Earlier this month President Trump advanced the view that during a national emergency the President has “total power.” The real power, however, is being exercised by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (New York Fed) with not so much as one vote by any elected representatives of the citizens of the U.S.
The speed at which the New York Fed, owned by multinational banks, can create trillions of U.S. dollars by pushing an electronic button and bring financial relief to the 1 percent on Wall Street stands in sharp contrast to the millions of mom and pop small businesses across America who are still waiting to see a dime in relief from an elected Congress, forcing a growing number of small businesses to close permanently and thus further consolidating money and power in the United States.
On September 17, 2019, months before any case of coronavirus COVID-19 had been discovered anywhere in the world, the New York Fed began pumping out hundreds of billions of dollars a week in super cheap loans to the trading houses of Wall Street, a group of 24 firms it calls its “primary dealers.” This action in the repo loan market was the first by the New York Fed since the financial crisis of 2008. By January 27, 2020, before one death had been announced in the United States from the virus, the New York Fed had pumped $6.6 trillion cumulatively in revolving loans to the trading houses of Wall Street. By March 14, the loan tally was more than $9 trillion and climbing.
In addition to those repo loans, the New York Fed is running an alphabet soup of emergency relief programs for the mega banks and trading houses on Wall Street in addition to the billions the Fed is loaning through its Discount Window at 1/4 of one percent interest. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has made a grand gesture to the 1 percent on Wall Street by authorizing $454 billion of taxpayer money to be used to absorb losses on these emergency facilities for Wall Street.
In the past 90 years there have been three financial crises on Wall Street that required emergency operations by the Federal Reserve. Two of those three crises occurred in the past 12 years. That should send a very clear signal to every American and to Congress that Wall Street is bleeding the system dry.