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Alan Grayson Discusses His Expectations From The Upcoming One-Time Fed Audit
Dan Rather chats with Alan "Taz" Grayson in the enclosed clip, over the opportunities that America may glean as part of the historic one-time only audit of the Federal Reserve, which passed in a watered down vote as part of the FinReg. The exact conditions and the applicable disclosure are still rather murky, although we will take the congressman's word that the information obtained will be material. As Rather says: "soon auditors and accountants will comb through he Fed's book, looking at all the lending the Fed engaged in, starting in 2007 and ending in July 2010, a one-time only peek behind the curtain of the secretive institution." Grayson elaborates: "I expect to learn exactly who got what. We have nothing but single line descriptions of hundreds of billions of dollars that have been disseminated by the Fed. We don't even know who got that money. We don't know the terms of that money. We don't know what the Fed got in return. And in particular we don't know why the Fed keeps insisting that none of these deals were deals that exposed it to the risk of loss." Alas, we are convinced that since the Fed did in fact allow politicians to vote unanimously on the one-time deal, that, just like Goldman, it had found a loophole to proper, correct disclosure far in advance: the truth of what happens behind the Marriner Eccles walls will not be disclosed until well after the reset button has been pushed. Importantly, as Alan points out, occasionally the people in this country can make a difference by calling their congressmen and making it clear just what is important to the broader population, and oddly enough transparency at the money printer, especially when the only thing that can keep the economy solvent is printing ever more money (and issuing more debt, but the two are synonymous, just ask the primary dealers).
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Can they audit the Fed's "equity" book as well?
Create money, Buy mortgage, Buy stocks, Devalue dollar, Monetize Treasury debt. They will do anything as prop up the stock and housing market.
When will the crimes end?
I hear that the Supremes upheld Sarbanes Oxley back in June.
"Almost immediately upon its passage, the FED issued a Supervisory Letter (SR 02-20) outlining the basic provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley and confirming the Act's applicability to banks and bank holding companies that are public companies. Of particular emphasis to banks, the FED pointed out Section 301's requirement that each bank subject to the Act have an audit committee comprised of entirely independent directors whose duties are to oversee responsibility for the appointment and compensation of the bank's outside auditors. The audit committee's responsibilities include establishing and overseeing methods and controls for receiving and addressing any complaints about the bank's accounting, internal accounting controls or auditing matters."
Liberal appilcation would be entertaining...
total joke
Simple question - who controls US gold
The Treasury or FED.
Is it a ambiguous answer which means Europeans and Arabs have US gold in personal possession while the Germans states Gold still resides under Manhattan?
And anyway how can anybody make a rational investment decision in a capitalistic system where the location and quantity of the core capital is a enigma wrapped up in a riddle.
A simple answer would be nice but I would appreciate anything that could throw light on this murky area of our zany capital markets.
Treasury controls it and has it on the books at like 42 dollars an ounce. The fed had it on their books as well but that turned out to be a big no no. I found an interesting law about this like 2 years back but can't find it again. It explains the way it's supposed to be but no the way it actualy is.
There must have been a tremendous drain on US gold given the strength of the Euro for most of the decade yet it is not showing up on sovereign states books.
Did European citizens dramatically reduce the amount of Gold in US personnel possession given the currency dynamics over the noughties?
(I believe that one of the Euro entry stipulations was that member countrys could not have a excise tax for imported gold)
If so would this explain the FEDs reluctance to bid up the price of Gold and reduce its liabilities - why would it buy all that junk in exchange for treasuries ?
Is it directly criminal or is it trying to protect the NY FED from criminal action ?
That sounds interesting, can you paste some links on the subject of excise taxes for imported gold and more on why the fed wouldn't want to bid up the priceo of Gold?
Well DarkMath my country had to conform with these rules on entry and so I presume this was universal in the Euro area.
