Tuesday
May112010
BREAKING: Bernie Sanders' Version of 'Audit The Fed' Passes Senate Unanimously 96-0
Not everything we wanted, but still a victory for the transparency squad. Sanders' amendment passed 96-0. No one would step in front of the train. Vitter's amendment was defeated 62-37. Not so good. More on this later.
Naysayers are wrong on this one. This was a huge victory for truth, justice and fair play. The dam is cracked. What we gain from this audit will help us get more extensive audits later. Any embarrassing information will be exploited by those on our side in the push for even greater transparency.
The super-galactic Federal Reserve MOJO has been defeated.
May 11, 2010 at 1:16 PM
Reader Comments (10)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/11/judd-gregg-feds-biggest-d_n_571667.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/10/ron-paul-backs-fed-audit_n_570487.html
A weekly column
Fed Audit Under Fire
http://www.house.gov/htbin/blog_inc?BLOG,tx14_paul,blog,999,All,Item%20not%20found,ID=100510_3699,TEMPLATE=postingdetail.shtml
Many politicians still need to fill their campaign war chests, tis the season.
Senate: Vitter Amendment Fails - Yea 37 Nay 62
DUMB FUCKS @DB
DELETE ON, BASH ON, DEBATE ON WHAT?
RIOTS IN USA TIME LINE NOV 2010-2011
That fucker Sander sold his soul to Bernanke too
Senate Votes to Audit Fed Emergency Steps, Rejects Wider Probe
Share Business ExchangeTwitterFacebook| Email | Print | A A A
By Alison Vekshin and Craig Torres
May 11 (Bloomberg) -- The Senate approved an amendment to the regulatory-overhaul bill authorizing a one-time audit of the Federal Reserve’s emergency-lending programs, and defeated a second proposal that would have allowed continuous inquiries.
Lawmakers voted 96-0 today for Senator Bernard Sanders’s proposal to let a congressional watchdog conduct an audit of every Fed emergency action since December 2007. The Senate rejected a measure from Louisiana Republican David Vitter that would have permitted unlimited reviews.
The Sanders amendment is closer to what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke told legislators he would support. The Fed chief, during a February hearing, invited an audit of emergency loan programs, while raising concerns that broader audit authority could result in reviews of monetary policy.
“The Sanders amendment gives perfect political cover to senators who are eager to punish the Fed for its secrecy and forays into fiscal policy, but are not eager to take any blame for intervening in the Fed’s setting of interest rates,” said Sarah Binder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Sanders last week narrowed his amendment in response to concerns raised by Bernanke, the Treasury Department and senators that his call for broader audit could threaten the central bank’s independence. The change drew support from Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who wrote the main financial-regulation bill.
‘Lobbying Power’
“There was a tremendous amount of lobbying power placed on senators” to avoid audits of monetary policy, said Mark Calabria, director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute and a former Senate Banking Committee staff member. “Dodd wasn’t in favor of it, the White House wasn’t in favor of it, and Treasury was absolutely opposed to it.”
Federal Reserve spokesman David Skidmore had no comment.
“The time is now that we have got to end secrecy at the Fed,” Sanders, a Vermont independent, said before the vote. “This money does not belong to the Fed. It belongs to the American people, and the American people have a right to know where their taxpayer money is going.”
The amendment is aimed at forcing the Fed to release information about its use of emergency powers to help rescue financial firms during the crisis. Bernanke used Depression-era authority to loan billions to U.S. corporations and bond dealers, and to rescue Bear Stearns Cos. and American International Group Inc.
“We understand that the unusual nature of those facilities creates a special obligation to assure the Congress and the public of the integrity of their operation,” Bernanke told legislators Feb. 24.
GAO Audit
The Sanders amendment allows for a one-time audit by the Government Accountability Office of Fed loans and financial assistance, including foreign currency swap lines for the period beginning Dec. 1, 2007, through the date of the financial-rules bill’s enactment.
It also requires the Fed to publish on its website the names of businesses, people and central banks that got aid, the type of assistance, amounts and other information. The revision also includes a GAO audit of regional Fed bank governance.
Vitter said he modeled the language of his amendment after a proposal by Representative Ron Paul, a Texas Republican, that was included in the House’s financial-overhaul bill. Senators voted 62-37 to defeat Vitter’s plan.
Vitter, who backed Sanders’s amendment, said he decided to offer his measure after Sanders altered his last week.
