I hear you. In capitalism, capital is king. And the bourgeois own it.
I’d thought we had addressed some of the worst of capitalism’s excesses the past 100 years, but the past 40 have been mostly re-instating the economic favoritism towards the already wealthy. We’re moving *back* towards the unfettered capitalism Marx witnessed.
I agree 100% the tortured logic of the opinions reveals these priorities. The President can’t screw up the regulation of the money supply and banking system. But he can *every* other regulatory scheme, almost all of which are essentially citizens protections against business excess put in place ever since Sinclair published The Jungle. They are seeking to roll it all back
It's much worse than that as a logical argument! There were no congressional majorities on the eve of World War I for a central bank like the First or the Second Bank of the United States or the Bank of England. The dominant progressive view was that those were fortresses of high finance banker power, and were unfit for America. Therefore a deal was struck: instead of one central bank located in the financial hub, there would be 12 regional banks to serve as "reserve banks". The directors of these banks would not be exclusively bankers and their friends, but would represent the interests of the users of banking services as well as the providers. and on top, supervising the whole system, there would be a standard progressive era independent agency with president appointed and senate confirmed governors. (The only deviation from standard progressive era practice was to offer the governors 14-year rather than four-year terms.)
This is not an institution in any sense continuous with the First and Second Banks of the United States. And the idea that the United States should have a standard central bank was fought over politically and decided decisively in the age of Andrew Jackson. The answer was "no."
Now comes the corrupt Supreme Court majority in Slaughter to say that in spite of nearly 130 years of precedent and understanding about how the Constitution works, "ooopsie! independent Progressive Era-pattern agencies are and always have been unconstitutional!" And there is nothing at all to distinguish the Federal Reserve Board from the other agencies whose independence from the momentary pleasure of the president has now been destroyed.
And John Roberts did not even try to find anything distinguishing. There is the bare assertion that the Federal Reserve is the first and second banks of the United States—which it is not. and there is the claim that institutions like the first and second bank of the United States are constitutionally hunky-dory— which was a position that was disputed and fought out in the ages of Hamilton, Madison, and Jackson, and ultimately resolved with the final answer being "no".
Now Lisa Cook is a former student of mine. Lisa Cook is very good people. Lisa Cook is highly qualified to be on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve right now. I see no credible case that Lisa Cook has committed any form of mortgage fraud. She deserves on all the equities to keep her job. And a system in which Congress has stated that executive officers should only be removed "for cause" should mean what it says.
But that does not keep Roberts' opinion here from being profoundly mendacious on pretty much every level I can think of.
> **John Ganz**: No Touch Money <https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/no-touch-money>: 'How else can one possibly reconcile the decisions handed down yesterday—Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook?... n Cook, the same court, the same justices, discover an exception! The president cannot remove a member of the Federal Reserve Board without establishing cause. What’s the difference? Well, the Fed is special...
Meanwhile Cass Sunstein is still pretending the Seditious Six are serious legal scholars working out the implications of the Constitution and their legal theories. This type of pandering to power is the job of the elite law schools
Nice reference to “Touchez pas au grisbi,” the great 1954 Jean Gabin movie. Direct, simple, and elegant, the film is a real contrast to today’s events.
I agree with John's conclusion, and indeed it is very commonly and openly expressed by thoughtful political conservatives, albeit in different terms. (They usually use it to limit the power of a central bank--monetary policy and nothing else.) I only want to set a bit of John's history straight.
Plenty of founders were in favor of the first BUS. George Washington signed the legislation, and I think we can fairly call him a founder. Same for many in the first Congress. Jefferson really really! really!!! hated the first BUS (his opinion on constitutionality was little short of frothing), but Madison did not.
Madison's objections were legal, and indeed, he probably thought that the First BUS was good on the merits. In a January 8, 1782 letter to Edmund Pendleton, he stated that the Bank of North America was wise on the merits, but had constitutional problems. During the Constitutional debates, he was interested in providing a limited chartering power to Congress. It ultimately went no further than the Post Office Clause. His speech to the First Congress against chartering stressed remediable issues: the wealth transfer to Northern speculators implicit in the subscription procedure of the act; an excessively long lifetime; a branching power. His draft of a veto message for Washington (Feb. 21, 1791) stressed the unfair subscription procedure, and indeed the subscription procedures were rescinded a week after passage.
