Professor at University of North Texas: Talk about Fed is "conspiracy theory"

[Brent H]

My e-mail to the university professor

To: scobb @ unt.edu
Subject: Defective curriculum in the MBA program

Dr. Cobb:

I received my MBA in 1997 with a specialty in BCIS, and received a defective economics course from Dr. Lew Abernathy. Everything in all of the courses made sense, except the chapter in the economics course that covered the operations of the Federal Reserve. I went over that chapter multiple times but finally gave up on trying to understand it. My conclusion was that the people who ran the Federal Reserve were geniuses, and that mere mortals simply couldn't understand such mystical things as expansion and contraction of the money supply.

Then, last year I read Murray Rothbard's "Case Against the Fed" ( http://mises.org/books/fed.pdf ) and G. Edward Griffin's "The Creature from Jekyll Island" ( http://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/0912986212 ) No wonder the text book in Dr. Abernathy's course didn't make any sense -- it didn't tell the full and complete truth about how banking works. Instead it presented a false reality and covered up for the parasites that create money out of thin air.

I hope that in the future you will reorient the economics department to teaching students about how banking, finance, and economics really work.

Sincerely,
Brent H

His response:

Thanks for your input. I believe that we will stick to the academic approach and avoid teaching conspiracy theory.

Steve Cobb
Steven L. Cobb, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Chair
University of North Texas
Economics Department
1155 Union Circle #311457
Denton, TX 76203-5017
Phone: (940) 565-2184
Fax: (940) 565-4426

 

[Mahkato]

I think it's bad form to post email addresses and other contact info on a public forum.

 

[Brent H]

I think it's bad form to post email addresses and other contact info on a public forum.

I think its bad form for a professor to provide Keynsian drivel to a student and call it an "academic education".

 

[Andrew-Austin]

Send him Murray Rothbard's essay called something like "The Conspiracy Theory of History Revisited", and ask him if he thinks conspiracies are possible.

If his answer is somehow a no, tell him that you don't think his students are being shown the academic approach, when their professor prefers to stick his head in the sand and ignore opposing views on economics.

 

[lemnad]

I think it's bad form to post email addresses and other contact info on a public forum.

It's all info that is posted on the schools public website. Anyone can access it

 

[Mahkato]

If his answer is somehow a no, tell him that you don't think his students are being shown the academic approach, when their professor prefers to stick his head in the sand and ignore opposing views on economics.

Except don't say "stick his head in the sand" as that's going to shut down the discussion instantly and accomplish nothing.

 

[malkusm]

Except don't say "stick his head in the sand" as that's going to shut down the discussion instantly and accomplish nothing.

It seems from his short, bitter reply that he doesn't intend to continue the discussion anyway.

 

[Dr.3D]

It seems from his short, bitter reply that he doesn't intend to continue the discussion anyway.

That's my take on it too.

 

[hugolp]

It seems from his short, bitter reply that he doesn't intend to continue the discussion anyway.

Why do some economist react like that? You would think they would like to discover why their formulas are failing. But no, they completely close down and dont try anything else.

 

[sparebulb]

What should one expect when the former head of the economics department was none other than Dick Armey. Yes, that d(D)ick.

 

[ArchPaul]

Why do some economist react like that? You would think they would like to discover why their formulas are failing. But no, they completely close down and dont try anything else.

Because they would have to think, and defend thier position with logic and sound reasoning. They don't teach that anymore. It's all lollipops and unicorn farts now.
So they just dismiss it as conspiracy because it's the easy way out.

 

[Brent H]

My followup response

Dr. Cobb:

There is a bill H.R. 1207 to audit the Federal Reserve. It currently has over 220 sponsors in the U.S. House: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-1207 If this attempt to audit the Federal Reserve is successful, the Federal Reserve will be toast.

If you call the manufacture of money out of thin air and charging interest on it "conspircy", then the people who run the Federal Reserve are engaged in "conspiracy theory", because this is how they describe the creation of money in their own documents. You must not have read their own documents that they publish on their own web site.

You may very well end up on the wrong side of history.

Sincerely,
Brent H

 

[torchbearer]

my followup response

ftw.

 

[dannno]

I would have said:


So you choose to omit real information about our banking and financial system in order to avoid teaching conspiracy theory? Have you ever thought about why that is necessary?




But that was a pretty good response.

 

[Danke]

"If you call the manufacture of money out of thin air and charging interest on it "conspircy"


I would have avoided putting it that way. I'd bet he will come back with a response to that. You are not speaking the same language at this point.

 

[tonesforjonesbones]

I am glad you are sending rebuttals...tones

 

[jon_perez]

When you use phrases like "... received a defective economics course from Dr. Lew Abernathy", the flippancy in the reply is not unexpected either.

