All fed up.

Imagine an elected official saying, "We need more unemployment. We need lower wages. I don't want you people to make any more money." That's essentially what Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, said when he decided to raise interest rates in March.

Problem is, Greenspan is not an elected official, yet he is in charge of our economic lives. He just decided to throw more people out of their jobs, raise mortgage payments, and hike the amount we pay on our credit cards.

Greenspan wasn't exactly blunt about his intentions. Here's what he said, word for word: "The action was taken in light of persisting strength in demand, which is progressively increasing the risk of inflationary imbalances developing in the economy that would eventually undermine the long expansion."

A wordsmith he ain't. But note the term "inflationary imbalances." What does that mean? In Greenspan's language, it means that workers' wages might be going up. Perish the thought!

In testimony before Congress on March 20, Greenspan was more blunt. He said that if unemployment dipped lower than 5.3 percent, it "would heighten the risk of additional upward pressure on wage costs, and ultimately prices." There you have it.

But wages are not going up very fast right now "Wage increases overall show very few signs of breaking out of the 3 percent to 4 percent range," The Wall Street Journal noted just one week before the rate hike. "That means there isn't widespread pressure on businesses to raise prices to offset wage costs."

Greenspan worries about the economy overheating But it's barely revving its engines, crawling along at 2.4 percent growth a year.

Even Greenspan admitted that inflation currently is "quite benign," but any inflation to him is a tumor Why? Because inflation cuts into the fixed assets of the big bond-holders, threatening to erode their principal.

Plus, allowing workers to have higher wages, and establishing a fullemployment economy, would threaten the power of corporate America. Workers might demand more of a say in how things run, instead of being cowed by the nearest unemployment line.

So the Fed raised the rates.

The fact is, the Fed likes unemployment. It likes low wages. It likes "job insecurity." Listen to Business Week: "Lately, Greenspan has been saying that job insecurity is easing. This was undoubtedly a factor" in his decision to raise rates. But, notes Business Week, "job insecurity hasn't vanished. New figures show that companies are laying off even more than they were a year ago."

Companies will be sending out more pink slips now, thanks to Alan Greenspan. And job insecurity--and waves--will worsen as former welfare recipients are thrown into the work force by the millions.

But that's just the way Greenspan wants it. The Fed insists on an unemployment level of at least 5 percent. Anything below that is too beneficial to labor, too detrimental to capital.

Greenspan's actions are not idiosyncratic; they are perfectly in keeping with the actions of past Fed chairmen. He's just doing his job.

Paul Volcker was no better. The head of the Fed in the late 1970s and 1980s, Volcker engineered brutal recessions that threw millions out of work and sent thousands of farmers into bankruptcy.

In 1985, a delegation of local legislators from farm states came to Washington to plead with Volcker. "In the magnificent boardroom of the Federal Reserve," William Greider writes in his classic work, Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country, "the chairman listened to the farm representatives argue for easier money, for lower interest rates, and an end to the price deflation. His response chilled them. `Look,' Volcker said, `your constituents are unhappy; mine aren't.'"

That's the problem with the Fed. It is not a democratic institution. The Federal Reserve Board is a bankers' board. It responds not to the interests of the general public, but to the interest of the banks and bond-holders. The heads of the twelve reserve banks around the country sit on the Fed board and are elected by the banks themselves. Yes, the President nominates the chairman and the seven governors of the Fed, and the Senate approves them. But these are not like Cabinet positions, since the terms are greater than four years--an intentional effort to limit the influence of the people.

We need to democratize the Fed. One way would be to have each new President appoint the chairman and the governors for a four-year term, with the Senate approving the nominations. This way, economic policy can be a subject of democratic debate during elections, not shrouded in secrecy and euphemism. Why shouldn't citizens have the right to decide whether we'll have a full-employment economy or one with a lot of job insecurity and low wages?

Many Western countries have central banks that function much more democratically than ours. "The American arrangement," writes Greider, is "quite different from those of the central banks in most other industrial nations.... The crucial difference [is] that other central banks, even the prototypical Bank of England, were democratized in a way the Fed was not. They all operated on the same basic principles of finance, but other central bankers took their orders directly from elected officials."

