Elliot Spitzer

Eliot Spitzer: The New York Fed is the most powerful financial institution you've never heard of.

http://www.slate.com/id/2217811/

Fed Dread
The New York Fed is the most powerful financial institution you've never heard of. Look who's running it.
By Eliot Spitzer
Posted Wednesday, May 6, 2009, at 12:29 PM ET

The kerfuffle about current New York Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Stephen Friedman's purchase of some Goldman stock while the Fed was involved in reviewing major decisions about Goldman's future—well-covered by the Wall Street Journal here and here—raises a fundamental question about Wall Street's corruption. Just as the millions in AIG bonuses obscured the much more significant issue of the $70 billion-plus in conduit payments authorized by the N.Y. Fed to AIG's counterparties, the small issue of Friedman's stock purchase raises very serious issues about the competence and composition of the Federal Reserve of New York, which is the most powerful financial institution most Americans know nothing about.

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