The reason why the FED may not want to bid up the price of Gold is simple - they may not have the gold they say they have and also the amount of gold within US jurisdiction may be a lot more limited then people imagine given the happy clappy time of the 90s and the debasement of the dollar in the noughties and therefore the limited potential to buy large amounts of bullion over the last decade.
These two factors could severely limit the value of a dollar which is backed by gold.
I suspect this could have been the primary reason for Greenspan's low interest rate policey.
But it is I am afraid mainly conjecture.
I do not know if this sheds any light on the matter, but each Saturday Barrons magazine (newspaper) shows Federal Reserve statistics near the back of its Market Week section.
It lists gold stock on page M53 at $11,041 million ($11 bn, at $42 / oz), which I believe correlates with the amounts I have seen elsewhere. The same data can probably be found by digging around:
barrons.com/data
Ya you don't go from 1.5 to 1 euro/dollar to 1.3 to 1 euro dollar without moving a bunch of gold back into europe. That's the problem right there with this western centric system and exacly what happened during the great depression. There's NOT ENOUGH GOLD TO SUPPORT BOTH A EUROPEAN PONZI SCHEM AND AN AMERICAN PONZI SCHEME. America is considered the colony and it was when europe started repossessing gold starting with france that caused problems for america. That's why they flooded germany with money. He was originally supposed to just stick europe as the plan was for the "independant" US to become reserve currency.
That's where we are now. As bad as the london bullon market exchnage is right now it's relatively flooded with gold and that crisis has been averted. Now it's time for the lull before the storm at which point the american state crisis will hit and it'll be too much ponzi for too many participants. Then it will get real ugly. Not just sort of ugly. The hour past ugly. The ugly that makes you throw up just because the smell of the vomit is a nice distraction. There won't be enough liquid saleable gold and it'll all crash.
I am not talking about the London metal exchange - I know next to nothing about what goes on there.
I do know however how the average German thinks and I suspect that a lot of these respectable middle class Germans have 100oz or so and maybe wants even more.
Remember the median income and wealth in Europe is much higher then in America and we hold a lot more liquid assets that can be converted to bullion easily.
In America it now seems to be just a rich mans game to involve himself with the yellow metal.
Neither the Fed nor the Treasury...the Rothschilds have it...and Fort Knox is little more than a well guarded 'Air Vault'. A misdirection from the Rothschild family of Magicians.
How'd the Rothschilds get it???? Simple, it's called the Derivatives Market; pure smoke and mirrors designed to leech real value, physical wealth, and replace it with Fiat wealth, nothing more!
Possession is 9/10ths of the law...it's all gone!
Then again if that is true and you had a hyperinflationary collapse in America , followed by a radicalised tea party like military rule - America could be a very dangerous wounded beast that would want some satisfaction.
London no longer has sufficient military protection.
Yo DORK--
tea party ain't nothin' like that. Figure it out. Hint-you won't if you are listening to MSM.
- Ned
It's always a nice trick to get in front of the train and steer into a derail. But sometimes it doesn't work.
In a society that enters breakdown mode things get mixed up and abused - shit we are not in full collapse mode yet and large numbers of those tea party guys will take a good dose of propaganda and accept that as fact.
Besides while I like some of the libertarian elements within this movement it cannot be successful without the use of the state via a strongman or group of men - you may not like it and I may not like it but it is just the way of the world.
The best thing you can hope for is a De Gaulle like figure that will step down when the time is right and not the other sort that will take a country to the edge of oblivion and beyond.
In the interests of disclosure I am a Republican Statist who believes in a strong but limited state rather then the now more usual weak but all encompassing state.
This Gaullists view is sadly seen now as a form of socialism within the US - because of the bankers mind bending of the republican party since the days of Reagan and the John Birch thingy.
