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Fed Audit Deal Reached In Senate
A deal was struck in the Senate today regarding an audit of the
Federal Reserve.
Senator Dodd worked out a compromise with
Senator Sanders, and Dodd will now become a co-sponsor of the bill.
The White House has also apparently signed off on the legislation.
The bill would:
Require
the non-partisan General Accountability Office to conduct an
independent audit of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve
System that does not interfere with monetary policy, to let the American
people know the names of the recipients of over $2,000,000,000,000 in
taxpayer assistance from the Federal Reserve System, and for other
purposes.
And the bill provides:
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Board of
Governors
shall publish on its website, not later than December 1, 2010, with
respect to all loans and other financial assistance it has provided
during the period beginning on December 1, 2007 and ending on the date
of enactment of this Act under the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money
Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility, the Term Asset-Backed Securities
Loan Facility, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, the Commercial Paper
Funding Facility, the Term Securities Lending Facility, the Term Auction
Facility, Maiden Lane, Maiden Lane II, Maiden Lane III, the agency
Mortgage-Backed Securities program, foreign currency liquidity swap
lines, and any other program created as a result of the third
undesignated paragraph of section 13 of the Federal Reserve Act.
A
Sanders aide said the bill would now include a “one-time” audit of the
steps taken since 2007 to provide emergency lending to banks and other
institutions. The Fed is required to post on its website by Dec. 1,
2010 the names of institutions that received aid from its emergency
programs.A summary of the amendment said it preserves statutory
protections for Fed monetary policy. The Government Accountability
Office (GAO) would also be required to audit the Fed’s governance
structure.***
An aide to Sanders described the changes as
“minor” but a senior GOP aide said Sanders had “gutted” his amendment
to placate senior Obama administration officials.
Ron Paul - the original sponsor of the efforts to audit the Fed - writes:
Bernie Sanders has sold out and sided with Chris Dodd
to gut Audit the Fed in the Senate. His “compromise” is what the
Administration and banking interests want: they’ll allow the TARP and
TALF to be audited, but no transparency of the FOMC, discount window
operations or agreement with foreign central banks. We need to take
action and stop this!
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What I do not understand is:
Ron Paul's Bill, which had majority support, has been languishing for months on the floor and they choose a crazy and hectic day like today to push this crap through./sarc
This whole thing seems staged.
Watching your goverment continuously screw you over makes me feel really lucky I'm not an American.
an 'audit of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System that does not interfere with monetary policy'?
So basically Obama killed the bill.
Guess we better get used to that yoke on our backs for another 30 years. 'Shall I top up your glass, Mr. Morgan? Another stuffed mushroom Mr. Blankfein?'
Correction: Basically, Bernanke and Obama's other puppetmasters killed the bill.
But I'm sure Obama was allowed some small input --- as if his pro-status-quo sentiments were not going to be obvious from the beginning.
"Change we can believe in!" Too bad our Kenyan-Indonesian president doesn't believe in it himself!
Hey Zerohead, Carl Sagan used to talk about "billions and billions" of stars and I thought that was an awful lot of stars. No more. Let's see. There are about 2 billion stars in our galaxy and 3 billion stars in the Andromeda galaxy—chump change to the Fed. . Two trillion is enough to make up1000 galaxies.
Hopefully we will see some hard analysis of what was lost by the compromise, and what good could possibly be derived from the bill in its present form. I still think they should end the fed after breaking up the big banks.
Yes, let's oppose this amendment and hold out for another few years while Ron Paul campaigns to become President and fails because his own party hates him... fuck that. I'd rather have some transparency right now and let the American people get a taste of what has been going on behind closed doors. If they have any sense left, they will be outraged and demand to see more or maybe even abolish the Fed. Now let's stop whining and bitching and get something done!
Not the most popular view, but stop funding them. I paid off my debt, quit my job and sat at the pool all day today. I'm not rich, but I am not funding these assholes anymore. I don't have kids so it is easy for me, but this is my form of protest.
It is hard not to consume but you can try. I want an IPad, but i'm not getting it. I may start a 12 step program!
Not the most popular view, but stop funding them. I paid off my debt, quit my job and sat at the pool all day today.
Oh, AMEN. I am so envious. This has been my dream for the last 3 years. Now I am honestly beginning to look at it. I just can't as a Christian stand before God on that judgment day and answer for all the dead people that my money is paying to kill. I just can't. What am I going to say..... OH, sorry God, everyone else was doing it and I didn't kill anyone "directly".... doesn't that count?
I just don't think so. I'm with you in about 20 more months.
The other thing that came to my mind was about working within a church and then donating all my money to the church in exchange for a staff position where i provide care to the congregation. If all of the money I make from my job is donated to the church it is all tax free , right? I don't know, any other suggestions?"
We are dealing with sociopaths (politicians/banksters). They don't play by the same rules that the rest of us do. They do not care at all about anything other than amassing more power and money. They use people, they do not even understand what it means to care--unless it is about power and money. This is a new paradigm for many people to understand.
Dec 1 st , 2010. That how much time the Fed needed to shred and destroy all traces of its illegal activities. Look for a sudden surge in sales of Sharpie black permanent markers.
It appears that the Fed crashed the market today to provide just a taste of what they would do if the Paul/Grayson language passes as an amendment to the financial reform bill. Did you notice how the Sanders audit the Fed "compromise" verbiage came out soon after the crash?. Bernanke is a financial terrorist on a global scale and must not be rewarded for this threat. We must be brave and stand up to him, regardless of the near-term consequences. Bernanke must be exposed as the criminal and terrorist that he is, before he completely distroys the country and leaves nothing for our children.
Sadly, the preponderance of data appears in your favor, as earlier I thought it might well be a responding sally from the Eurozone, indeed it is probably the Fed wielding their ungodly power over us.
And whatever vile lifeform Bernanke may be, he is certainly NO economics scholar...
I suspect you are right.
the politicians are on their knees facing... the large banks . and the fed.
we will all go down together ,
This is a complete defeat for honesty, integrity, transparency, and the American people.
Sanders, that socialist swine, caved in to political pressure from Obama and Bernanke, and gutted his own bill. This "audit" will now be about as toothless as a 120 year-old nursing home resident. Its virtually complete neutering was the ONLY way that Dodd and Obama would have ever been willing to "sign off" on it --- because now they have NOTHING to fear from it! All the original, meaningful aspects of the Fed audit as originally written by Ron Paul, such as a GAO review of the Fed's currency swaps with foreign central banks, have been stripped from this amendment.
Once again, the score is:
Central Banksters: 1
American people: 0
this smells of trickery...but I think even tho they think this we get us off the scent, something else is going to come to light....something is better than nothing, it not like this "audit" will improve their credibility so it does not harm there..
Gotten so used to getting shafted totally that my first impulse was "at least it is something". I'll have to read about it some more. certainly any blatant exclusions will just shine on a light them.
I think the FED will invent a new bill denomination:
The $1,999,999,999,999 bill.
It will be circulated widely
Total sell out. Ron Paul is against this amendment now bc Bernie caved in - this is a trap and is not a true audit.
Any time you find out Senator Chris Dodd is in support of something - watch out.
According to our sources on the Hill, Senator Bernie Sanders caved to pressure from the White House and Chris Dodd and stripped out the Paul-Grayson language from his Fed transparency amendment.
What Sanders is now proposing is essentially the Watt amendment we all opposed last year in the House. In addition, it supports just a one-time audit.
Talking Points Memo reports that, "In order to allay some of the White House's and the Fed's concerns, Sanders has agreed to limit the scope of what the Government Accountability Office would be allowed to audit--but his plan will still require thorough review of all the Fed's emergency lending, beginning December 1, 2007."
Call Senator Sanders' office at (202) 224-5141 and tell him how you feel about this last-minute sell out.
I called. Unlike my Senators from New York his aides actually picked up the phone and answered.
This is so depressing though: even the socialists have become bankers.
So much for finding out anything about gold manipulation , currency swaps, market rigging, and every other injustice the Fed has performed on the American public since 1913. Sanders is a two-bit turncoat. Ron Paul in 2012 !
No, Sanders is a two-bit socialist turncoat!
What more can one expect from a clueless, East Coast, died-in-the-wool statist?
(And I know this is off-topic, but what IS it with New Englanders and their rabidly pro-statist, socialistic authoritarianism anyway?)
I had strong suspicions about this socialist weasel sponsoring this "Audit the Fed" amendment from the beginning. I wouldn't doubt if the fix were in from the get-go, and his putative "sponsorship" was just a ploy to get the neutered version of the audit amendment slipped into it in place of Ron Paul and Grayson's original wording.
we all knew Fed did something really extraordinary. no surprise there. Exactly what? who got that money? if Fed got audited, and show similar payouts like AIG did, then we will know who got the money, and using that money to pay bonuses. This is a testing time for the country as a whole. of course it is a good bill.
I think the surprise once the fed is audited will be someone utterly don't deserve a penny, and got shitload of money to survive the run, then pay a shitload money for bonuses. The whole country will be pived big time and burn the sonofbitches on the cross.
"Exactly what? who got that money?"
While I strongly suspect we'll never, ever see an actual audit of the Fed, one might surmise a portion was given to select private equity firms, as well as certain well-known banksters, and a bunch more funneled back to purchase t-bills....
I hope your right. It should at least make them think twice about future shenanigans.
Is that inflation indexed?
Keep the FED secret! Keep people alive! Pure and simple!
An audit of the FED would bring America to her knees!
deleted double post
Just because you are comfortable being a slave to the Fed, don't drag the rest of us with you. There won't be a mushroom cloud you pussy, you just won't be able to buy the useless shit you use to impress some dumb bitch to sleep with you.
Fed audit = your dumb ass not breeding = everyone wins
Is that you Ben? You need to try a little bit harder convincing the readers here if you want us to believe that.
I don't know why Toothless is so worried about bringing America to her knees, when he appears to prefer groveling before criminals and sociopaths while on his own.
pure and simple keep the fed alive,lol
keep a mad ravenous dog alive to make lunch meat out of the population
what are you smoking dog lover toathis
Would you kindly shut the FUCK up already, you brainless and blathering, fearmongering idiot! If there are to be any mushroom clouds, please prelocate yourself directly underneath the first of them.
And screw this gutted and neutered "audit the Fed" amendment of Sander's, too!
END THE FED! DESTROY THE BEAST!
Troll alert, y'all.
Suggest quietly junking and not wasting your valuable time and thought with replies... :-)
STRONGLY suggest not bothering to get irritated with the comment. Irritation/disruption is the sole purpose of a troll's existence.
(Sorry akak, not targetting you - just replying to you here so it's close enough to the original comment that people see it! And sorry to all for the double post. I do hate to see a good thread discussion disrupted...)
Gotcha, and sorry for my vitriol.
This jerk has just been running rampant in every comment section and trashing any talk of auditing the Fed with the most absurd and hyperbolic fearmongering nonsense. I guess I have trouble suffering fools lightly.
Ditto, but as long as the N.A.M. and the Financial Services Roundtable support these nat'l call centers which troll the Web, this scabbies will sound off.
Too bad about Bernie, but I've always been a tad suspicious of him in getting aboard the anti-offshoring boat so late in the game, and spouting off ancient and lowballed numbers in that category.
I guess it's just Kucinich, DeFazio and (although I'm no Libertarian fan), Ron Paul....
heh, wasn't just you. I actually put in a general reply but so many people got irritated that my reply turned up way down there somewhere. :-)
The financial and political geniuses on ZH know a lot about a lot of things, but only a few of us, NON-financial geniuses, date back to the old alt & usenet days, when spamming and trolling were just as big a problem!! The more important the discussion, the more they come out of the woodwork, too...
no matter what, you knew the "audit" wasn't going anywhere. That's because the Congress is no longer representative and foreigners own our government. I wish we would collapse already.... what really needs to happen is for the social security checks to stop. That's all that needs to happen. Then we could have our government back......... broke and bankrupt .... but at least it would be ours again. Until then we're just screaming kids on the bus while the feds keep on driving up the winding road that leads to the drop-off. The longer they drive the worse the fall will be!!! There is no "reasoning" with them, there is no hijacking them, I don't see anyone blocking the road up ahead..... just drive it off the cliff already!!!!
BURN THE FED TO THE GROUND!!!!
This is my compromise.
This is a sell out. Did anyone expect anything different?
Ron Paul opposes this compromise.
Trillion? The fix is in.
They should just spell it out Two Trillion because all those zero's are what the American public ended up with.
+two trillion :)
oops the smiley shouldn't really be smiley because it isn't something to be happy about is it!
this sucks.. shouldn't have bothered now that it has those changes
So every recipient of under $2,000,000,000,000 is in the clear?
I think that is just a poorly written sentence. It is meant to give the reader an idea of the total amount of Fed help given out -- 2 trillion dollars worth.
I was just thinking about that sum myself... what a staggering number when you just look at all those zeros. But the fed don't think of them as zeros do they, just paper and ink required
"conduct an independent audit of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System that does not interfere with monetary policy"
This is the smoking gun. Remember the Fed's original objection to an audit, that it would interfere with monetary policy? So this prevents an audit of anything they claim (with an "independent" person nodding in agreement) will interfere with monetary policy.
Done. Release the spin teams and let's call it a night.