivity, thus there is no excess slack in the labor market. If you think this is some crazy hawk-talk, think again. Fed Chair Janet Yellen in July:

The growth rate of output per hour worked in the business sector has averaged about 1‑1/4 percent per year since the recession began in late 2007 and has been essentially flat over the past year. In contrast, annual productivity gains averaged 2-3/4 percent over the decade preceding the Great Recession. I mentioned earlier the sluggish pace of wage gains in recent years, and while I do think that this is evidence of some persisting labor market slack, it also may reflect, at least in part, fairly weak productivity growth.

http://economistsview.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b33869e201b7c7c9668b970b-500wi

Another view from real median weekly earnings:

http://economistsview.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b33869e201b8d15351b4970c-500wi

Real median weekly earnings have grown 8.6% since 1985. Nonfarm output per hour is up 79% over that time. Yet the instant that there is even a glimmer of hope that labor might get an upper hand, the Federal Reserve looks to hold the line on wage growth. It still appears that the Fed's top priority is making sure the cards remain stacked against wage and salary earners.

[hobbit709]

1. The Fed is by, for, and of the 1%-no others need apply.

[questionseverything]

26. bernie got the fed audited

Senate Backs One-Time Audit of Fed’s Bailout Role
By: David Herszenhorn
The New York Times
Tuesday, May 11, 2010

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Tuesday voted unanimously to require a one-time audit of the Federal Reserve’s emergency actions during and after the 2008 financial crisis as part of broad legislation overhauling the nation’s financial regulatory system.

The amendment, proposed by Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, would require the Government Accountability Office to scrutinize some $2 trillion in emergency lending that the Fed provided to the nation’s biggest banks.

The vote was 96 to 0.

“At a time when the Federal Reserve has provided the largest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world, the largest financial institutions in this country, trillion-dollar institutions,” Mr. Sanders said in a floor speech, “the Sanders amendment makes it clear that the Fed can no longer operate in the kind of secrecy that it has operated in forever.”

He added, “For the first time the American people will know exactly who received over $2 trillion in zero or virtually zero-interest loans from the Fed, and they will know the exact terms of those financial arrangements.”

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/senate-backs-one-time-audit-of-feds-bailout-role

[Chan790]

2. It's becoming frustrating...

I'm starting to agree with the Paulites that we need to burn the Fed down...and the Paulites are crazy people.

[A HERETIC I AM]

8. If you burn it down, what are you going to replace it with?

You might want to think about your answer carefully.

[sulphurdunn]

12. How does a publicly

owned national bank sound?

[A HERETIC I AM]

16. Fine, but it still has to perform the functions the Fed does now.

And it will still be (or rather must be) a strong central bank.

Out of curiosity, how well do you understand the structure of the Federal Reserve System as it stands now?

Are you of the opinion (like many Americans and DU'ers, for that matter) that it is a privately owned entity?

[sulphurdunn]

18. The Fed is an autonous entity.

Here is what it says about itself.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm

I don't have much faith in an 'autonomous entity' within government run by revolving door bankers, regardless of its mandate or oversight. The Fed should be publicly owned and run by career federal employees. If direct civilian control and public funding are good enough for the Pentagon, they're good enough for the Fed.

[WinkyDink]

19. Do YOU?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/who-owns-the-federal-reserve/10489

“Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders.”

– The Honorable Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1930s

[A HERETIC I AM]

20. Uh huh. Yup Sure.

Well, first off, Ellen Brown doesn't understand what she is talking about.

I don't have the desire to get into a multi- paragraph post desribing how she is wrong, so if you want to beleive that the Fed and the member banks are a for profit enterprise and that they are raking money from the American populace, go right ahead.

It's no skin off my nose in the least.