Dork-good answer, thanks. My point is that the Tea Party is an almost leaderless movement. And yes, the Lott-like idiots will try to co-opt it. But it is loose, non-violent, non-almost anything except for pro Constitution, pro-reduce government, and pro-reduce (useless) spending. Most have no explicit knowledge of "liquidity trap" but they know in their hearts.
La Grande Charles avec La Grande Nez? I'd hope we could do better. But, then again, our best may be none too good.
- Ned
i'd be willing to bet a silver buffalo that a material portion of the germans' gold is no longer residing under the bedrock on the isle of manhat and is now back in german custody.
...say about late summer last year...
Well they did not have the balls to send over a frigate to collect - say what you like about the French but when they get pissed off they really get pissed off.
But maybe you are right - perhaps a few dozen extra lufthansa cargo planes took special delivery of the yellow stuff at JFK
These Boneheads wouldn't even know how to interpret the results of a Fed audit.
I'd like Rep Grayson a whole lot more if he wasn't consistently wrong on just about every other issue. He also comes across as quite an arrogant asshole.
He's no Ron Paul.
Matt Taibbi on Alan Grayson: (a very funny read...)
I have personal experience with… well, let’s call it the unique personality of Alan Grayson. In his capacity as an attorney he once basically threatened to have me dismembered and have my body parts dumped in a tin canister and fired into the center of a burning supernova. And that’s actually underselling the real language he used. We were having a disagreement about the use of information given to me by a certain source in a story about military contracting, and in the middle of what had been a normal contentious argument between two sane adults, dude suddenly assumed this crazy monster-voice and just went medieval on me. He was roaring into the telephone about how he was going to crush me, how I was going to wish I had never messed with him, how I didn’t know who the hell I was dealing with, and so on. One phrase I remember in particular was, “I am going to strip the bark off of you!” It came totally out of the blue and it was like being on the telephone with a metamorphosing werewolf — the whole performance genuinely freaked me out. I may even have peed a little, I can’t remember.
When I heard Alan Grayson was running for Congress, I remember thinking to myself, That Alan Grayson? The lunatic? It can’t be, I thought. I kept imagining trails of half-eaten sheep leading to his campaign appearances. But it turned out to be true. And when I checked, his platform turned out to be quite sane and even kind of interesting. Then he got elected and I suddenly started seeing his name attached to all of these calls for transparency, various crusades for FinReg reforms, etc.
And now every time I see Alan Grayson, he’s tearing some freaked-out bureaucrat a new asshole in the middle of some empty conference room in the Capitol somewhere. I see the looks on the faces of these poor souls and I know exactly what they’re going through. Which is just hilarious, frankly. Especially since these people all tend to deserve it, like this nebbishy little creep Alvarez quite obviously does.
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/09/25/have-the-federal-reserve-or-prime-brokers-ever-tried-to-manipulate-the-stock-market/
LOL. That Matt really knows how to turn a phrase or two.
indeed. but not as good as antoine dodson.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEvNS5TzvwM
He is one Democrat that should stay simply because he is willing to speak truth to power. Freshman Reps are usually told to keep their mouths shut the first 2 years. I 've seen his relentless drilling/cross-examining of Fed officials to government officials. I would hate to be a hostile witness with him asking questions.
Unlike most congress people he has a practical and high level academic knowledge of finance and the economy.
So you don't like his stand ups for the middle class? The middle class doesn't have many voices with balls in DC that aren't corrupt. He financed his first campaign since he wasn't the choice of the Washington elite and he won. He is one of about one.
He is one person in 435 who in two years has probably been one of the more successful representatives. You can't believe how hard it is to get a bill passed even for experienced legislators. The best you usually get from Freshman are road sign changes. He was smart enough to team up with Ron Paul. If either of them had tried it on their own, it never would have passed. Ron Paul is putting up with his stands that we all know are diametrically opposed to Ron Paul’s. Ron Paul also knows Grayson is second to no one in terms of his ability to take complicated issues and make experts look like they got hit by a truck. Like most good attorneys, he prepares for these things. His staff doesn’t put a speech in front of him that he doesn’t understand like most congress people.
