by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade
During his testimony to the Senate Banking Committee yesterday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell let it slip out, for the first time, that the Federal Reserve has had a 10-year game plan to deal with the financial crisis. In response to a question on cyber threats from Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Powell stated the following:
“They kind of pay us to be awake at night worrying about things. I would say that if you look at what happened in the financial crisis, we had a game plan there. We implemented it over the course of 10 years. I won’t say that it’s perfect or anything like that, but we have a plan that is meant to address those kinds of things.”
“Those kinds of things?” The financial crisis, fueled by corruption and lax regulation of Wall Street banks, destroyed the housing market in the U.S. and left the U.S. economy in tatters. Millions of Americans lost their jobs and their homes to foreclosure. The New York Fed was the supervisor of key Wall Street banks that caused this problem – shouldn’t it have had a 10-year game plan to prevent “Those kinds of things” instead of creating the game plan after the damage had been done?