‘Look Forward’
“We must go beyond the Sanders amendment,” Vitter said before the votes. “We must look forward and not just one time back to ensure the American people that we all know what our Federal Reserve is doing.”
Vitter said the Federal Reserve’s re-start of foreign currency swap lines with the European Central Bank is one reason why Congress needs continuous audit authority. “Clearly, they are perfect and very, very recent example of why we need to look at what the Fed is doing on an ongoing basis,” he said.
The Fed has used its balance sheet to finance housing, purchasing $1.25 trillion in mortgage-backed securities. The step was break from the Fed’s own previous commitment to avoid policies that veer toward fiscal policy and benefit specific industries.
Total assets on the central bank’s balance sheet stand at $2.32 trillion, up from $880 billion two years ago. The Fed closed four of its emergency-lending facilities Feb. 1.
The Fed chairman also said in February the confidentiality of bank borrowing from the Fed’s discount window “must be maintained.”
Bloomberg Suit
Bloomberg LP has sued the central bank to release records of discount-window loans following a request under the Freedom of Information Act. The U.S. Court of Appeals in New York ruled March 19 that the Fed must release the records.
The Federal Reserve Board asked the appeals court this month to reconsider its ruling. If the court refuses, the Fed can appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Bloomberg also sued the Fed to reveal securities purchased from Bear Stearns Cos. to facilitate the investment bank’s merger with JPMorgan Chase & Co. The Fed made that information public March 31.
To contact the reporters on this story: Alison Vekshin in Washington at avekshin@bloomberg.net; Craig Torres in Washington at ctorres3@bloomberg.net
They never really LOST control of the audit, Gomps. No need to take what you already have. If an audit DOES go thru I bet HUGE chunks of information and access to documents would be barred from auditor viewing on the grounds that it may endanger NATIONAL SECURITY.
And that's the end of THAT. Because those two little words alone put together inevitable manage to send a shiver thru the average American's spineless spine, making them DESIST IMMEDIATELY from any further probing or questioning of their government's actions.
I think it's INCREDIBLY naive to think that a government that suffers from INSTITUTIONALIZED corruption would (or COULD) suddenly make a 180 degree headturn towards the opposite direction.
Just doesn't happen. Expect more bread & circus.
Yes, you are in “The Warzone.” Learn how Wall Street and the “Happy Conspiracy” control the American mind, your money and global markets in “The Warzone.” Learn everything you need to know—and everything they don’t want you to know—about the secret predatory darkside of behavioral finance, neuroeconomics, behavioral economics, investment psychology and the new “science of irrationality.” Learn how these new behavioral sciences are being used as “weapons of mass manipulation” to control, not just how you invest your money, but how this “Happy Conspiracy”—the new Orwellian Big Brother—is fundamentally altering the way you ”see” the economy, markets, government, business and the world in general, luring you into their “Warzone” to play by their rules in a game that’s fixed. Know their game and you can win.
During the past forty years the behavioral sciences have been rapidly chipping away at Wall Street’s outdated “rational man” theory of investing—which, for more than two centuries, had been the basis of all market and investment decision-making since formation of the New York Stock Exchange in 1792. Wall Street’s theory tells us that investors are “logical, reasonable and rational.” But today, the “rational man” theory no longer works. Not on Wall Street. Nor on Main Street. This historic flip-flop is the result of research in the related fields of behavioral finance and neuroeconomics, the psychology of investing and the new “science of irrationality. ”
Listen very closely, there is no such thing as a “rational investor.” Never was. It was an illusion … it is an illusion … it always will be an illusion … it was concocked by Wall Street. We are all “irrational investors”—you, me and every one of the 95 million investors in America. And yet today—in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary—most investors still live in denial, preferring the illusion over reality. Why? Very simple: Because $20 trillion in investor assets and hundreds of billions of Wall Street’s annual profits depend on keeping that misleading illusion alive in the minds of the American public! And that’s why Wall Street is engaged in a secret war to manipulate, dominate and control the mind of the investor.
Ellison makes Tea Party’s Iraq-style ‘most wanted’ cards; group claims no violent intent
http://minnesotaindependent.com/58796/ellison-makes-tea-party-most-wanted%E2%80%93style-playing-cards
Well, I happen to remember having seen videos of those same nazi faces as they were marched off dressed in rags, slogged off painfully towards Siberia, never to be seen or heard from again.
I find myself wishing history WILL REPEAT itself again. SOON.
Please leave your contact info and don't be a little bitch about it.