Madison strongly disagreed with Hamilton on only one merits issue: a general trading company, like the South Sea Company. (The impeachment of Warren Hastings was in progress at the time.) He hated them, and raised this issue often in his speech to Congress. This was not a problem with the Bank of the United States, since its charter explicitly forbade trading. However, he and Edmund Randolph (who was the Attorney General and opined to Washington against the Bank) both shared the legal belief that the power to charter a bank was also the power to charter a trading company. In Madison's mind, it was worth sacrificing the BUS to avoid a monopolistic national trading company.
Hamilton adopted precisely this position in his first draft on the constitutionality of the bank (Feb. 23, 1791), but in the opposite direction. He liked monopolistic trading companies! , However, Hamilton was no political fool. He dropped any references to his beloved trading companies in his final report to Washington on constitutionality.
The issue with the underlying thesis here seems to be that the Cook case was one vote away from going Trump’s way.
This would suggest a conflicted, rather than monolithic, state—even in this supposedly fundamental role of backstopping the capitalist system.
What to make of the four dissenting justices, and the legions of similarly disposed jurists who might well ascend to replace one of the five in the majority?
The second Trump administration has not been kind to economic determinism.
Well, look at the Tarriffs case. Isn't it interesting that when core capitalist interests are involved it somehow always goes against Trump? the closeness seems to suggest a structural account—its the determination in the final instance.
Two cases—one decided by the leanest of possible majorities–don’t a pattern make. Consider all the deeply destabilizing actions the court has let Trump get away with, the times it has indulged his whims, and consider too that above all else instability and capriciousness are a threat to capital: indeed, investors and corporations will happily work with outright socialist and even communist governments so long as they provide some predictability.
I hear you. In capitalism, capital is king. And the bourgeois own it.
I’d thought we had addressed some of the worst of capitalism’s excesses the past 100 years, but the past 40 have been mostly re-instating the economic favoritism towards the already wealthy. We’re moving *back* towards the unfettered capitalism Marx witnessed.
I agree 100% the tortured logic of the opinions reveals these priorities. The President can’t screw up the regulation of the money supply and banking system. But he can *every* other regulatory scheme, almost all of which are essentially citizens protections against business excess put in place ever since Sinclair published The Jungle. They are seeking to roll it all back
It's much worse than that as a logical argument! There were no congressional majorities on the eve of World War I for a central bank like the First or the Second Bank of the United States or the Bank of England. The dominant progressive view was that those were fortresses of high finance banker power, and were unfit for America. Therefore a deal was struck: instead of one central bank located in the financial hub, there would be 12 regional banks to serve as "reserve banks". The directors of these banks would not be exclusively bankers and their friends, but would represent the interests of the users of banking services as well as the providers. and on top, supervising the whole system, there would be a standard progressive era independent agency with president appointed and senate confirmed governors. (The only deviation from standard progressive era practice was to offer the governors 14-year rather than four-year terms.)
This is not an institution in any sense continuous with the First and Second Banks of the United States. And the idea that the United States should have a standard central bank was fought over politically and decided decisively in the age of Andrew Jackson. The answer was "no."
Now comes the corrupt Supreme Court majority in Slaughter to say that in spite of nearly 130 years of precedent and understanding about how the Constitution works, "ooopsie! independent Progressive Era-pattern agencies are and always have been unconstitutional!" And there is nothing at all to distinguish the Federal Reserve Board from the other agencies whose independence from the momentary pleasure of the president has now been destroyed.
And John Roberts did not even try to find anything distinguishing. There is the bare assertion that the Federal Reserve is the first and second banks of the United States—which it is not. and there is the claim that institutions like the first and second bank of the United States are constitutionally hunky-dory— which was a position that was disputed and fought out in the ages of Hamilton, Madison, and Jackson, and ultimately resolved with the final answer being "no".
