Originally Posted By: sinij
Originally Posted By: Derid


If that is not central planning, then what is?



Derid, you don't know what you are talking about. Central planning is deciding how many tractors per farmer should be produced in the next 5-year and building a factory to do just that.

Saying applying (arguably misusing) control is central planning is like saying brawl in the bar is a holocaust.


Sinij.... sorry bro, but I have got to do this to you.

"Economic planning refers to any directing or planning of economic activity outside the mechanisms of the market. Planning is an economic mechanism for resource allocation and decision-making held in contrast with the market mechanism. Most economies are mixed economies, incorporating elements of market mechanisms and planning for distributing inputs and outputs.[1] The level of centralization of decision-making ultimately depends on the type of planning mechanism employed; as such planning may be based on either centralized or decentralized decision-making.[2]"

The entire Federal Reserve system is a system of *central planning*. That is what the Federal Reserve IS. They DECIDE HOW MUCH MONEY GETS MADE. What ELSE COULD THAT BE BUT CENTRAL PLANNING. Sorry for the caps, but before calling other people names you AT LEAST NEED TO LEARN THE BASICS OF WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.

I did not say we live in a completely *planned economy* , if that is somehow what you are thinking - simply because your extremist liberal brain saw a "liberal trigger phrase - central planning " and decided to stop functioning , and start ranting against imaginary something.

We live in what is called a mixed economy, with elements of free market and central control.

The Federal Reserve is a mechanism of central planning. It decides how much money gets made. That is central planning. There is nothing else it can be. If it is not, you need to somehow figure out how to describe what it is... because it sure aint the market that decides how much money gets created.

Now The Fed is using this power to centrally plan how much money gets created, combined with their unregulated power to loan as much printed money as they want, to artificially set the price of loaning money and distort the market.

Like I said, unsold T-bills just go on their own balance sheet. The market is not deciding what it will pay for a T-bill. The Fed is now arbitrarily deciding what that T-bill is worth. This is an extension of central control, and an increase in the level of central economic planning found in our system.

This is not speculation, or political word playing, or even an argument - this is simply what is happening. Its not a matter of opinion, its not a matter of politics, its not a matter of perspective.

Judging from your wording, you seem to think that central planning is only present if the govt controls *everything*. FYI, it is not an all or nothing proposition. We live in a mixed economy, but the Fed is inducing a much ratio ratio of control in that mix, and bringing with it all of the malinvestment and misapplication of resources one expects in the face of higher degrees of central control.


For who could be free when every other man's humour might domineer over him? - John Locke (2nd Treatise, sect 57)