by Paul Craig Roberts, Paul Craig Roberts:

I have never known the Federal Reserve make a good decision.  Indeed, disastrous decisions are the Fed’s hallmark.  There are many such disasters.  Among them the Great Depression, the decade long consequence of the Federal Reserve Board’s failure to prevent the shrinkage of the US money supply.   See: https://www.hoover.org/research/feds-depression-and-birth-new-deal 

In more recent times we had Brooksley Born, head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), blocked from regulating over the counter derivatives and credit default swaps that resulted in  financial panic and economic collapse.  Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt conspired to have Congress block Brooksley Born from doing her job.  The four dumbshit officials told Congress that “markets are self-regulating.”  Greenspann when later questioned by Congress admitted that his ideology “had a flaw.”  http://www.shoppbs.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/interviews/born.html