Now Lisa Cook is a former student of mine. Lisa Cook is very good people. Lisa Cook is highly qualified to be on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve right now. I see no credible case that Lisa Cook has committed any form of mortgage fraud. She deserves on all the equities to keep her job. And a system in which Congress has stated that executive officers should only be removed "for cause" should mean what it says.
But that does not keep Roberts' opinion here from being profoundly mendacious on pretty much every level I can think of.
> **John Ganz**: No Touch Money <https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/no-touch-money>: 'How else can one possibly reconcile the decisions handed down yesterday—Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook?... n Cook, the same court, the same justices, discover an exception! The president cannot remove a member of the Federal Reserve Board without establishing cause. What’s the difference? Well, the Fed is special...
<https://braddelong.substack.com/p/i-am-glad-lisa-cook-rightly-gets>
Thanks! Wonderful history lesson.
Meanwhile Cass Sunstein is still pretending the Seditious Six are serious legal scholars working out the implications of the Constitution and their legal theories. This type of pandering to power is the job of the elite law schools
https://substack.com/home/post/p-203589229
Nice reference to “Touchez pas au grisbi,” the great 1954 Jean Gabin movie. Direct, simple, and elegant, the film is a real contrast to today’s events.
I agree with John's conclusion, and indeed it is very commonly and openly expressed by thoughtful political conservatives, albeit in different terms. (They usually use it to limit the power of a central bank--monetary policy and nothing else.) I only want to set a bit of John's history straight.
Plenty of founders were in favor of the first BUS. George Washington signed the legislation, and I think we can fairly call him a founder. Same for many in the first Congress. Jefferson really really! really!!! hated the first BUS (his opinion on constitutionality was little short of frothing), but Madison did not.
Madison's objections were legal, and indeed, he probably thought that the First BUS was good on the merits. In a January 8, 1782 letter to Edmund Pendleton, he stated that the Bank of North America was wise on the merits, but had constitutional problems. During the Constitutional debates, he was interested in providing a limited chartering power to Congress. It ultimately went no further than the Post Office Clause. His speech to the First Congress against chartering stressed remediable issues: the wealth transfer to Northern speculators implicit in the subscription procedure of the act; an excessively long lifetime; a branching power. His draft of a veto message for Washington (Feb. 21, 1791) stressed the unfair subscription procedure, and indeed the subscription procedures were rescinded a week after passage.
Madison strongly disagreed with Hamilton on only one merits issue: a general trading company, like the South Sea Company. (The impeachment of Warren Hastings was in progress at the time.) He hated them, and raised this issue often in his speech to Congress. This was not a problem with the Bank of the United States, since its charter explicitly forbade trading. However, he and Edmund Randolph (who was the Attorney General and opined to Washington against the Bank) both shared the legal belief that the power to charter a bank was also the power to charter a trading company. In Madison's mind, it was worth sacrificing the BUS to avoid a monopolistic national trading company.
Hamilton adopted precisely this position in his first draft on the constitutionality of the bank (Feb. 23, 1791), but in the opposite direction. He liked monopolistic trading companies! , However, Hamilton was no political fool. He dropped any references to his beloved trading companies in his final report to Washington on constitutionality.
The issue with the underlying thesis here seems to be that the Cook case was one vote away from going Trump’s way.
This would suggest a conflicted, rather than monolithic, state—even in this supposedly fundamental role of backstopping the capitalist system.
What to make of the four dissenting justices, and the legions of similarly disposed jurists who might well ascend to replace one of the five in the majority?
The second Trump administration has not been kind to economic determinism.
Well, look at the Tarriffs case. Isn't it interesting that when core capitalist interests are involved it somehow always goes against Trump? the closeness seems to suggest a structural account—its the determination in the final instance.
Two cases—one decided by the leanest of possible majorities–don’t a pattern make. Consider all the deeply destabilizing actions the court has let Trump get away with, the times it has indulged his whims, and consider too that above all else instability and capriciousness are a threat to capital: indeed, investors and corporations will happily work with outright socialist and even communist governments so long as they provide some predictability.