Former AG says Federal Reserve is a Ponzi scheme!
NEW YORK - July 25, 2009 - The Federal Reserve - the quasi-autonomous body that controls the U.S. money supply - is a “Ponzi scheme” that created “bubble after bubble” in the U.S. economy and needs to be held accountable for its actions, says Eliot Spitzer, the former governor and attorney general of New York.
In a wide-ranging discussion of the bank bailouts on MSNBC’s Morning Meeting, host Dylan Ratigan described the process by which the Federal Reserve exchanged $13.9 trillion of bad bank debt for cash, which it gave to the struggling banks.
Spitzer - who built a reputation as “the Sheriff of Wall Street” for his zealous prosecutions of corporate crime as New York’s attorney general and then resigned as the state’s governor over revelations he had paid for prostitutes - seemed to agree with Ratigan that the bank bailout amounts to “America’s greatest theft and cover-up ever.”
Advocating in favor of a House bill to audit the Federal Reserve, Spitzer said, “The Federal Reserve has benefited for decades from the notion that it is quasi-autonomous, it’s supposed to be independent. Let me tell you a dirty secret: The Fed has done an absolutely disastrous job since [former Fed Chairman] Paul Volcker left. The reality is the Fed has blown it. Time and time again, they blew it. Bubble after bubble, they failed to understand what they were doing to the economy.
“The most poignant example for me is the AIG bailout, where they gave tens of billions of dollars that went right through - conduit payments - to the investment banks that are now solvent. We [taxpayers] didn’t get stock in those banks, they didn’t ask what was going on - this begs and cries out for hard, tough examination.
“You look at the governing structure of the New York [Federal Reserve]; it was run by the very banks that got the money. This is a Ponzi scheme, an inside job. It is outrageous; it is time for Congress to say enough of this. To give them more power now is crazy. The Fed needs to be examined carefully.”
In a wide-ranging discussion of the bank bailouts on MSNBC’s Morning Meeting, host Dylan Ratigan described the process by which the Federal Reserve exchanged $13.9 trillion of bad bank debt for cash, which it gave to the struggling banks.
Spitzer - who built a reputation as “the Sheriff of Wall Street” for his zealous prosecutions of corporate crime as New York’s attorney general and then resigned as the state’s governor over revelations he had paid for prostitutes - seemed to agree with Ratigan that the bank bailout amounts to “America’s greatest theft and cover-up ever.”
Advocating in favor of a House bill to audit the Federal Reserve, Spitzer said, “The Federal Reserve has benefited for decades from the notion that it is quasi-autonomous, it’s supposed to be independent. Let me tell you a dirty secret: The Fed has done an absolutely disastrous job since [former Fed Chairman] Paul Volcker left. The reality is the Fed has blown it. Time and time again, they blew it. Bubble after bubble, they failed to understand what they were doing to the economy.
“The most poignant example for me is the AIG bailout, where they gave tens of billions of dollars that went right through - conduit payments - to the investment banks that are now solvent. We [taxpayers] didn’t get stock in those banks, they didn’t ask what was going on - this begs and cries out for hard, tough examination.
“You look at the governing structure of the New York [Federal Reserve]; it was run by the very banks that got the money. This is a Ponzi scheme, an inside job. It is outrageous; it is time for Congress to say enough of this. To give them more power now is crazy. The Fed needs to be examined carefully.”
