The Cato Institute hosts a discussion on increasing the public transparency of the Federal Reserve featuring Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX); with comments by Gilbert Schwartz, Partner, Schwartz & Ballen LLP, Former Associate General Counsel, Federal Reserve; and Bert Ely, President, Ely & Company, Inc. Moderated by Mark Calabria Director, Financial Regulation Studies, Cato Institute.
Bio
Mark Calabria
Mark A. Calabria, Ph.D. is Director of Financial Regulation Studies at the Cato Institute. Before joining Cato in 2009, he spent six years as a member of the senior professional staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. In that position, Calabria handled issues related to housing, mortgage finance, economics, banking and insurance for Ranking Member Richard Shelby (R-AL).
Prior to his service on Capitol Hill, Calabria served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Regulatory Affairs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and also held a variety of positions at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, the National Association of Home Builders and the National Association of Realtors.
Calabria has also been a Research Associate with the U.S. Census Bureau's Center for Economic Studies. He has extensive experience evaluating the impacts of legislative and regulatory proposals on financial and real estate markets, with particular emphasis on how policy changes in Washington affect low and moderate income households. He holds a doctorate in economics from George Mason University.
Bert Ely
Bert Ely is head of Ely and Company, a financial institutions consulting firm in Alexandria, Virginia.
He was one of the first people to publicly predict FSLIC's bankruptcy.
Congressman Ron Paul
Ronald Ernest Paul is a Republican United States Congressman from Lake Jackson, Texas, a physician, a bestselling author, and a former 2008 U.S. presidential candidate. Paul serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Joint Economic Committee, the Committee on Financial Services and is Chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy. He is a candidate for the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States in the 2012 election.
Gilbert Schwartz
Gil Schwartz specializes in advising clients on matters of financial services law and the development of new financial products. With over 30 years experience in the financial industry, Gil possesses the distinctive knowledge required to counsel clients on complex regulatory issues and successfully represent them before federal and state bank and thrift supervisory agencies including the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the National Credit Union Administration. He also testifies on behalf of clients before Congress and state legislatures on the potential effects of financial services legislation.
Gil is at the forefront of federal and state privacy issues, including the implementation of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act. He was active in Congress' consideration of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACT Act), and he advises clients on requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act.
In addition, he helps financial institutions comply with anti-money laundering laws and regulations including the USA Patriot Act. Gil is the author of numerous articles on banking issues and is quoted frequently in the press on financial services industry matters.
He also appears on seminar panels to discuss legal issues confronting financial institutions and serves regularly as an expert witness in litigation involving financial services law.
U.S. central bank system consisting of 12 Federal Reserve districts with a Reserve bank in the principal commercial city of each district. The system is supervised by a board of governors in Washington, D.C., as well as by various advisory councils and committees. As a result of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, all national banks are required to join the system; state banks may join if they meet membership qualifications. The Federal Reserve is responsible for monetary policy. The original act set fixed reserve requirements for the U.S. fractional reserve banking system. It allowed each district bank to determine its discount rate, the rate it charged on loans to member banks. The modern Federal Reserve resulted from the Federal Reserve Act of 1935, which allowed the board to determine reserve requirements within defined limits. It became responsible for approving the discount rates of the district banks. Most importantly, the act created the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee, which is responsible for conducting operations in financial markets that increase or decrease the amount of reserves in the system. If the Federal Reserve wants to ease monetary policy, it will use open market operations and increase the amount of reserves through the purchase of financial assets. Conversely, it can tighten monetary policy through the sale of financial assets.
I agree with Foraboy, bad politics primarily is created by the passivity of the masses who rather spend their unconscious lifeīs eating fast food in front of their TV. Ron Paul is wasting his time because the masses always prefers a good sounding lie over the ugly truth. "I donīt want cut my spending right now, itīs feels somehow too inconvenient , I rather deal some day with the global finical crisis... and now get lost, I mean get out of my view so I can watch: Lost!"
Ron Paul and Peter Schiff tell us both regular citizens and corporations (defense, finance, medical, etc) get too much free money from the government and this shifts the economy off balance, inflates prices, etc. They are against welfare and wealthfare. They want to do away with social security, medicare, medicaid, and minimum wages. Sure there is corporate support for that. Will they realistically succeed of getting rid of wasteful military spending and subsidies to the finance sector in the form lower taxes, zero interest loans and plain purchasing the banks investment losses? No! We all did the crime, but realistically, only regular people will do the time.
It is funny how people can get suckered into thinking that the RP skit was real. You see RP and Bruno, but you don't see the cameraman who is focusing in for RP's "reaction".
Moreover, I doubt you can get RP for a cup of coffee (without an audience) or giving birth.
Think about WHY they let Lehman fail. Head of the Fed was Tim Geitner, and he had ties to Goldman Sachs. With all of these failures, Goldman Sachs has come out better for it. I've heard Congress ask where money has gone directly to Bernanke, and he simply says, "I don't know." That isn't transparency, so obviously something needs to be done to change things.
member. 