[VanillaRhapsody]

3. Damn you FDR!

[questionseverything]

22. ?

he Federal Reserve Act (ch. 6, 38 Stat. 251, enacted December 23, 1913, 12 U.S.C. ch. 3) is an Act of Congress that created and established the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States, and granted it the legal authority to issue Federal Reserve Notes (now commonly known as the U.S. Dollar) and Federal Reserve Bank Notes as legal tender. The Act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson.

[VanillaRhapsody]

23. FDR bailed out the Federal Reserve....

but you knew that right?


All Rand Paul fans all seem to know it....but you are not one of them right?

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-takes-united-states-off-gold-standard

[questionseverything]

25. yea fdr propped it, was just going back to the 1913creation

FDR’s 1933 Gold Confiscation was a Bailout of the Federal Reserve Bank

by Daniel Carr, owner/operator of Moonlight Mint and www.DC-Coin.com



President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1933 executive order outlawing the private ownership of gold in the United States was arguably unconstitutional. But why did he do it ? Many historians and economists point to efforts to get the economy moving again as the reason, the theory being that people were hoarding gold and the velocity of money in circulation needed to be sped up.



But the real reason for the gold confiscation was a bailout of the privately-controlled Federal Reserve Bank. And the evidence has been printed right in front of our faces.





PAPER REPLACES SPECIE



During the 1800s, paper money was suspect in the eyes of many. Nobody would ever choose a government-issue $20 note over a $20 gold coin. Gradually during the late 1800s and early 1900s, confidence in government paper money increased to the point where it was widely accepted. People accepted the money because they felt confident they could exchange it at the US Treasury or any Federal Reserve Bank for gold at any time – it even said so on the notes. Without the gold exchange clauses printed directly on the notes, the public would have been much less likely to accept them. Silver Certificates and United States Notes circulated alongside Gold Certificates, which were legally interchangeable dollar-for-dollar.





THE “FED” AND EASY MONEY



In 1913 the Federal Reserve Bank was established and it began issuing Federal Reserve Notes the following year.

Once free of the restrictions imposed by the limitations of available physical gold for coinage, the quantity of Dollars in circulation increased dramatically. The increase was mostly in the form of paper money, not specie.



The result was an economic “boom”, also known as “The Roaring Twenties” (1923-1929). But like all artificially-induced stimulus, it came to a crash in the fall of 1929. The burden of over-extended credit was the culprit. Prior to the formation of the Federal Reserve, money in circulation consisted of copper, silver, and gold coins, United States Notes, Silver Certificates, and Gold Certificates. All of these were non-interest-bearing, were issued directly by the US Treasury, and did not have any debt associated with their issuance.

[VanillaRhapsody]

28. "propped it up"

he bailed it out!

And I was being facetious....

[cantbeserious]

4. Know Thy Enemy - Oligarchs, Corporations And Banks - The 99% Are Mere Chattel To The 1%

eom

[Hydra]

5. This is where the real tension is coming from between normal people and the Status Quo

They either live in a bubble totally unconnected to normal reality, or they know what they are doing and find it amusing to rig the game against their "fellow humans&quot hard to say how human they are)

[Octafish]

6. Ha ha. It is to laugh.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=7142356

[1939]

7. What steps should the Fed take within their powers to increase wages? NT

[Octafish]

11. Time to Make the Fed a Public Utility

The Treasury’s website reports the amount of interest paid on the national debt each year, going back 26 years. At the end of 2013, the total for the previous 26 years came to about $9 trillion on a federal debt of $17.25 trillion. If the government had been borrowing from its own central bank interest-free during that period, the debt would have been reduced by more than half. And that was just the interest for 26 years. The federal debt has been accumulating ever since 1835, when Andrew Jackson paid it off and vetoed the Second U.S. Bank’s renewal; and all that time it has been accruing interest. If the government had been borrowing from its central bank all along, it might have had no federal debt at all today.

-- Ellen Brown

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/23/time-to-make-the-fed-a-public-utility/

Which would make a good start.

[sulphurdunn]

13. Agreed.

What kind of representative government turns its financial policy and money over to private banks?