 

[emazur]

I read Rothbard's "The Case Against the Fed" I don't recall it being conspiratorial at all. In any case, I'm going to copy/paste a reply I just made on digg that shows, with the government's own words and documents, that the Federal Reserve is a conspiracy fact:

Q: Is the Fed really a private corporation?
A: Yes - "The Federal Reserve Banks are privately owned, locally controlled corporations"
-Lewis vs. U.S., 680 F2d 1239, 1241 (1982)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8518

Q: Is the Fed really a banking cartel that manipulates interest rates to their advantage?
A: Yes, head of the House Banking Committee, Wright Patman, launched an investigation and wrote:
11. Do private bank interests influence Federal Reserve policy?
Yes. Of the 12 members of the Open Market Committee—the Committee which actually controls credit policy—5 are presidents of regional banks. These presidents are elected by the individual regional banks’ nine-man board of directors with its preponderance of private commercial bank representatives. Further, all 12 of the regional bank presidents participate in the Open Market Committee’s discussions, though only 5 can vote. The ‘discussion’ Open Market Committee, then, has 19 members—12 regional bank presidents and the 7 members of the Federal Reserve Board
http://dewoody.net/money/

Former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer researched the composition of the Federal Reserve Board and found:
So who selected Geithner back in 2003? Well, the Fed board created a select committee to pick the CEO. This committee included none other than Hank Greenberg, then the chairman of AIG; John Whitehead, a former chairman of Goldman Sachs; Walter Shipley, a former chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, now JPMorgan Chase; and Pete Peterson, a former chairman of Lehman Bros. It was not a group of typical depositors worried about the security of their savings accounts but rather one whose interest was in preserving a capital structure and way of doing business that cried out for—but did not receive—harsh examination from the N.Y. Fed.

The composition of the New York Fed's board, which supervises the organization and current Chairman Friedman, is equally troubling. The board consists of nine individuals, three chosen by the N.Y. Fed member banks as their own representatives, three chosen by the member banks to represent the public, and three chosen by the national Fed Board of Governors to represent the public. In theory this sounds great: Six board members are "public" representatives.

So whom have the banks chosen to be the public representatives on the board during the past decade, as the crisis developed and unfolded? Dick Fuld, the former chairman of Lehman; Jeff Immelt, the chairman of GE; Gene McGrath, the chairman of Con Edison; Ronay Menschel, the chairwoman of Phipps Houses and also, not insignificantly, the wife of Richard Menschel, a former senior partner at Goldman. Whom did the Board of Governors choose as its public representatives? Steve Friedman, the former chairman of Goldman; Pete Peterson; Jerry Speyer, CEO of real estate giant Tishman Speyer; and Jerry Levin, the former chairman of Time Warner. These were the people who were supposedly representing our interests!
http://www.slate.com/id/2217811/

I'll have to take issue with your point about the Fed being independent and uncontrolled by the federal government.
http://www.fpf-direct.com/article.php?id=147

Obama is part of the problem:
YouTube - PROOF Obama is Wall Street's Lap Dog

Nominally, the Fed is an independent group of private bankers that controls the nation's money supply (which is bad enough), but the President assigns the Fed head and Congress confirms him/her. Members of Congress and/or the President can and do pressure the Fed to alter their economic decisions for political reasons - check out this 3 part interview with the author of "Bubble Man":
YouTube - Greenspan's stock and real estate bubbles (2006 intrvw.) 1/3
YouTube - Greenspan's stock and real estate bubbles (2006 intrvw.) 2/3
YouTube - Greenspan's stock and real estate bubbles (2006 intrvw.) 3/3
It's also hard to believe that nobody in Congress would try to influence the Fed's decisions, since many stood to benefit from the Fed bailout of the banks:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy.../06/10/AR2009061002565.html?wpisrc=newsletter

The bankers "own" the Congress, and Congress "owns" the bankers:
http://digg.com/politics/Top_Senate_Democrat_Bankers_Own_the_U_S_Congress#
http://www.prisonplanet.com/banks-run-congress-top-democrat-says.html

I'm also getting sick of people denying the Federal Reserve Act was created by the world's richest bankers on the private Jekyll Island in 1910, because this information can be found on the Fed's website. Why would the world's richest bankers gather to write a bill if they were not going to benefit from it?
http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/pub_display.cfm?id=3815

"The Jekyll Island Expedition"
"One evening in early November 1910, Warburg and a small party of men from New York quietly boarded Sen. Aldrich's private railway car, ostensibly for a trip south to an exclusive hunting club on an island off the coast of Georgia.
In addition to Warburg and Aldrich, the others, all highly regarded in the New York banking community, were: Frank Vanderlip, president of National City Bank; Harry P. Davison, a J.P. Morgan partner; Benjamin Strong, vice president of Banker's Trust Co.; and A. Piatt Andrew, former secretary of the National Monetary Commission and now assistant secretary of the Treasury. The real purpose of this historic "duck hunt" was to formulate a plan for US banking and currency reform that Aldrich could present to Congress."

 

[Gideon]

Who finances economics theorists & professors anyway?

I actually got a "B" in macro-economics because I questioned the same processes.


Second to the Apocalyptic Books of the Bible, The Creature From Jekyll Island is the most important book of our time.

 

[brandon]

lol, nice letters Brent!