How could you claim to be so well versed in the Fed and not know what POMO is? Permanent Open Market Operations. Here, read up. You're referring to transparency under POMO - that was never in dispute, and is not the subject of the transparency complaint.
Here is a good link to the paper ya'll are trying to attribute something clandestine to. http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2015/02/cleveland-fed-accidentally-links-to.html This is an excellent account of U.S. CB intervention in currency markets in an attempt to maintain the Bretton Woods system of exchange, to which the U.S. obligated itself at Bretton Woods, at great benefit to the U.S., following WW II.. The brilliant Keynes opposed the Bretton Woods System because he foresaw the problems that would eventually arrive. It took only about 15 years, roughly the time it took Europe and Japan to recover from the devastation of the war, for the problems Keynes foresaw to become a serious threat to maintenance of the Bretton Woods agreement. An interesting side note here is that the Kennedy tax cuts were structured to stimulate exports and make it possible for the U.S. to maintain the $35 peg. This is the only tax cut after the immediate aftermath of the War that economists believe actually did result in an increase in government revenue. (All other cuts since have had a negative affect on revenue, despite total revenues, after tax cuts, having increased because of inflation and increased government borrowing and spending.) The intervention of the U.S. central bank in attempts to maintain the Bretton Woods arrangement is very well known and part of the public record.
Because I know it simply as Open Market Operations, part of the day to day functioning of the Fed, so naturally they are permanent. These are transparent. Completely so! As are all of the "less permanent" market operations since the financial crisis. Perhaps you'd like to refer to these as "LPOMO" You may not know much about the Fed, but at least you are entertaining.
I hate being impolite, but actually what you said was: "And the piece is written by a Former Fed Employee. No conflict there." I took this as as sarcasm, as anyone would.
So the fact that someone put the P for Permanent in front of OMO (which you knew) left you trying to figure the whole thing out. "Ohhh....that POMO." LOL! Yeah. And it's me who doesn't know much about the Fed.
The piece was written by a former Fed employee. That doesn't make him a mouthpiece for the Fed. I used to work for Nestle'. If I wrote an article that was positive about Nestle', one could say that I was a former employee and that influenced my perspective. Doesn't make me a mouthpiece of Nestle'. You're supposedly some academic, aren't you? Why won't you answer the question of what Fed bank you work at?
First, I'd like to know all of the assets that makes up the Federal Reserve's balance sheet. I'd like to know price paid, current market price... Transparency is not historically the Fed’s strong suit In the subsequent interview with Cook, Bloomberg Television’s Washington correspondent, Powell hit the transparency theme hard. Categorizing the “Audit the Fed”movement as “unprecedented steps,” he told Cook “we absolutely welcome transparency with open arms.” Just one recent example of Fed transparency, however, comes after the New York Fed denied the media a Freedom of Information Act request on leaks inside the bank regulator. This resulted in U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Elijah E. Cummings (D-MD) seeking to obtain transparency when the Fed did not provide it to the media. They sent a letter to Scott Alvarez, General Counsel of the Federal Reserve Board asking logical questions. As reported in ValueWalk, they were simply seeking information about his internal investigation into a leak of “market moving information” from a Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting in September 2012 after the New York Fed stonewalled Pro-Publica, which first reported the issue. Apparently this Fed “transparency” to which Powell discussed did not extend to that issue, nor did Powell address the actions the New York Fed has taken regarding the unregulated derivatives that underlie the Greek economic. When asked about the Greek situation in an interview later in the afternoon, Powell seemed to avoid the derivatives question and the New York Fed’s role in managing what is logically considered a next crisis flash point. Powell nonetheless spent a considerable amount of time in his speech praising the agency for its transparency of the last crisis while avoiding transparency in the current one. The big bank derivatives that were at the heart of the 2008 market crash are documented to be a major concern today. If the New York Fed was truly “transparent” and “independent” have they demanded the banks provide transparency into the unregulated derivatives that underlie the Greek economy? Here Powell only confirmed he was following the events “carefully,” saying he hoped the issues surrounding Greece “can be sorted out in a way that is not disruptive to financial markets and the economy.” and Regulatory and Monetary Complaints Run Together in Audit The Fed Campaign As previously reported in ValueWalk, the Fed’s “independence” came into question most recently when a former Fed employee, Carmen Segarra, secretly recorded conversations and meetings from inside the New York Fed. The tapes showed senior New York Federal Reserve executives telling lower level regulators to back off investigations of Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS) Group Inc the world’s most powerful investment bank. Other scandals, such as leaks coming from the Fed regarding market moving information and providing access to favored friends, such as allowing Jon Corzine’s MF Global to have access to the Fed discount window when the firm was clearly unqualified and was rejected when previous management attempted to achieve such status. CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton has called the Fed “an old white boys club” in an Opalesque interview, where he also said the Fed refused to share information about the big bank commodity holdings. Behind the scenes some regulatory reform advocates point to the New York Federal Reserve in particular as more of an institution used to protect large banks rather than regulate them. None of this, of course, has entered the mainstream conversation. just for starters.
http://www.propublica.org/article/leak-at-federal-reserve-revealed-confidential-bond-buying-details See as well: http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/ethics-conflicts-of-interest.html