[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 44 (Wednesday, April 20, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 20, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                 IDENTIFYING THE FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I said yesterday that I was going to bring 
to the floor of the Senate today a chart with the pictures of all of 
the folks who cast votes down at the Federal Reserve Board, but whose 
identity almost no one in America knows. The Federal Reserve Board 
basically operates in secret. They close their doors--I guess they keep 
the lights on--and they make judgments about interest rates and 
monetary policy that affects the life of every single American. They 
are the last sort of dinosaur left in this country that can do that in 
secret. We have unappointed, unelected, and unconfirmed president of 
the regional Fed banks that make decisions about monetary policy, and 
nobody knows who they are.
  I thought I would bring their pictures, show their salaries, and give 
a little bit about their backgrounds. This would show the American 
people who are making decisions to increase interest rates to put the 
brakes on the American economy, despite the absence of any credible 
evidence of inflation. We have a bunch of folks sitting behind a closed 
door voting and saying our problem is, ``We are headed toward 
inflation, and we want to protect the big money center banks.''
  Let us tell the people who they are. I hope it will not alarm them 
that I intend to show pictures of them so they get proper credit for 
their monetary policies. I think this is wrongheaded to increase 
interest rates at a time when the country has just come out of a 
recession and is not nearly reaching cruising speed. To have the Fed 
now say, ``Let us put the brakes on, let us decide that we have an 
inflation problem,'' that is like a doctor prescribing penicillin for 
an illness he cannot diagnose. He says to the patient: You have nothing 
wrong with you, but someday you will catch something, so let me start 
giving you medicine.
  Putting the brakes on this economy with three successive interest 
rate increases in as many months is wrongheaded policy. I cannot do 
much about it. The Fed is an independent agency, unaccountable to 
virtually anybody except the constituency it serves. I regret that we 
now see that policy. I wanted to bring that poster today, but it is 
hard to get the pictures and get them pasted up. I will do that 
tomorrow.

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