[Octafish]

15. Somebody somewhere was hoping We the People wouldn't notice.

The Federal Reserve is the only central bank with a dual mandate. It is charged not only with maintaining low, stable inflation but with promoting maximum sustainable employment. Yet unemployment remains stubbornly high, despite four years of radical tinkering with interest rates and quantitative easing (creating money on the Fed’s books). After pushing interest rates as low as they can go, the Fed has admitted that it has run out of tools.

-- Ellen Brown

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/09/we-need-a-central-bank-that-serves-main-street/

We Need a Central Bank that Serves Main Street (not Wall Street).

[A HERETIC I AM]

24. Sorry, but Ms. Brown doesn't know what the fuck she is talking about.

If the government had been borrowing from its own central bank interest-free during that period, the debt would have been reduced by more than half.

It just doesn't work that way and to write that displays a dramatic lack of understanding.

[Octafish]

27. She makes sense to me. Why do you say that?

I'm sure you know more than me about the Fed, but it seems to me that a private bank has no business doing the public's banking.

[A HERETIC I AM]

30. First of all, it isn't a private bank.

Let's just start there, OK? All the conspiracy type bullshit aside, the Federal Reserve is NOT a privately held institution. It seems so because it is given autonomy in a way that looks odious, but the alternatives, which this country experienced before the Fed was established are far, far worse.

It is in many ways analogous to the Supreme Court. The framers designed the SCOTUS process so that the Justices could outlive the administrations that appointed them, thus making sure that when a president went away, the entire court didn't go with him.

The economy is an incredibly complex mechanism and the same sort of autonomy, not tied to the political whims of the party in charge, must be maintained. Sure, Greenspan was an asshole and an economic conservative, but the guy that followed him was not of the same stripe and the current head, Janet Yellen is a different stripe again. What's more important, is that those transitions did not occur on the inauguration day of the various presidents.

Unfortunately, this is really bad timing. I would love to go into the detail necessary to describe why I have the understanding I do, but I just don't have the time this afternoon. You've been on this board as long as I have, Octafish, and I trust you have read some of what I have posted over the years. I am a career truck driver, NOT an economist, but you may recall that I was a Stock Broker from mid 2006 through late '09 and during that time I learned a SHITLOAD about this institution as well as the US Treasury and their roles in how money is procured and distributed, both for government operations as well as the economy.

I have to drive tonight. I have to go to sleep now so I can get up at ten PM and drive all night, so I just can't type out a 2 hour, properly edited and attributed multi paragraph description with links.

But I will say this before I go;

In the article you linked as well as the article linked in post #19 above, she conflates the job the US Treasury does with that of the Federal Reserve. The FED does not issue US Treasury debt paper. Thats what the Treasury does. The way the Fed is associated with United Stated Treasury Bonds is the NY Fed branch acts as an agent, conducting the regular auctions of debt paper on behalf of the Treasury and they have the ability to buy and sell treasury securities in order to add or remove money (cash - lets be clear here) from the supply. Why does the NY Fed do this? Because New York is where every major bank in the world has a branch and the "Primary Dealers" are all located. Go to the NY FED website and search for the Primary Dealers list. You'll see the list of banks and brokers that are allowed to do the bidding at the auctions. Please note that "China" is not on the list, but a bank that does a lot of business with the Chinese Fed equivalent (the Chinese central bank) is on the list (the name escapes at the moment) I say this because so many people have the impression that we - the US Government - somehow went hat in hand to the Chinese and begged them to loan us a trillion dollars (or pick your figure). Nothing could be further from the truth. We don't OWE the Chinese a damned thing. THEY own (or hold) US Treasury Bonds which they bought of their own volition - no one twisted their arm - and they get regular interest payments on them. When a series they own matures, they get redeemed and paid in Federal Reserve Notes for the entire Par value of the series. Why do they own so much? And the Japanese too? Because US Treasury bonds are an INCREDIBLY SAFE AND EXTREMELY LIQUID SECURITY and not a single issuance, not one single series has ever defaulted in modern times.

