While the United States Armed Forces (private mercenaries) are stationed at 737 bases, in 130 nations around the world, defending “all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world,” President Charles I. Plosser, of the privately owned Federal Reserve (central) Bank of Philadelphia, a speech to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, pennsylvania, criticizes the “Bernake Doctrine,” in its enabling the 1,200,000,000,000 “dollar” Federal bailout of Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (a.k.a. “Fannie Mae” and “Freddie Mac”):

       In addition, the Fed[eral Reserve System of (central) Banks] greatly increased the size of its balance sheet and changed its composition, substituting less liquid, long-term assets, such as securities backed by mortgages guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for the short-term Treasury securities it typically held before the crisis.  These policies have veered toward deciding how public money should be allocated across firms and sectors of the economy.  I believe that if the government must intervene in allocating credit in this manner, such decisions properly belong to the fiscal authorities – not to the central bank.  By making these unprecedented lending decisions, and at times being less transparent than we could have been, the Fed has opened itself up to criticism from various sources and has encouraged the idea that monetary policy decisions may be influenced by political or other special interests.  This is not healthy development.

       NOTE: At the time Plosser made this speech he was an alternate member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the quasi-Federal/private committee that dictates interest rates to the banking industry.

       [added 3/6/2021] Thanks to Freedom’s Phoenix for this entry.