"Occupy The Fed" Rebranding to "Fix The Fed"
Is it possible to Fix the Fed? Nope. But we think it's important to try, at least until the political will exists to END the FED.
We live in troubling times. America becomes more and more the corrupt, authoritarian corporatocracy that novelists warned us about for decades. Instead of heeding the warnings, our corrupt, greedy, uber-rich, public-private autocrats have used these imaginary hellscapes as blueprints to capture and pervert our country’s institutions. Follow the money and, at the heart of it all, is Wall Street-Fed corruption, and it’s worse than ever.
When we started researching and writing “Occupy The Fed” a few years ago, we held on to certain idealistic notions. We were inspired by the likes of the Martens at Wall Street On Parade, wallstreetonparade.com (of course, we can’t hold a candle to their incredible investigative and writing talents, but we’re just saying these are the types of people who inspired us to do something and speak out). We assumed mainstream financial “journalists” would run with WSOP’s groundbreaking series of articles exposing how the Fed made tens of trillions in secret bank repo bailouts in 2019, dwarfing anything ever done during the Great Financial Crisis. Wow, we were wrong.
When the Wall Street Journal broke the Fed’s massive insider trading scandal in 2021 (and Occupy The Fed highlighted some of Chair Powell’s own improper trades), we thought this was it. There would have to be consequences! Nearly two years later after zero accountability and a flimsy internal report supposedly exonerating Powell, we were wrong again.
We also thought like-minded, well-meaning citizens would start to organize and help bring more attention to Federal Reserve corruption. Indeed, our name was inspired by the heyday of Occupy Wall Street. While we respect and admire the efforts of those brave souls who protested (and the few who continue the good fight), we have yet to see anywhere near that level of interest — at least yet. But we certainly cannot blame anyone who is reluctant to join the cause.
In fact, we would strongly caution those inclined to protest or demonstrate. At this point, our government cannot be trusted to allow even legal and peaceable protest. The government (and their ultra-rich Wall Street/corporate cronies) are actively attempting to intimidate and crush all dissent. In fact, we believe our own team has been targeted. Under these circumstances, public demonstration comes at too great a risk for us. For clarity, WE WILL NEVER SPONSOR, SUPPORT OR BE INVOLVED WITH ANY PROTESTS OR DEMONSTRATIONS RELATING TO THE FED OR OTHERWISE. WE ADMONISH ANYONE WHO DOES PROTEST OR DEMONSTRATE TO ENSURE THEY DO SO PEACEABLY AND IN FULL COMPLIANCE WITH THE LAW.
To be blunt, we’ve risked enough and donated enough time on this little research project — time we could have spent with our friends and families or on other rewarding pursuits. We did this entirely at our own personal expense because we wanted to try to help America’s working and middle class wake up to the Fed’s role in their financial destruction. While it’s time for us to shift gears now, we’d be remiss to give up the ghost entirely.
We’d love to see an End to the Fed, of course. But our elected “representatives” in Congress don’t seem inclined to shut down the sprawling 30,000+ employee, public-private Fed Reserve system anytime soon. That’s why it’s imperative to vote in only politicians who are truly critical of the Fed and willing to curtail its power.
But what can we do in the meantime? We’ve thought about this question hard. We understand others may disagree with some halfway approach of reform. But we don’t see the harm in advocating for reasonable, practical changes short of ending the Fed, even if that’s the ultimate goal. In other words, #FixTheFed until we can #EndTheFed.
For example, why not at least end the Fed’s dual mandate? The Fed’s sole mandate should be price stability — which the Fed has failed miserably to achieve for years. Of course, the Fed and its cronies at BLS manipulate the definition of inflation beyond reason. But too often the Fed gets to hide behind its “maximum employment” mandate to undertake all sorts of shenanigans for Wall Street and the 1%. Having a singular mandate would help expose the Fed’s intentional attempts to monetize debt and inflate prices.
Here’s another idea: Expressly prohibit the Fed from buying or holding mortgage-backed securities. Perhaps one of its worst-ever offenses, the Fed has purchased trillions in residential MBS without apparent legal authority. (Indeed, there is “no express provision in the Federal Reserve Act for the Federal Reserve to use its open market authority to purchase private sector promissory notes … the plain meaning of Section 14 reveals that the Federal Reserve may not purchase private assets because they lack the requisite ‘full guarantee’ element required by the Federal Reserve Act.” Emerson, More Illegal Actions of the Federal Reserve: How the Federal Reserve Acted Outside the Scope of Its Legal Authority in Purchasing Securities from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, 29 NO. 10 BANKING & FIN. SERVICES POL’Y REP. 11 (Oct. 2010)).
The Fed’s illicit MBS purchases have caused soul-crushing housing inflation, destroyed the US housing industry, and set in motion what will be the worst homelessness crisis in American history. The Fed has played God in housing for the benefit of Wall Street for far too long. Congress must put a stop to it.
One more for good measure: Require the Fed to obtain Congressional approval for bank bailout programs and reinstitute bank reserve requirements. Too often the Fed sets up a new program to “fix a liquidity issue” for the megabanks without any real oversight. The unelected apparatchiks at the Fed face no consequence for pumping infinite money to their cronies on Wall Street. The Fed inflates and crashes the markets on purpose, making things less and less stable. Indeed, the “Financial Stability Oversight Committee” has convened at least 7 times this year as the Fed and Treasury undertook to bailout billionaires in Silicon Valley and make Jeffrey Esptein’s longtime bank ever bigger. At least Congress answers to the people in some respect.
Listen, we know we’re unlikely to see any real reforms that make a difference. But that doesn’t mean we should just give up or limit ourselves to pounding the table about ending the Fed entirely. Even if the Fed is not salvageable, we completely believe in and love America. Sadly, what we have today is no longer capitalism. Our financial system has been perverted by Fed-Wall Street corruption into a socialist ATM for the wealthy. We suspect many of the people who attack capitalism are misguided and don’t understand what we really need is a return to real capitalism with even application of the law — as opposed to say, the insane “stakeholder capitalism” that totalitarian communists at WEF are peddling.
We believe there is still enough good in America, however, to salvage. We just need more GOOD people, in every income bracket, both in the public service and private enterprise, to SPEAK UP and do their part to help stop greedy, corrupt bastards at the Fed, on Wall Street, in the hills of Davos and elsewhere who are trying to destroy everything that is great about this country. It’s easy to see what’s happening isn’t just capitalistic greed. It’s fraud. It’s corruption. It’s anti-American. It’s frankly, evil. And it all needs to end.
Anyhow, we hope you all have enjoyed and gotten something out of our writings. We truly thank our thousands of followers here and on “X” (we still like to call it Twitter) for your support, insights and engagement. We hope we might inspire a few others to speak out more about the evils of the Fed. We’ve tried very hard to be accurate and tell it like it is. And we hope to continue to share some thoughts at times…unlike the Fed, which runs its mouth constantly, is intentionally opaque and is as corrupt and dystopian as anything George Orwell could have imagined.
Sincerely,
#FixTheFed (formerly #OccupyTheFed)