Ralph Nader Destroys the Federal Reserve in Open Letter – Calls it “Out of Control, Private Government”

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When it comes to the Fed, Congress is mired in hypocrisy. The anti-regulation, de-regulation crowd on Capitol Hill shuts its mouth when it comes to the most powerful regulators of all – you and the Federal Reserve. Meanwhile, Congress goes along with the out-of-control, private government of the Fed—unaccountable to the national legislature. Moreover, your massive monetary injections scarcely led to any jobs on the ground, other than stock and bond processors.

– Ralph Nader in his letter to Janet Yellen

Ralph Nader gets it. In fact, he get it so much that he published a book last year titled: Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State.

Nevertheless, in case you need more proof of just how profoundly he understand how this neo-feudal gulag economy functions, read the following letter he wrote to Federal Reserve Chairwoman, Janet Yellen, on behalf of savers.

Here it is, in its full glory:

Dear Chairwoman Janet Yellen:

We are a group of humble savers in traditional bank savings and money market accounts who are frustrated because, like millions of other Americans over the past six years, we are getting near zero interest . We want to know why the Federal Reserve, funded and heavily run by the banks, is keeping interest rates so low that we receive virtually no income for our hard-earned savings while the Fed lets the big banks borrow money for virtually no interest. It doesn’t seem fair to put the burden of your Federal Reserve’s monetary policies on the backs of those Americans who are the least positioned to demand fair play.

We follow the reporting on your tediously over-dramatic indecision as to when interest rates will be raised – and no one thinks that when you do, it will be any more than one quarter of one percent. We hear the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors and the various regional board presidents regularly present their views of the proper inflation and unemployment rate, and on stock market expectations that influence their calculations for keeping interest rates near-zero. But we never hear any mention of us – the savers of trillions of dollars who have been forced to make do with having the banks and mutual funds essentially provide a lock-box for our money while they use it to make a profit for their firms and, in the case of the giant banks and large mutual funds, pay their executives exorbitant salaries..

We are tired of this melodrama that exploits so many people who used to rely on interest income to pay some of their essential bills. Think about the elderly among us who need to supplement their social security checks every month. 

On October 27, the Wall Street Journal headlined the latest rumors of twists and turns inside the secretive Federal Reserve: “Fed Strives For Clear Signal on Rate Move: As 2016 approaches, the central bank hopes to better manage market expectations.”

What about the expectations of millions of American savers? It is unfortunately true that we are not organized; if we were, we would give you and the Congress the proper signals!

Please, don’t lecture us about the Fed not being “political.” When you are the captives of the financial industry, led by the too-big-to-fail banks, you are generically “political.” So political in fact that you have brazenly interpreted your legal authority as to become the de facto regulator of our economy, the de facto printer of money on a huge scale (“quantitative easing” is the euphemism for artificially boosting the stock market) and the leader of the Washington bailout machine crony capitalism when big business, especially a shaky Wall Street firm, indulges in manipulative, avaricious, speculative binges with our money. 

When it comes to the Fed, Congress is mired in hypocrisy. The anti-regulation, de-regulation crowd on Capitol Hill shuts its mouth when it comes to the most powerful regulators of all – you and the Federal Reserve. Meanwhile, Congress goes along with the out-of-control, private government of the Fed—unaccountable to the national legislature. Moreover, your massive monetary injections scarcely led to any jobs on the ground, other than stock and bond processors.

So what do you advise us to do? Shop around? Forget it. The difference between banks, credit unions and mutual funds may be one-twentieth or one-tenth of one percent! That is, unless you want to tie up money, that you need regularly, in a longer term CD or Treasury. Even then interest rates are far less than they were ten years ago.

Maybe you’re saying that we should try the stock market to get higher returns. Some of us have been impelled to do that, but too many have lost their peace of mind and much money in the market.

The Fed’s near-zero interest rate policy isn’t helping younger people with student loans (now over 1.3 trillion dollars), whose interest rate ranges from six to nine percent. It doesn’t help millions of pay-day loan borrowers or victims of installment loan rackets – mostly the poor – whose interest rates, rolled over, can reach over 400 percent!

Chairwoman Yellen, I think you should sit down with your Nobel Prize winning husband, economist George Akerlof, who is known to be consumer-sensitive. Together, figure out what to do for tens of millions of Americans who, with more interest income, could stimulate the economy by spending toward the necessities of life.

For heaven’s sake, you’re a “liberal” from Berkeley! That is supposed to mean something other than to be indentured by the culture and jargon of the Federal Reserve. If you need further nudging on monetary and regulatory policies of the Fed, other than interest rate decisions, why not invite Berkeley Professor Robert Reich, one of your long-time friends and admirers, to lunch on your next trip home?

