WHY US FOREIGN POLICY SHOULD NOT BE PRIVATIZED

 
Vince Dhimos answered a question at Quora.
 
https://www.quora.com/Wouldnt-it-be-better-if-the-U-S-privatized-its-foreign-policy/answer/Vince-Dhimos
 
WOULDN’T IT BE BETTER IF THE US PRIVATIZED ITS FOREIGN POLICY?
 
Vince Dhimos, Editor-in-Chief at New Silk Strategies (2016-present)
 
Recently influencers such as think tanks close to Trump have started to call for privatization of foreign policy, based on the pretext that this would somehow curb the US appetite for war. The National Interest showed why this is wrong thinking.
 
Privatization means wresting control of a government function from the electorate (who control that function via the Congress, Senate or white House) and handing it over to an entity that generally has an interest not in the public good but only in profit for itself or its shareholders.

US foreign policy is not controlled by the American people or the American government. It is controlled largely by 2 foreign entities, who are looking out for their own interests, not for those of the US public, as I explained at Quora:
 
https://www.quora.com/Which-of-the-USAs-global-interventions-were-purely-well-motivated/answer/Vince-Dhimos
 
This is not only a gross violation of the Constitution which rightfully places the creation of foreign policy in the hands of the US government, but in practice has led the US to wage wars against countries to please foreign allied governments with the consequence of a ballooning debt and wanton loss of life, mostly among unarmed civilians in the countries invaded by the US armed forces. And also to sanctions imposed on the victims of those wars, which deprive them of food and medicines. (Instead of helping Iraqis recover after the war, the US imposed sanctions that further harmed them, causing more deaths and great famine and hardship, including loss of drinking water and other vital public services. The same cruel policies are currently being imposed on Syrians, already devastated by a war and a wave of terrorism unleashed by the West, as explained here at Quora: https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-sources-for-American-involvement-in-the-Middle-East-since-9-11-It-s-for-a-paper/answer/Vince-Dhimos).
 
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5 of the Constitution states plainly:
 
The Congress shall have Power To...coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, ....etc.
 
The unconstitutional principle of privatization was implemented in 1913 when the US Congress was persuaded by shrewd billionaire bankers to create the Federal Reserve Board (the Fed), completely controlled by the most powerful private bankers with little or no government oversight — except that Congress had to approve the appointment of the chairman, though that was a mere formality of no significance.
 
So to illustrate how this experiment in unmonitored privatization worked out, consider the Great Depression, which was brought on when the FRB (the Fed) set recklessly lenient lending policies that allowed banks to lend to individuals with little or no collateral for the purpose of investing in the stock market. The Fed showed total incompetence here. With no experience to back it up, it assumed that US stock prices would never go down. As a result, it created a stock bubble (similar to the one being created now BTW) that inevitably popped and wiped out private savings, small banks and created a worldwide depression. People lost their jobs, leading to homelessness and famine.
 
Incredibly, the incompetent and unaccountable Fed repeated its mistake in the years prior to the 2009 crisis. Instead of creating a stock bubble, this time it created a housing bubble, lending at near-zero rates to individuals with poor credit and requiring little or no down payment. Consequently, housing prices rose wildly because the easy terms of lending and the low interest rates induced them to buy at higher and higher housing prices. The Republicans blamed Carter and his CRA (Community Reinvestment Act), while the Democrats blamed Bush and his Zero Downpayment Mortgage initiative, but the Fed refused to intervene on behalf of sound banking principles. Both presidents were equally to blame for letting the Fed fill their banker cronies’ coffers with an irresponsible lending policy.
 
The crisis has never been resolved since 2009. It was only palliated with Fed initiatives to print more unbacked currency, in initiatives called quantitative easing (in three phases, QE 1, QE 2 and QE 3) and today another similar crisis is starting, both in housing and in stocks. Trump claims that the escalating stock prices are a sign of a sound economy but in fact, they are the result of a dangerous bubble that will inevitably burst and cause another recession.
 
Further, the Fed has unleashed a third money printing campaign, which it slyly claims has nothing to do with quantitative easing, in order to alleviate a liquidity in the repo (sometimes called overnight lending) market. The interim plan is to print 400 billion unbacked dollars in a first phase!
 
So, already we have privatization of a government function, and it is a catastrophe. Please, let’s not have any more, ok?