Bill to Audit the FED Passes

[honeykeeper]

Audit the Fed Amendment Passes 43-26!
By tmartin • November 19, 2009
After several hours of heated debate, the Paul-Grayson “Audit the Fed” amendment passed 43-26 in the House Financial Services Committee earlier today. The amendment calls for a comprehensive audit of the Federal Reserve and replaces the opposing “placebo” amendment proposed by Mel Watt.

The Paul-Grayson initiative is an amendment to Barney Frank’s HR 3996, also known as the “Financial Stability Improvement Act of 2009″. The Committee was going to vote on that bill today, but Barney Frank surprisingly postponed the vote until after the Thanksgiving recess:

(Rep. Barney) Frank told the panel that most of the members pushing him to postpone the vote were members of the Congressional Black Caucus who said that the political environment wasn’t right for a vote this afternoon.

“It’s my understanding,” Frank said, “that the issues being addressed are not internal to this bill.” In other words, the Democrats were not expressing particular problems with the bill itself, but the larger problems in the economy made them reluctant to support a bill that could be portrayed as too friendly to Wall Street.

Ron Paul sent out the following press release shortly after the amendment passed:

Washington, D.C. – Congressman Ron Paul (TX-14) is pleased to announce that his and Congressman Grayson’s amendment based on HR 1207 has passed in the Financial Services Committee by a vote of 43-26 and will be included in major banking reform legislation.

The Paul/Grayson amendment:

Removes the blanket restrictions on GAO audits of the Fed
Allows audit of every item on the Fed’s balance sheet, all credit facilities, all securities purchase programs, etc.
Retains limited audit exemption on unreleased transcripts and minutes
Sets 180-day time lag before details of Fed’s market actions may be released
States that nothing in the amendment shall be construed as interference in or dictation of monetary policy by Congress or the GAO
“While HR 3996, if passed, will grant sweeping new powers to the Federal Reserve, at least with this amendment attached, it won’t be acting in secret anymore. This is a major victory for Federal Reserve transparency and government accountability,” stated Congressman Paul.


311 Co-Sponsors in the House

30 Co-Sponsors in the Senate

How they voted (HR 1207 co-sponsors in bold):

Democrats
MA-04 Rep. Barney Frank nay
PA-11 Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski nay
CA-35 Rep. Maxine Waters nay
NY-14 Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney nay
IL-04 Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez nay
NY-12 Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez nay
NC-12 Rep. Melvin L. Watt nay
NY-05 Rep. Gary L. Ackerman nay
CA-27 Rep. Brad Sherman aye
NY-06 Rep. Gregory W. Meeks nay
KS-03 Rep. Dennis Moore nay
MA-08 Rep. Michael E. Capuano nay
TX-15 Rep. Rubén Hinojosa aye
MO-01 Rep. William Lacy Clay aye
NY-04 Rep. Carolyn McCarthy nay
CA-43 Rep. Joe Baca
MA-09 Rep. Stephen F. Lynch nay
CA-42 Rep. Gary G. Miller nay
GA-13 Rep. David Scott aye
TX-09 Rep. Al Green nay
MO-05 Rep. Emanuel Cleaver nay
IL-08 Rep. Melissa L. Bean nay
WI-04 Rep. Gwen Moore nay
NH-02 Rep. Paul W. Hodes aye
MN-05 Rep. Keith Ellison nay
FL-22 Rep. Ron Klein nay
OH-06 Rep. Charles Wilson nay
CO-07 Rep. Ed Perlmutter aye
IN-02 Rep. Joe Donnelly nay
IL-14 Rep. Bill Foster nay
IN-07 Rep. Andre Carson nay
CA-12 Rep. Jackie Speier aye
MS-01 Rep. Travis Childers aye
ID-01 Rep. Walt Minnick aye
NJ-03 Rep. John Adler aye
OH-15 Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy nay
OH-01 Rep. Steve Driehaus aye
FL-24 Rep. Suzanne Kosmas aye
FL-08 Rep. Alan Grayson aye
CT-04 Rep. Jim Himes nay
MI-09 Rep. Gary Peters aye
NY-25 Rep. Dan Maffei aye