Never.

I have to stop now or this will take me two hours.

I'll be home Monday morning where I can sit at my PC and do this quicker, and if you like, I'll go into more detail, but suffice to say, much of what many many Americans understand about how the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve works is wrong.

[lark]

9. Of course it is.

The Fed, like all of our government, is run by and for the benefit of the 1%. It's to their benefit to keep wages low so they can take an ever increasing share of the pie. That's why they hate education, smart people want more money, and want to force women to have babies they can't support well so they have a continuous stock of ignorant low wage (slave) workers. It's also why they fight anything being done to control the poisons in our environment. Vulture capitalism is totally in charge right now and that's why the media is ignoring Bernie, he's the only one who could truly shake things up and improve the lives of ordinary Americans.

[turbinetree]

10. In working in the Aircraft industry.......with a A&P certificate held....starting pay...

Maintenance Technicians on average made around 30,000 a year + benefits (1985) 40 hr work week = 15.00 per hour
Maintenance Technicians on average made around 46,000 a year + benefits (2000) 40 hr work week = 23.00 per hour
Maintenance Technicians on average made around 38,000 a year no benefits (2015) 45+ hr work week = 19.00 per hour


CEO of United pay in 2014-------------------24.5 million 300% wage increase

[sulphurdunn]

14. B-u-u-t-t,

the CEOs must be worth it because the infallible free market they own says so. Right?

[turbinetree]

32. And whats really classic.................................

"if" I am found to be negligent in my maintenance practices and not following the mandates of the manufacturer and the FAA I am held liable and responsible.

Just for an example there was a situation a longtime ago ,where by a tech was doing an annual on the aircraft, he put the fuel filter in wrong, with the arrow flowing in the opposite direction from which it was suppose to flow into the carburetor, and he signs off the log book saying everything is operating in a normal condition and was ok for flight, after doing the annual.
Pilot gets on board takes-off and gets about 600- 800 feet in the air the plane crashes and kills the pilot, after the NTSB investigated the issue they found the fuel filter was in the wrong flow pattern, the DA in the county charges the guy with murder but is convicted of manslaughter.

So the CEO is not worth the pay, never has been and never will,

[bbgrunt]

17. Monetary policy is ineffective in this economy. Keeping interest

rates low is supposed to stimulate borrowing and hence jobs by stimulating economic growth. Interest rates have been near zero for years. The problem isn't low interest rates, but that these money games are fueling speculation rather than good paying jobs.

Fiscal policy (use of government spending) is needed. If there is insufficient consumer spending power, businesses will not borrow to expand. The disappearing middle class cannot support the kind of consumer demand needed to kick the real economy into a higher gear.

Bernie's plan for infrastructure spending would help remedy this problem. Instead everyone, even democrats are so allergic to increasing the deficit, no one will else will even mention such a program. Increasing the minimum wage will also be a start.

Nick Hanauer's excellent Ted Talk is worth a listen:

https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_hanauer_beware_fellow_plutocrats_the_pitchforks_are_coming?l

[1939]

29. Precisely my point

Tinkering with interest rates and tinkering with the money supply are the only tools the fed has. The fed cannot increase wages.

What is needed is to disincentivize speculation so that the ease of borrowing and availability of money will pour into capital investment rather than fuel speculation.

[DirkGently]

21. Greenspan thinks skilled U.S. workers are paid too much.

Last edited Sun Sep 6, 2015, 04:36 PM - Edit history (1)

He's talked for years about opening the borders to bring in foreign workers to keep wages down. Somehow, in his Ayn-Radian worldview, that is supposed to help with income inequality.

I guess his conceit is that it's the difference between skilled and unskilled workers, not the difference between massively overpaid CEOs and the klepto-investor class on Wall Street and everyone else that is the "real" problem.

[Marrah_G]

31. Maybe they are counting all the outsourced wages....