Courtesy of Pam Martens
William C. Dudley, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
On Thursday, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, William C. Dudley, held a press conference to effectively tell Puerto Ricans to suck it up as they attempt to recover from an epic humanitarian crisis caused by Hurricane Maria, which devastated infrastructure and wiped out electricity to the entire Island in September.
When it comes to corrupt Wall Street banks that are in the process of failing, the Federal Reserve can always find trillions of dollars to funnel into the banks’ coffers at almost zero interest rates to prop them back up. It does that through its power to electronically create money out of thin air. Take, for example, the $16 trillion it secretly lavished on Wall Street banks and their foreign counterparts during the financial crash of 2007 to 2010.
For deviant banks and their shareholders, the Federal Reserve has a big heart, great sympathy and big purse strings. When it comes to the human suffering of Americans, it consistently turns its back.
Consider how Dudley’s predecessor at the New York Fed, Tim Geithner, handled the housing crisis created by Wall Street banks. According to Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in his book Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street, this is what happened: the Fed created HAMP, ostensibly a program to provide housing relief to humans but it was secretly a delay mechanism to help the banks. Barofsky wrote in his book:
“For a good chunk of our allotted meeting time, Elizabeth Warren grilled Geithner about HAMP, barraging him with questions about how the program was going to start helping home owners. In defense of the program, Geithner finally blurted out, ‘We estimate that they can handle ten million foreclosures, over time,’ referring to the banks. ‘This program will help foam the runway for them.’
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