The Ray Rice video for the financial sector has arrived.

That piece said nothing. Maybe the tapes will say something. I have no doubt people will make the wrong conclusions, because few people understand the Federal Reserve or how destructive it has been to the country since it was created in 1914.

None of this should be surprising to anyone. The Federal Reserve itself is the problem. It is a secretive organization (independent of Congress and the President -- what are we North Korea?) that was given authority to manipulate our interest rate markets (but it has taken MORE power -- now it outright rigs our financial markets by buying assets) and control us by controlling the money supply -- without any rhyme or reason or any accountability or ability for anyone to stop them from running amok if they are fucking things up.

It is nominally given the task of "regulating" banks (ask yourself, why do they need to be regulated and for what ends except creating winners and losers?), but it carries out its mandates with regard to employment and inflation (which it never gets right; it can't) by carrying out it's shenanigans THROUGH those banks. Without those banks doing the work for it, the Fed is powerless. So those banks are given HUGE powers that unfairly hurt the rest of us.

You have 9 directors at the Fed who oversea 12 Federal Reserve banks. 6 of them are CHOSEN by those private banks, including Goldman. It has to be that way. The banks and the central bank need to be in bed together, or else neither benefits. And to get Goldman to play the game, they need to get something return. Without those private banks, the Fed has no ability to actually do anything. And without the Fed giving those banks a leg up (that the rest of us don't get), they don't have such an easy time being profitable. The Fed gives those banks risk-free income -- at the expense of OTHERs.

Which is why the farce the Fed "regulating" the banking system is so maddening. The Fed fucks the rest of us by giving advantage to those banks. It is in the nature of what the Fed does. For example, since the financial crisis, the Fed has embarked on all kinds of unprecedented action that has robbed savers to largely benefit those banks. It encourages riskier and riskier behavior by those banks similar to what created the financial crisis in the first place, although that is a whole other conversation.

Three rounds of buying assets (treasuries and mortgage-backed securities) that have swelled the Fed's balance sheet to more than $4 trillion -- a looming disaster, because there is no market out there for them to unwind those assets in an unrigged market.

in the short-term, with the Fed buying up every piece of shit piece of paper out there, it has boosted the prices of those assets and the beneficiaries have been those banks that you all think the Fed regulates. They have been handing money to those banks.

At the same time, the Fed has rigged interest rates down to 0 percent to encourage more and more debt (with the twisted idea that we can only grow the economy by encouraging people to borrow). So if you are saver, or a retiree who needed nominal, relatively-risk free income, you are fucked. It doesn't exist because of the mess the Fed has created. Treasuries pay nothing. High quality corporate debt pays nothing. So it has boosted the value of every risky asset you can get your hands on as people have thrown themselves into another frenzy. We learned nothing from the early to mid 2000s.

The beneficiaries? Those banks, which have leveraged themselves up to the hilt and have driven the prices of risky assets (stocks, junk bonds, real estate again, securities that are asset-backed by auto loans, which are the new mortgage bubble, etc.) up. The Fed does it to try to pretend we have a healthy economy rather than dealing with the mess they created in the first place. But it is more of, and to a much more dangerous degree, of what the Fed created prior to 2008, in which it rigged interest rates to encourage people to put themselves into debt, and use the money to engage in riskier and riskier behaviors. We are sitting exactly where we were, but worse. Higher debt levels and with more inherent risk that can and will eventually crumble our financial system. And the Fed is responsible. IT is the problem.

By the way, private banks choose 9 of the Fed's directors. The other three currently? They came from the financial sector. The actual Fed presidents? The current New York Fed chairman CAME right from Goldman Sachs before heading to the Fed. The Fed president who he took over for, went right to Warburg Pincus (that is Tim Geithner, who helped create the mess, and then gets credit for saving the world somehow!). The Fed president before Geithner, right to Merrill Lynch. The Fed president before him? Right to Goldman Sachs.

Whatever comes out in those tapes. ... Rather than knee-jerk about amorphous "regulation," people should be asking why we have a central bank that is centrally planning our economy in the first place. You should ask why Goldman Sachs needs to be regulated? Without the competitive advantage the Federal Reserve gives those large banks, Goldman Sachs has absolutely nothing -- zero power. It isn't Apple that produces products that sell like crazy in a marketplace. It has NO competitive advantage on its own that any of us couldn't have. It would have to actually compete, and honestly, it wouldn't be able to. But with the Federal Reserve controlling our monetary system (and fucking it up), and needing Goldman (and a handful of other financial institutions) to do it, it is an unfair relationship that screws us all.

It's amazing that people still don't get it.