home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
The Unsorted BBS Collection
/
thegreatunsorted.tar
/
thegreatunsorted
/
texts
/
txtfiles_misc
/
news119
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1993-04-17
|
3KB
|
54 lines
3/11/1993
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Twelve middle-aged white men, in alternating
dark blue and dark gray suits, scrunched together in front of a
Senate committee and entered a footnote in history.
Men who look like that are fairly common witnesses at Senate
hearings, though not usually so many at once.
But these 12 were the presidents of Federal Reserve regional
banks, and they had never appeared together at a congressional
hearing in the Fed's 80-year history.
They didn't look entirely comfortable trying to fit around two
tables pushed together.
But their comfort was clearly not the aim of Wednesday's hearing
by the Senate Banking Committee.
They had been summoned by Democrats who wanted to know why the
Fed's deliberations about interest rates are so secretive and even
why all 12 presidents were both male and white.
Unspoken during the hearing that ran more than four hours was an
even bigger question: What did the committee plan to do with a bill,
sponsored by three of its ranking Democrats, to strip the presidents
of their power to set interest rate policies?
The 12 never were asked directly their feelings about the measure
proposed by committee Chairman Donald Riegle, D-Mich.; and Sens.
Paul Sarbanes, D-Md., and Jim Sasser, D-Tenn.
Instead, they were subjected to pointed questions about whether
the Fed's tight-money policies to fight inflation had triggered the
1990-91 recession and the prolonged period of economic weakness that
followed.
Democrats also wanted to know whether the central bank was lying
in wait to sabotage President Clinton's economic program by pushing
rates higher at the first whiff of inflation.
Sarbanes asked whether a woman or member of a racial minority had
ever headed one of the Fed's regional banks.
Yes, one woman, the Fed presidents said: Karen Horn, who served
in the 1980s as president of the Cleveland bank, but no minorities.
It was all too much for Republicans on the banking committee.
They charged the entire exercise -- legislation and hearing -- was a
ham-handed attempt to pressure them to keep interest rates low for
the benefit of Clinton's economic program.
Sen. Connie Mack, R-Fla., called it "an arrogant display of
congressional power" and said the clear intent was to "intimidate
the Federal Reserve into an easier monetary policy."
Sen. Lauch Faircloth, R-N.C., said that subjecting the Federal
Reserve to more political control was a "recipe for fiscal disaster
for the American economy."
Not so, contended the sponsors of the legislation. They said the
measure was aimed at answering the public clamor for policymakers to
be held more accountable, and nowhere was this more needed than at
the powerful Federal Open Market Committee.
*********************
Note the senate committees and names of the senators: Call these
people and give them the REAL story! Demand an investigation!