The Fed has a lock on the economics world

On 23 October 2009, The Huffington Post quoted economist Joshua Rosner, 'the Wall Street analyst who foresaw the (2008) crash,' thus:

"The Fed has a lock on the economics world... There is no room for other views, which I guess is why economists got it so wrong."

Ryan Grim, in whose article the above quote appears, added:

"The Federal Reserve, through its extensive network of consultants, visiting scholars, alumni and staff economists, so thoroughly dominates the field of economics that real criticism of the central bank has become a career liability for members of the profession...

This dominance helps explain how, even after the Fed failed to foresee the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, the central bank has largely escaped criticism from academic economists. In the Fed's thrall, the economists missed it, too."

Elsewhere at The Post, in a 3 February 2010 article titled, 'Has the New York Fed Been Serving the Public Trust? Has Geithner?' Joshua Rosner says:

"The New York Fed is not government-owned. Most people fail to recognize this fact...

The New York Fed is a shareholder-owned or private corporation... Historically, the New York Fed has been among the most profitable shareholder-owned corporations in the world. Yet it keeps the details of its shareholders' ownership information private. What we do know is that its owners include precisely those institutions it is tasked to regulate and supervise and those is has obviously failed to adequately supervise... 

The New York Fed's concentration of the largest banks, coupled with its unique role of managing the market operations of the entire Fed system, has built a culture where it sees itself as a market participant and peer to those firms it regulates.

The President of the NY Fed is chosen by, paid by and reports to the private shareholders of that private institution. Only three of the nine Directors of the Board of the New York Fed are chosen by the Federal Reserve Board and, until this year, the NY Fed's Chair, chosen by the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, was a former Chairman of Goldman Sachs who still sits on Goldman's Board.

We do not know the full roster of shareholders, but the list of the NY Fed's Board and management group is particularly interesting, reading like a Who's Who of sell-side financial corporations that the taxpayer has bailed out and whose systemic riskiness Washington would rather take indirect and half measures to address rather than take a head-on approach of resolving...

The story... predates the unfolding of the crisis. The full story puts Tim Geithner (U.S. Treasury Secretary at the time Rosner's article was written) and Larry Summers dead center in creating the environment that drove us to crisis...

Geithner's ineffectiveness in his role at NY Fed President and his current political posturing... seems to have resulted from design rather than accident. After all, in a previous 'public service' role, Geithner was the lead negotiator for the WTO's General Agreement on Tarrifs and Trade for financial services. In this role, Geithner reported to Larry Summers, who in turn reported to Secretary of Treasury Robert Rubin.

In 1998, this team won the banks EVERYTHING they requested from that treaty. From open access to new markets to unrestricted growth in equity and credit derivatives, they opened the door to rapid and deregulated growth of the large multinational banks, allowing them to become 'too big to fail'."

Whilst he was Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, repealed the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which had separated largely unregulated investment banks like Goldman Sachs from government-supervised and insured commercial banks like Citigroup. He left government shortly after the Act was passed and was appointed Citigroup's CEO almost immediately.

He, the aforementioned Larry Sumner, and Timothy Geithner, are Jewish. As are Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Fed Res from 1987 to 2006 and his successor Ben Bernanke.

Lloyd Blankfein, the current Chairman of Goldman Sachs, is also Jewish.

More on these top table financiers can be found here and here.