Matt Stoller: Why Does the Dallas Fed President Want to Destroy West Coast Port Unions?

By Matt Stoller, the former Senior Policy Advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can reach him at stoller (at) gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @matthewstoller. Cross posted from New Deal 2.0

The FOMC is far more secretive than most government agencies, and after reading the transcripts of its meetings, it’s not hard to see why.

The people that really run the world are not elected, but sit on the Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve (FOMC). This is the crew of Fed insiders — mostly regional reserve bank presidents hired by banks as well as finance-friendly Fed governors appointed by the president — who set monetary policy. They are the ones who decide whether interest rates go up or down and whether to heat or cool the economy.

You can actually read the deliberations of their meetings, but only for those that took place five years ago or more. Unlike most federal agencies, their meetings are kept secret for at least five years.