Should it be law that the fed must instantly reveal to the citizens of this country what each investor is doin

g with their money? Wouldn't a transparent economy benefit all of us? Or is it necessary for secrecy to survive democracy?

In this age of information, I can't imagine that it would be that aweful hard to computerize all transactions through the SEC.

I think it would benefit society, by removing opportunity hunting from the lower classes. They could just follow the leader?!

The very rich and profitable persons and organizations would be readily identified and could be followed by anyone or mimiced.

This would allow governments to keep tabs on terrorism too, as well as citizens.

No - there would be no value to that, and the government has no right to cross that line into violating an individual's privacy.

First, the Fed does not know what each investor is doing, so it could not reveal it.

Second, this would also reveal who has how much money, and most persons do not want the amount of money that they have revealed to everyone else.

It's not a matter of secrecy. People do have a right to privacy, and I don't want to live in a country where there is no such right.

Additionally, how would you propose implementing this? Just technically, would be next to impossible if not totally impossible. And then how would you, in your curiousity, wade through the zillions of entries on this list of transactions?

That's not the way it works. If an investor puts his/her own private funds into a private company, what business is that of the government?

Umm. Almost every person in the US is an investor. You want the government to try to report every move they all mak?

That is a really bad suggestion. Nothing to do with secrecy or transparency, just absolutely un-doable.

First, the fed doesn't have anything to do with individual investors. You may be thinking of the SEC.

Second, it's no body's business what I'm doing.

Just think about how stupid this is. Wouldn't you be required to tell me how much you make at your job? How much you have in savings? If transparency is such a good thing why don't you go first and tell all of us here and now.

Just plain wrong. The basic premise is wrong. There's nowhere to go with this question. Sorry.

First no one in the world has centralized knowledge of what investors are doing. Even the exchanges don't know, although there is some knowledge by the exchange regulators of what certain large investors are doing, such as the Bank of Japan or Warren Buffett.

A transparent economy would benefit no one. What does matter is effective enforcement of property rights.