Republicans
AL-06 Rep. Spencer Bachus aye
TX-19 Rep. Randy Neugebauer aye
DE-01 Rep. Michael N. Castle aye
NY-03 Rep. Peter King aye
CA-40 Rep. Edward R. Royce aye
OK-03 Rep. Frank D. Lucas aye
TX-14 Rep. Ron Paul (sponsor) aye
IL-16 Rep. Donald A. Manzullo aye
NC-03 Rep. Walter B. Jones aye
IL-13 Rep. Judy Biggert aye
NC-13 Rep. Brad Miller
WV-02 Rep. Shelley Moore Capito aye
TX-05 Rep. Jeb Hensarling aye
NJ-05 Rep. Scott Garrett aye
SC-03 Rep. J. Gresham Barrett aye
PA-06 Rep. Jim Gerlach aye
GA-06 Rep. Tom Price aye
NC-10 Rep. Patrick T. McHenry aye
CA-48 Rep. John Campbell aye
FL-12 Rep. Adam Putnam aye
MN-06 Rep. Michele Bachmann aye
TX-24 Rep. Kenny Marchant aye
MI-11 Rep. Thaddeus McCotter aye
CA-22 Rep. Kevin McCarthy aye
FL-15 Rep. Bill Posey aye
KS-02 Rep. Lynn Jenkins aye
NY-26 Rep. Christopher Lee aye
MN-03 Rep. Erik Paulsen aye
NJ-07 Rep. Leonard Lance aye

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUW2X...layer_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vkF6...ayer_embedded#

Another hoop jumped.........HR1207 passed!


Bill to audit Federal Reserve passed in committee

Bill to audit Federal Reserve passed in committee

For the first time in history, the Federal Reserve Bank may be facing an audit. On Thursday, the House Finance Committee passed a bill (HR 1207) that authorizes the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a wide-ranging audit of the Fed's secretive deals with foreign central banks and major U.S. financial institutions.
HR 1207, sponsored by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), currently has 313 co-sponsors in the House from both sides of the aisle, which is a veto-proof majority. A companion bill in the Senate (S 604) has 30 co-sponsors.
Glenn Greenwald, an investigative reporter writing for Salon.com, points out what may be the most significant aspect of the passage of HR 1207:
Our leading media outlets are capable of understanding political debates only by stuffing them into melodramatic, trite and often distracting "right v. left" storylines. While some debates fit comfortably into that framework, many do not. Anger over the Wall Street bailouts, the control by the banking industry of Congress, and the impenetrable secrecy with which the Fed conducts itself resonates across the political spectrum, as the truly bipartisan and trans-ideological vote yesterday reflects. Populist anger over elite-favoring economic policies has long been brewing on both the Right and Left (and in between), but neither political party can capitalize on it because they're both dependent upon and subservient to the same elite interests which benefit from those policies.
HR 1207 faced fierce last-minute opposition from Federal Reserve executives and centrist Democrats, including Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), who is the Chairman of the House Finance Committee.
Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC) introduced an amendment that would, according to Rep. Paul, "fully obliterate everything 1207 is intended to do." Barney Frank, after initially expressing support for Paul's bill, did an about face and backed the Watt amendment. Backers of the Watt amendment pressed their case on Wednesday by sending a letter from a "political cross section of prominent economists" backing a measure like Watt's. Ryan Grim, writing for the Huffington Post reported that those economists might well be prominent, but they certainly aren't a "political cross section." Seven of the eight economists in question have extensive connections to the Fed and half of them are currently on the Fed payroll. Those affiliations were not noted in the letter.
Opponents of HR 1207 argue that it could be perceived as influencing monetary policy, which can have inflationary pressure. Reps. Paul and Alan Grayson (D-FL), however, made it clear that is not the intent by adding an amendment that expressly blocks Congress from interfering with the independence of monetary policy decision-making. Ron Paul made that very clear in a speech before the committee.
After that, Federal Reserve Vice Chair Don Cohn and General Counsel Scott Alvarez spent much of the day calling committee members, urging them to oppose the Paul-Grayson amendment in favor of Watt's. Opponents of Paul's bill went as far as violating House rules by placing a letter from former Fed chairmen Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker on the seats of every committee member. Rep. Grayson, also a strong advocate of auditing the Fed, was able to have the letters removed before the vote.
The actions of Federal Reserve officials and the centrist "Blue Dog" democrats in their wallets should leave no doubt that the Fed has something to hide from Congress and the American people.
Whenever the government needs to have money printed, or spend our tax dollars, it issues treasury bonds to the Federal Reserve, which in turn prints the Federal Reserve notes to back those up. The catch, however, is that money is issued with interest charged to the federal government (a.k.a. the taxpayers). According to CNN, the interest alone on U.S. debt is projected to grow to $4.8 trillion in the next decade. According to Ron Paul, since the Federal Reserve was given control over U.S. currency in 1913, the purchasing power of the dollar has fallen by over 95%.
The Federal Reserve is a private bank, yet it controls all currency and debt in the United States and all national banks are required to join the Federal Reserve system. Since the big bank bailout last year, taxpayers are now stakeholders in many of these banks. The Federal Reserve has used TARP bailout funds to enter into agreements with foreign central banks and foreign governments, and the GAO is prohibited from auditing or even seeing these agreements.
Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Fed, could (or would) not account for $500 billion of those funds when questioned earlier this year by Rep. Grayson. In essence, the Fed has been using taxpayer money to invest in foreign banks and large Wall Street firms that deal with derivatives on the world market, while at the same time neglecting to invest funds in smaller banks that could loan money to consumers and small businesses. The end result is mega-profits for the big banks while the rest of the economy stagnates and unemployment continues to rise. Anger over the pillaging of America's economic security by the financial elite is found on both ends of the political spectrum.
Despite its immense powers, the Federal Reserve has never had a real audit in its history and little is known of what it does with the trillions of dollars at its disposal. And it seems, for some reason, that the Fed does not want congress or the American people to know what goes on behind their vaults.
While the passing of this bill in committee is a huge hurdle overcome, it must still come to a full vote in the House and a companion bill must be passed in the Senate, where there seem to be many more obstacles in getting any sort of populist legislation passed.
But a victorious Rep. Grayson said, "Today was Waterloo for Fed secrecy."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8EKGtf_YrY

