

The Federal Reserve has enormous power over who is president - william_stranix
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/13/yes-the-federal-reserve-has-enormous-power-over-who-is-president/

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pdabbadabba
Wonkblog's headline is pretty clickbaity -- there's really not much to see
here.

Technically it's true that the federal reserve has a lot of control over who
is elected president. But, contrary to the headline's implication, the article
doesn't argue that the fed can intentionally engineer electoral outcomes. The
fed controls elections only because monetary policy has a significant effect
on the economy, and the nation's economic performance significantly effects
presidential elections. Bad monetary policy -> bad economy -> change in
political party occupying the white house. On this definition there are many
agencies that "have enormous power over who is president."

I suppose the Fed chair and other officials could _engineer_ an electoral
outcome by sabotaging the economy, but this seems pretty far fetched and the
article does not suggest that this occurs.

~~~
kolbe
The Fed can also use bad monetary policy to add short-term gains to economic
development while sacrificing the long-term health of the economy. So, they
can use the tool both ways.

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ddeck
For a very interesting commentary of the immense power of central banks, I'd
recommend the documentary "Princes of the Yen", a film adaptation of Richard
Werner's[1] book of the same name.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Ac7ap_MAY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Ac7ap_MAY)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Werner](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Werner)