He managed to pull enough Dems away from Barney Frank to get this bill passed even though it was watered down by the Senate who the banking industry owns.
He made his fortune finding govt corruption in contract awards. Talk about a difficult and mind bending process. The sheer amount of layers to that onion scare the hell out of most attorneys. He made quite a living peeling big onions.
You may not like his stand on issues or maybe because he belongs to the wrong party, but in my mind he is doing what representatives should do. He is educating himself on top of the education he already has . He's from a conservative district where 13 Republicans got in the primary to face him. Despite my anger last night at the democraps, I’d like to see him stay on.
I also believe some of his stands on issues are simple pandering since he really doesn’t sit on many committees that oversee those issues. He does it so he can raise money without being a bitch for corporations. He 's a good showman. He needs to be because the establishment isn't going to help him.
He may survive, he may not, but he isn't leaving anything on the table.
He is picture of one hard working smart son-of-a-bitch. The arrogance is more of an act. He knows he wasn't the choice of the elites and probably still isn't. Arrogance in the face of spinelessness tends to quell opponents in his own party.
You don't see that much in DC.. Take a good look. You might not see it again.
Spot on! I would take Grayson over Obama any day as president! At least we would know where he stands...Grayson for President 2012!!!
bread and circuses. nothing more nothing less.
What I'd really like to know is whether this audit would reveal the Fed's direct involvement in the equity markets, e.g by purchasing equity index futures.
I don't think you'll ever see direct involvement, but I'm sure you'll see plenty of cash disbursed to the TBTF banks to buy equities (read: JP Morgan, GS, etc.)
I'll go out on a limb here and say nothing will be revealed that upsets congress or voters enough to change how the Fed is run.
There'll always be plausible deniability. It'll be funnelled through the member banks into the market via the repo process.
It's hard to find a funding increase that Grayson doesn't support, unless it violates his dearly held leftist beliefs. Why is he relevant?
He deserves some credit for his steadfast efforts toward Fed. transparency. However, his motives are suspect. I offer (and have offered previously) the following theories:
The always willing to fund Grayson is irritated that anyone could possibly have funds not controlled by the House of Representatives.
After one of Bernanke's appearences on the Hill, as part of a Congressional initiation ceremony, Grayson was forced to toss Ben's salad without the benefit of scented, flavored oils.
Looks like a bunch of unemployed accountants and auditors just got some contract work for the GAO, good for them, your stimulus U$D at work.
As to the futility of the exercise...o bother!
I love the smell of a Dog and Pony show in the morning. That smell, That shitty smell, The whole hill . Smells like.........Shit
oh and they sure stressed those EuroZone banks....didn't they?
I liked his speech about the Fed owning the Red Roof Inn. Hilarious, but his speech about Republicans wanting the uninsured to die was disgraceful.
Yes he should have stated that Fem Dems want the uninsured to die, too, but "insured".
"[T]he truth of what happens behind the Marriner Eccles walls will not be disclosed until well after the reset button has been pushed. "
Classic post TD.
And here someone that knows a thing or two, Paul Craig Roberts, the former Treasuie Secretary Assistant, and creator of Reaganomics in its raw form, on Jones last friday, as he outlines what sounds like his version of The Long Emergency.
http://www.youtube.com/user/fairinfowar#p/c/7082038AF71D2041/9/F-Odvm-8-oQ
Here is the article.
The Year America Dissolved:http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts07262010.html
And just because...
Doctor Robert:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCpGy3pwkKM
Good stuff Lennon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaBaBDJuYsw&feature=related
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WTF, taxes???
Which set of books are being audited?
You don't mean to say there is more than one set of books, do you? There is only one set of course: the one they've been fabricating ever since the law was passed to audit them. Even though they know they won't have to withstand much scrutiny, they're outdoing themselves since "cooking the books" has proven more popular at Bernanke dinner parties than Pictionary.