Democratizing the election of Fed officials will not solve the problem entirely, however, as Doug Henwood of Left Business Observer has pointed out. He notes that unless we can control capital flows, investors have the power to hold our economy hostage. Walter Wriston, the former head of Citicorp, once bragged that currency traders at 200,000 computer terminals around the world could undermine the monetary policy of any liberal or left-leaning government simply by moving funds out of that nation's currency.

To answer that threat of blackmail, our government would need to get serious about controlling capital.

Progressive economists have suggested imposing taxes on currency and bond transactions, granting favorable treatment to banks that invest in local community jobs and housing, and giving more say to workers over their pension-fund investments. Unfortunately, we are far from imposing such controls on capital in today's political climate.

But we need to start raising the issue of a democratically controlled economy right now. Alan Greenspan has just provided us with an opportunity.

Goodbye, Nation of Immigrants

On April 1 a new law designed to stem immigration went into effect.

The Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act disproportionately targets poor and working-class immigrants. Starting in May, anyone sponsoring a relative must prove an ability to support that person at 125 percent of the poverty level. This is $22,000 for a family of four.

The new rule will enforce the separation of poor families. The immigration service has already found that half the Mexicans and Salvadorans currently residing in the United States would be unable to sponsor close family members under this new law. This also holds true for one out of every three Koreans and Dominicans, one out of every four Jamaicans and Chinese, and one out of every five Filipinos, Vietnamese, and Indians now in the United States.

The act grants disturbing new powers to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which has a history of abusing the immigrants it is supposed to supervise. Individual INS officials now have the power to decide if an immigrant asking for asylum can cross the border or not. Unless INS officers believe their stories, refugees can now be deported immediately. Under earlier law, all immigrants who requested asylum automatically gained the right to a hearing before an immigration judge.

And legal immigrants are not safe. They can be deported if convicted of any of a long list of crimes, including shoplifting.

But that's not the worst of it. This act also effectively protects the INS from court oversight. "The biggest effect of this law on immigrants is the way it virtually strips the courts of jurisdiction over the Immigration and Naturalization Service when it acts in an illegal and unconstitutional way," says Gregory Nojeim, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "We are fighting in court to ensure that the INS, like other federal agencies, is not put above the law. It's particularly important in the area of immigration, where deportation can result in splitting up families, ending careers, and--in the case of asylum-seekers--persecution and even death."

The law also infringes on the rights of American citizens. It authorizes pilot projects in five of the seven largest states to test what it calls "verification of employment eligibility," a way of determining whether or not a new employee is a legal resident of the United States.

"The law represents a giant leap toward moving the nation toward a national I.D. system," says Nojeim. "For the system to work, the government has to maintain electronic files on everyone in the country, including citizens."

"Your papers, please" is the new national motto.

No Aid for Bibi 

Benjamin Netanyahu's government does not deserve U.S. support. He has ripped up the peace process, perhaps beyond repair. His favorite tactic is provocation; his favorite response is to blame Yasir Arafat.

When Netanyahu decided to go ahead with the construction of 6,500 new Jewish homes around East Jerusalem, he knew he was playing with fire. He knew that Palestinians would consider it a betrayal of the Oslo Accords, which stipulated that the fate of Jerusalem would be discussed between the parties. He didn't care. He wanted to create a fact on the ground that would make it impossible for the Palestinians to take hold of Jerusalem.

Then when Palestinians protested, he said that Arafat wasn't doing enough to repress his own people. This is a lot to ask. Some Palestinians responded with violence, which is deplorable. But Netanyahu is doing little himself to ease the tension.

Netanyahu has not been negotiating in good faith. He has barely been negotiating at all.

How has the Clinton Administration responded? It has vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning Israel's settlement drive. While all our allies recognize Israel's responsibility for the violence, the United States apologizes for Netanyahu.

The U.S. government spends $3 billion a year on aid to Israel. We have been subsidizing aggression after aggression, provocation after provocation. Enough already!