From earlier:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXlxBeAvsB8

[bestatchess]

This should be interesting.

[helomech]

Maybe I am cynical, but I doubt it will go anywhere.

[honeykeeper]

Dec. 3rd is just around the bend.........show time for Bernanke....or no show.

Fed rage boils over ahead of Bernanke's confirmation hearing - Nov. 23, 2009

Fed rage boils over on Capitol Hill
Ben Bernanke will win confirmation to a second term as head of the central bank. But it won't be pretty. The movement in Congress to rein the Fed in is gaining steam.

Chairman Bernanke's confirmation hearings start Dec. 3.
Quick Vote
Should Ben Bernanke be confirmed for a second term as Fed chair?

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has a tough road ahead.

Very tough.

Bernanke, whose four-year term expires in January, is certain to face a contentious Senate banking panel at his confirmation hearing, set for Dec. 3. He is also defending against the sharpest attack on Federal Reserve powers ever.

The latest blow came last week, when a House panel overwhelmingly agreed to tack on to must-pass regulatory reform a proposal to dig into the Fed's books, despite attempts by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., to make it less intrusive.

Fed watchers say they expect that Bernanke will be confirmed for a second term as chairman. But he may get the fewest favorable votes on record - and end up at the helm of a vastly changed Federal Reserve.

"It's going to wind up to be a very different institution," said American Enterprise Institute scholar Vincent Reinhart, a former director of the Fed's division of monetary affairs. "At least on the Federal Reserve part, Congress is going to converge on something that's tougher on the Fed. It's a way to vent anger. And fundamentally people are angry."

What Congress has in store for the Fed
While many credit Bernanke for saving the economy from falling into the next Great Depression, some in Congress blame the Fed - and Bernanke - for having failed to restrain the housing bubble. Others say he has gone too far in the financial system bailouts.

"We're in a very populist era and that populism is manifesting itself in a dislike and distrust in large institutions," said Washington policy analyst Brian Gardner of investment firm Keefe Bruyette & Woods. "That means the Fed is one of those targets."

But the proposal to allow for congressional audits of the Fed is taking that anger one step further.

Since the 1980s, Fed antagonist Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, whose recently published book is entitled "End the Fed," has been trying to pass bills to curb Fed powers.

Paul won approval for his audit proposal from a key House committee last week.

"I agreed with him that some increase in openness about the Fed was important," Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the Financial Services Committee, told CNNMoney.

The audit measure scares the Fed and many of its defenders.

Bernanke has said on several occasions that Paul's proposal, which would allow members of Congress to have the Government Accountability Office audit Fed activities, is more than a simple "look at the book." He warns it would interfere with the central bank's ability to carry out independent monetary policy.

Last week, Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., who offered an alternative version of the audit proposal that did not go as far, pleaded with his colleagues to moderate their anger.

"I recognize the Fed currently has no political capital. Everyone would like to beat up on the Fed and call them the bad guys," Watt said. "If we make this decision on a political basis, I know what the result will be."

Politics won out. With 15 Democrats and all Republicans, the panel passed Paul's more controversial audit.

Still, the measure may meet resistance in the Senate. Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., released a statement Friday calling the audit amendment "a dangerous move ... to pander to the populist anger" at the Fed.