Start imagining what we, the savers, have to endure because of plutocratic, crony capitalism for which the Federal Reserve has long been a leading Tribune. 

Can we expect your response?

Sincerely yours,
Savers of America

At 81 years old, this man shows no signs of slowing down.

While we’re at it, check this out if you missed it the first time around:

Video of the Day – Ralph Nader Blasts Harvard Law School for Serving “Corporate Crooks on Wall Street.”

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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16 thoughts on “Ralph Nader Destroys the Federal Reserve in Open Letter – Calls it “Out of Control, Private Government””

    • Right, but a long time late in coming. Many of us on the Internet have been hollering about the FED and their Government, actually, the Rothschild’s Government, for many years. Just like always, as the ship sinks even the big shots get their feet wet. Nader, has always been one of the big shots, you can tell them by the air time they get, Nader, has gotten a lot. There are people in this world if they had been allowed to speak to the people directly like Nader has and so much, then, we wouldn’t be in the shape we are in. The shape we are in, the ship is pointed bow to the sky, get it, we are going under, all of us, but, the filthy rich. The filthy stinking rich with their poop stained underwear and their DUMBS, aren’t they a gas. Too late, too little, too far to go.

  1. Gee, Nader, we’re glad you woke up. Hope you’re not considering running again for the sole purpose of stealing votes from more viable candidates. After all, the Fed Reserve has been around longer than you have. What did you think they would do – suddenly shift policy and give us a break? lol

    Reply
    • Nader didn’t “steal” votes; the Republican Party stole them by rigging the electronic vote machines. Later, Republican John Bolton shut down the vote recount, even though he had no authority to do so, because the recount was closing the gap between Gore and Bush. The Democratic Party sued to continue the recount, but the U.S. Supreme Court unconstitutionally ruled that Bush won.

    • That’s real funny, considering the DemoRATs are always whining about how they don’t want voters to have to show any ID when at the polls. What they really mean is that they want to be able to vote over and over again and also use the names of possibly dead voters so that they can continue to steal elections. And of course they use the old b.s. of pretending to be victims of ‘rayyyyyycism’ so that weak willed neocons will cave in to them.

  2. Good letter but it did not venture deep enough into the owners of this printer of bacteria laden “wealth” that has financed, indirectly or directly, evil evil on earth since 1913 and whose pioneers made sure that nothing stood in their way; via their assassinations of world leaders and opponents and their associate since 1905 – 1913 including the sinking of the “Titanic” in 1912. How can you tell when an American financial or political type is lying? When their lips are moving.

    Reply
  3. the only way you lazy crusters are going to be able to live off transfer payments and interest incomes is to stop the interest going to Banks FIRST? Let me explain. you want social security and higher rates ABOLISH THE FED.

    Reply
  4. “The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences… The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank . . . sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.”

    Prof. Carroll Quigley, “Tragedy and Hope”, 1966, pg 324

    Reply
  5. Yup. one ring.. sorry, sory, bank to rule them all.
    Mordor if any lies in Basel, Swiss, and right now, even they have had their eyes kicked open, the glearing scam is even obvious to any Swiss.

    The weird thing is, and this goes back to ancient times, the Swiss, is the corner stone, one of them, of several others spread around our world, and it have taken its time, not that the Swiss isnt Genuine, but they have been lost for eons, centurys in the wilderness.
    Its their desteny.

    This senario is equall all over the board, the Norwegians are going bonkers.
    “its free to loan” is the mantra, since the intress is Low, yea, the sub-prime nuklear bomb is coming, and the inflation I am vitnessing my self, is even wurse, every corp is backing their scams and specaultions in this Monetary herion dope joint, and kicks the bill at us, even local f….. comunetys is throwing their income into this scam.
    And of course, the bill is ours, all the time.
    Why WE arent hanging people, as the old bastard Ford sayed it, if we knew the truth, there would be an revolution tomorrow.
    And right now, its been given.

    Open your eyes, the lies are right infront of you, shamlessly do they lie and manipulate everything, the arogance and incopentangse in the MSM and the general heep of sheeps is staggering.

    Im pissed.

    peace

    Reply
  6. The Fed has looted billions upon billions of dollars from savers who have money in bank accounts by keeping interest payments extremely low by keeping interest rates near 0% for a ridiculously long time, in order to serve the monetary interest of bankster-fraudsters. My opinion is this amounts to criminal fraud. Couldn’t someone please file a class-action lawsuit to try to recover this harm to millions of US Americans.

    Reply

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