Alternative Visions - US Treasury vs. US Federal Reserve ‘Rift’ + Functions of Capitalist Central Banks

Dr. Rasmus discusses what’s behind the recent so-called ‘rift’ between the Mnuchin Treasury and Powell’s Federal Reserve bank. Why is it that Mnuchin ordered the return of $455 billion unspent stimulus funds passed in March while hundreds of thousands of small businesses are going under, 20-25m workers still unemployed, food lines growing, and rent evictions accelerating? The political reasons behind Mnuchin (and Trump & McConnell) actions to ‘take back’ the money allocated in the last March Cares Act from the Fed. Rasmus uses this event to explain the functions of these two key economic US capitalist institutions—the Treasury and the Fed and to debunk the mainstream economics fiction that central banks like the Fed are ‘independent’ of capitalist bankers and their politicians. Rasmus offers a short history lesson of