Federal Reserve Audit Under Fire

Fed Audit Under Fire

Ron Paul
Campaign for Liberty

May 11, 2010, http://www.infowars
.com/fed- audit-under- fire/

It doesn’t come as too much of a surprise that the measure to audit the
Federal Reserve is coming under continuous fire from the central bank
and its cronies.

For the first time since the Federal Reserve was created nearly a
century ago, they have hired an actual lobbyist to pound the pavement on
Capitol Hill. This is a desperate effort to hang on to the privilege of
secrecy and lack of accountability they have enjoyed for so long.

Last week showed they are getting their money’s worth in the Senate.

At the very last minute on the floor of the Senate, supposed compromise
language was agreed to and substituted in the Sanders Amendment to the
Financial Reform Bill. This language was acceptable to the
administration, committee leadership, and to the Fed.

The trouble is, while it is better than no audit at all, it guts the
spirit of a truly meaningful audit of the most crucial transactions of
the Fed. In fact, rather than still calling the Sanders Amendment an
audit, maybe it should instead be called more of a disclosure at this
point.

The new language of the Sanders Amendment requires a one-time disclosure
from the Fed of 13(3) facilities, foreign currency swaps and
mortgage-backed securities. Basically, their sins of the past would be
revealed and Americans would know more about who got bailed out by the
Fed and under what terms. This would be good, but its not nearly enough.

Taxpayers are sick and tired of bailing out privileged, dysfunctional
institutions that should be allowed to fail in order to stop their
ability to wreak havoc on our economy. Perpetuating these corporations
at taxpayer expense is not just wasteful, it is actively harmful. It
would be good to know what went on in the past, but what about
accountability in the future? A one-time disclosure now will not do us a
lot of good down the road when the cycle repeats itself and friends of
the Fed find themselves in trouble again.

More importantly, agreements with foreign central banks are not touched
by the new Sanders Amendment language. At a time when Greece, Portugal,
Spain and other countries are experiencing dire financial crises and
have their hands out to the international community, we need to know if
our Federal Reserve is at all involved in bailing them out. As weary as
we are of bailing out companies, the American people would not stand for
bailing out entire countries. Our government is wasteful enough in its
own affairs without contributing to the waste of other countries. Yet
the Fed currently has the tools it needs to do just this, and to do it
in secret.

If we cannot take away the Fed’s ability to waste trillions of taxpayer
dollars on failing companies and failing countries, at the very least,
we can take away their ability to do this with no transparency or
accountability to the American people. While the Sanders Amendment no
longer contains a full audit, Senator David Vitter has introduced an
amendment which contains the Audit the Fed language that passed the
House last fall. The Senate must pass the Vitter amendment for full
disclosure and full accountability going forward.