>Is this still the case, Doug? Would televising
>meetings force the board's hand, and would it still be
>worth a glimpse into the mentality of power, as a
>venue that severely circumscribed the Fed's ability to
>manipulate it (not to say TV's an innocent medium)?
>Could business be done by other means?
>
>The number of people who would watch it is another
>matter entirely.
Well, like I said towards the end of Wall Street:
>Financial populists often propose to "democratize the Fed," opening
>up its proceedings to public scrutiny, and making membership on the
>Board of Governors into an elective office. Fundamentally, this is a
>fine idea. But, in the spirit of this chapter, its limitations have
>to be acknowledged.
>
>Congress is an elective office, too, and its proceedings are
>televised in narcotic detail on C-SPAN, but the body still produces
>innumerable insults to democracy. The moneyed and powerful enjoy an
>access to Congress that mere citizens lack, a disparity that is well
>known; why should applying similar standards to the Fed produce any
>better results - especially when it comes to the central bank, whose
>issues are dear to the hearts of rentiers? The spectacles of
>Congressional tax-writing and budget-making don't offer an inspiring
>precedent.
C-SPAN hasn't done much to democratize the U.S., but it's still better that the hacks be televised than not, if only to see the full richness of their hackery. Fed governors are probably better informed and more articulate than your average Congressperson, so they wouldn't supply the same spectacle of idiocy that Congress does, but still, it'd probably be better that they be televised than not.
Doug