Audited "through July 2010", and on the first trading day of August ...
Jed, are you suggesting that the FED also understands window dressing?
Say it ain't so!
- Ned
Ned- The fed, the administration, it's so hard to tell the difference. And on our last exchange; HFT, from it's namesake, would seem to indicate Fourier analysis could be useful - FFT and particularly the phase (relative to inputs... ;-)
Small businesses whining louder than ever. But since none of 'em are in the spooz . . . . BULLISH:
http://www.businessinsider.com/wells-fargo-gallup-small-business-index-2...
I like this comment from the peanut gallery there:
@kryptic:
Yeah. You know you're in trouble when instead of getting cash-advance checks in the mail, VISA sends you a coupon book for credit counseling centers.Anyway, here are my . . .
Top 10 Delusional Reasons for Owning a Small Business
10) I run a small business so I can go the the beach any time I like.
9) It lets me avoid the wife by working weekends.
8) Why take a vacation when I'm making this much money?
7) One day, kids, all THIS will be yours!
6) As a business owner I've got the best boss in the world. A pity I can't sue the bastard.
5) I make all my money under the table -- at least since I fired the guy who used to sweep up nights.
4) I love my job so much I'd do it for free. Hell, come to think of it, I am doing it for free!
3) Our customer service might not be great, but neither are our customers, so screw 'em. They're not coming back anyway!
2) I'm unemployable.
and the NUMBER ONE STUPID JUSTIFICATION . . .
1) Sure, the money ain't much . . . but I haven't personally had to buy a roll of toilet paper, a box of paper clips or a Sharpie marker in 7 years!
If you only do one audit then how do you know their telling you the truth? They've been lying for years about everything including gold manipulation. You can bet the books the auditor see's will look like the eurozone audit of the banks, worthless lyes
I bet the path of funny money to bid for treasuries could be devious, this means you can only know who are the "primary agents"...
Better audit the Fort Knox and all ETF vaults and do testing on the gold bars.
Hey Dan get us a copy of those books at Kinko's!
Don't hold your breath. From H.R. 4173
‘‘(f) AUDIT AND REPORT OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE
SYSTEM.—
‘‘(1) IN GENERAL.—An audit of the Board of
Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the
Federal reserve banks under subsection (b) shall be
completed within 12 months of the enactment of the
Financial Stability Improvement Act of 2009.
‘‘(2) REPORT.—
‘‘(A) REQUIRED.—A report on the audit
referred to in paragraph (1) shall be submitted
by the Comptroller General to the Congress
before the end of the 90-day period beginning on
the date on which such audit is completed and
made available to—
etc.
Does this mean that the "results" of the "audit" will be "fake, but accurate?" With Rather involved, we know that the fix is in.
- Ned
Dan Rather, now that's a real truth seeking reporter! hehee
bad $ flushes out good $..isnt that right...
support America! stay at the Red Roof Inn on your next vacation! hurry up before gas goes through the Roof!
Will there be a seperate audit for Lead and Gold Paint and Rust.
tungsten
I smell limited hangout.
If they were really serious, Geraldo would be in charge
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oleUvvjeOh4&feature=related
trickey dick had a way, didn't he
Love to ask Paul the Octopus wether the Gold is really there............
I wouldn't trust Grayson at all. He's a real kook.
OK, so we audit it and figure out it's chock full of bullshit and conducted an incredible amount of transactions outside the parameters of its charter... then we.... it's like a dog chasing a car... what happens when he catches it? The worst part about it... we'll be lead to believe it wasn't designed to be collapsed all along... he'll get a pat on the back... we'll feel happy... and continue withering away in the doldrums of the wealth gap.
I have not seen anyone ask WHEN this will take place. "soon" is not good enough. I want to know when. I would also like to know why no mainstream media is covering this? That last question is rhetorical.