The Fed is an institution staffed by unelected, career technocrats. It's not supposed to have such sweeping powers (and, by charter, it really doesn't), but, like most parts of the executive branch, it has expanded in scope over time due to a steady erosion of our lawmaking institutions.
Put bluntly, the Fed can do what it does for the same reason the President can start pseudo-wars without going to congress: it's inconvenient for lawmakers to cop to such responsibilities. The other branches of government are simply shoring up the holes.
To be honest, I like the Fed a lot... In so far as grossly unchecked power goes, we could have far less competent people at the helm (The fact that so few in monetary policy wind up in congress is the real tragedy, if you ask me). That being said, future performance is no guarantee. History shows that it is not so simple to take back power once ceded for the sake of expediency when it is no longer convenient.
The question is how you put the genie back in the bottle.
I think this is the core insight of small-government conservatism. When big, powerful institutions exist, they can do great things...provided they're always run by exceptional people. But when they're not, the damage they can do is incalculable.
So the question becomes, how do you create a system with the best long-run survival properties? I, I suspect much like you, would like it if there was some way we could return a bit of power back to Congress and other institutions, and away from the huge executive we have today, in 2020. It just feels like a ticking time bomb until the wrong people get the helm.
I am no longer so sure these aren't mutually exclusive. In the end, the buck stops at the voters. Do voters in practice make decisions that make any sense at all? Were the successes of democracy really the successes of voters, or were they the successes of a technocratic gatekeeper class who very carefully controlled the flow of information to induce the voters to make the "right" decisions?
here's an example: do you all realize that the banks providing these loans are being paid essentially commission [1] for making the loans? anywhere from 1% to 5%? 5% on 500B is 25B in the pockets of bankers. why?
[1] bottom of the page here under PPP incentives https://www.chapman.com/insights-publications-SBA_Paycheck_P... . and if you think covering "processing fees" isn't commission then ask yourself as a programmer why it's not a flat incentive? does it cost more to process the paper work for 100k loan than a 10k loan?
edit: what in the fuck am i getting downvoted for? i have a literal citation of a tax attorney. i'm not editorializing or taking anything out of context or whatever. it's right there:
>the SBA will reimburse lenders for PPP loan processing fees, based on the disbursed loan amount: 5% for PPP loans up to $350,000; 3% for PPP loans greater than $350,000 and less than $2 million; and 1% for PPP loans of $2 million or more
what could you possibly disagree with here??? jesus christ forgive me if your naive understanding of the world doesn't reflect reality.
What does this mean? It's either verifiably true or it is not.
If you keep breaking the site guidelines with your main account, we're going to have to ban that as well.
please show me a single time in history that the Fed has leant directly to businesses, states, and local governments; from the article
>and reached into unchartered territory to support American businesses, states and local governments.
so hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm