Just a few days after Jeb Hensarling accused The Fed of "willful obstruction" in the Congressional leak probe, [8]demanding "immediate compliance" with the subpoena [8] seeing "no legal basis to withhold records from Congress," Janet Yellen has responded in a letter:
- *YELLEN REPEATS FED CAN'T PROVIDE DOCUMENTS ON LEAK PROBE
If this does not confirm The Fed is utterly above the law, we are not sure what it will take to convince skeptics of the need for an independent audit. As Hensarling previously noted, this appears to be "vigorous and coordinated obstruction.”
Here is the letter...
Fed Chair Yellen to @FinancialCmte [9] on why central bank did not comply with Congressional subpoena: pic.twitter.com/Yt4gpdGNu0 [10]
— Pedro da Costa (@pdacosta) June 22, 2015 [11]
Which translates as...
YELLEN TO HENSARLING: pic.twitter.com/xZ9GYiXjZ9 [12]
— Timothy Connolly CFA (@SconsetCapital) June 22, 2015 [13]
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As The Wall Street Journal's Pedro da Costa reports [14],
Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen said the central bank didn’t provide most of the information requested by members of Congress about an internal investigation because of an ongoing criminal probe into the matter.
In a letter to Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Ms. Yellen said the Fed’s Office of the Inspector General, which is conducting the criminal probe with the Justice Department, advised that sharing of the information could harm their investigation.
Ms. Yellen wrote the inspector general has indicated that “providing access at this time to records and information would risk jeopardizing that ongoing criminal investigation, and the Department of Justice shares this concern.”
“We are committed to working with you to fulfill the Committee’s requests with respect to this matter once the OIG and the Department of Justice have informed us that they have completed their criminal investigation,” Ms. Yellen added.
The Fed declined to comment further for this article.
We suspect Pedro will once again not be invited back to the Fed poress conference.
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