"Make no mistake; this move to bring the Fed's conduct of monetary policy under the control of Congress is a grave threat to our economy," Gregg said.

Tension on the Hill
Bernanke, 55, was first appointed to the top job in 2006 by former President George W. Bush, after serving as head of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Considered an expert on the Great Depression, Bernanke previously chaired the economics department at Princeton University. He also did a three-year stint on the Fed's board of governors ending in 2005.

Congress and the Fed have always had a complicated relationship. The Fed is designed to be independent and non-political, although it regularly reports to Congress.

The financial crisis and its aftermath have made things awkward for Bernanke on Capitol Hill. Congress didn't like that the Fed initially refused lawmakers' requests to reveal which major financial firms received billions in bailout dollars through the rescue of AIG (AIG, Fortune 500). The Fed later released the information.

Earlier this spring, when public rage boiled over about bonuses paid to the same unit of AIG responsible for the company's demise, lawmakers were irked to discover that the Fed had known for months about the bonuses.

For the past several months, a House oversight panel has been investigating whether the Fed, among other regulatory agencies, overstepped its authority in negotiating the Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) take over of Merrill Lynch.

Lawmakers have also accused the Fed of moving slowly on consumer protection. The Fed has lately stepped up in this area, crafting rules that crack down on credit card issuers and on banks' practice of automatically enrolling customers in overdraft protection programs with hefty fees.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Bernanke continues to make efforts to be more accessible than past Fed chairmen, according to lawmakers and congressional aides. He regularly answers questions, by phone or in person, aides say.

While Fed watchers expect Bernanke to be confirmed, they also expect that the hearing could turn into one of the more politically explosive confirmations the Obama administration has faced.

"Voting against him is a way of showing your discomfort with the current system and a lot of them are uncomfortable with the current system," Reinhart said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0NYB...eature=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-DOw...eature=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vkF6...ayer_embedded#

[bestatchess]

Originally Posted by helomech

Maybe I am cynical, but I doubt it will go anywhere.

Trillions of dollars and no oversight. You know they have been running rampant. Hopefully they look at that books for a couple of months and then start appointing special prosecutors.

[Papa_D]

Originally Posted by helomech

Maybe I am cynical, but I doubt it will go anywhere.

Yeah, I won't crack open the Champagne just yet either because the Federal Reserve is very powerful indeed and generally when people f*ck with them, they don't fair too well and I don't know if Kennedy's speech wasn't more related to the Russians or Communists instead, but it probably should have been about the Federal Reserve Banksters given their sorted past and current influence on everyone's well being.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AICGUyoISX0

[chunko]

I feel as though we're between a rock and a hard place with the fed.

1. It's stupid to allow politics to control monetary policy... bad decisions *will* be made in response to short-sighted populist opinion.

2. It's stuipid to have no oversight or accountability for US Monetary policy, bad things can and have happened... not the least of which is the all too warm and fuzzy relationships between the Fed and the big banks.


So which stupid is less stupid?

[jjski78]

Originally Posted by chunko

I feel as though we're between a rock and a hard place with the fed.

1. It's stupid to allow politics to control monetary policy... bad decisions *will* be made in response to short-sighted populist opinion.

2. It's stuipid to have no oversight or accountability for US Monetary policy, bad things can and have happened... not the least of which is the all too warm and fuzzy relationships between the Fed and the big banks.


So which stupid is less stupid?

I would have to say #2 is the most damaging. Well, let me add #2 is the most damaging if Congress actually followed the Constitution like they were supposed to. Constitutionally speaking if Congress were given some sort of control over monetary policy, in theory, we could hold them accountable through the use of our votes. We have no such power to hold the Fed accountable for anything.

[Papa_D]

Originally Posted by chunko

I feel as though we're between a rock and a hard place with the fed.

1. It's stupid to allow politics to control monetary policy... bad decisions *will* be made in response to short-sighted populist opinion.

2. It's stuipid to have no oversight or accountability for US Monetary policy, bad things can and have happened... not the least of which is the all too warm and fuzzy relationships between the Fed and the big banks.


So which stupid is less stupid?

Allowing the Congress oversight of the Fed needs to happen without question but it's not the solution and much like parasites, the Fed needs to be gotten rid of all together. Sure, the Congress would have the capability granted them by the Constitution with regard to coining money, no different than the power they have now and in the end, there is no reason for a privately owned Central Bank or fractional reserve banking unless you like parasites.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyjY7RdQMDQ

[Papa_D]

Here's a guy who voted for Obama but now says that Ron Paul and the Libertarians are right, maybe he should have thought about that before voting Obama into office, lol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqHBIpiq2kI