Liberty Maven

The IMF has informed Ben Bernanke that “the board has ruled that a so-called Financial Sector Assessment Program is to be carried out in the US.” This brings up an interesting dilemma for Ron Paul supporters who monitor the Fed and liken it to an unconstitutional cabal. We are against the IMF and federal style regulation over markets at all levels, yet we painfully yearn for more transparency from the Federal Reserve. If we aren’t yearning for more transparency from the Fed we are advocating abolishing it outright.

So the question is then, do we support the IMF investigating the hated Federal Reserve because it conveniently supports our anti-Fed sentiments? Or are we truly and purely against the IMF and it’s authority to perform such investigations?

In the opinion of David Hirst in Australian’s “The Age”, such IMF interventions are long overdue for America. After all many other IMF countries have had to go through the same investigations. Hirst calls it a “blow to American exceptionism.”

[The] IMF intervention (my expression) is a humiliation for the US, the real significance may be that this is another blow to American exceptionism.

While the examination is far reaching, and deeply intrusive, Canada, Britain, Italy, indeed two-thirds of IMF members, have participated in the program. The new President will soon discover the age of US exceptionism is over.

Meanwhile the US markets have entered bear territory, the economy has done likewise and we are at the beginning of a long and tortuous process before rebuilding can even commence.

The entire article by Hirst is well worth reading although his argument seems to be for demanding fairness from the IMF rather than whether performing such “investigations” should be done in the first place.