Alternative Visions - Central Banks on the Ropes, Part 2: Origins & Toxic Legacies of the Federal Reserve - 06.09.17

In the first half of the show, Dr. Rasmus reviews key economic events of the past week, including the collapseof ‘Banco Popular’ bank in Europe and what it might mean in coming weeks to Europe’s fragile banking system, the emerging problems in Junk Bonds and the retail sector in the US, renewed falling oil prices, the US House passing the ‘Financial Choice Act’ and new bank deregulation, and Turmp’s phony ‘Infrastructure Week’ announced this past week and why ‘infrastructure’  really means privatization.  Rasmus then discusses the origins of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, in 1913 and how central banks evolved out of private banks and still retain deep connections to private banking systems.  How the Federal Reserve originated from the Financial Crisis of 1907 and was developed by big New York banks as a way to capture control of a monopoly of a single currency, become the national ‘clearing house’ of all banks, and create an institution, the Fed, that would provide money to bail themselves out during periodic bank crises instead of having to bail themselves. Jack describes the early structure of the Fed, and how it was owned, financed, and directly controlled by the private banks, with the New York Fed operating as the ‘central bank of the central bank’. (Next Week: The Evolution of the Federal Reserve from the great depression to the crash of 2008).