From Liberty Classroom:
The other day, the Huffington Post ran an article by a Bonnie Kavoussi called “Eleven Lies About the Federal Reserve.”
And you’ll never guess: these aren’t lies or myths spread in the financial press by Fed apologists. These are “lies” being told by you and me, opponents of the Fed. Bonnie Kavoussi calls us “Fed-haters.”
So she, a Fed-lover, is at pains to correct these alleged misconceptions. She must stop us stupid ingrates from poisoning our countrymen’s minds against this benevolent array of experts innocently pursuing economic stability.
Here are the 11 so-called lies (she calls them “myths” in the actual rendering), and our responses.
HuffPo’s Myth #1: “The Fed actually prints money.”
She leads off with this? As if this is some big discovery that will refute the end-the-Fed people? When we talk about Fed moneyprinting, we are speaking in shorthand.
We’re pretty certain someone like Ron Paul knows the Fed doesn’t actually print money. But he, along with pretty much the whole financial world, speaks of the Fed as printing money. You know why? Because it’s a teensy bit more convenient than saying, “We need the Fed to credit some banks’ accounts with increased balances, which it does by means of a computer, though if these balances are lent out and the borrowers prefer to use some of this lent money as cash, the Treasury will go ahead and print the cash.”
HuffPo’s Myth #2: “The Federal Reserve is spending money wastefully.”
You may think the Federal Reserve is throwing around money like crazy, just like the federal government. But you’re wrong! As Kavoussi explains, the Fed doesn’t spend money like the federal government does; it creates money! That’s just totally different!
And so we read, “Both CNN anchor Erin Burnett and Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan have compared the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing to government spending. But the Federal Reserve actually has created new money by expanding its balance sheet.”
She then points out that hey, the Fed earned a profit of $77.4 billion last year. We are supposed to be impressed. But if you can create money out of thin air and buy bonds with it, and then earn interest on those bonds, wouldn’t it be pretty hard to lose money? (But they just might, if interest rates should spike.)
HuffPo’s Myth #3: “The Fed is causing hyperinflation…
