Nation magazine columnist John Nichols has an excellent piece today on why Obama should reverse his position and support Auditing the Fed. Nichols mentions that Sen. Bernie Sanders will offer an amendment this week to attach ‘Audit the Fed’ to the so-called banking regulation reform bill:
The Sanders amendment would require the Fed to name big banks that pocketed the trillions of dollars in secret subsidies – even as, in many cases, it now appears that those banks were claiming to have repaid acknowledged bailouts.
Sanders is working in conjunction with Ron Paul, who has succeeded in winning broad support in the House for Fed accountability. Sanders’ office notes the “unlikely pairing” of a socialist from Vermont and a libertarian from Texas
Here are links to some of my earlier posts on this subject:
January 2010: Dump Bernanke and Audit the Fed
July 2009: Washington Post Condemns Open Government [Audit the Fed]
May 2009: Audit the Fed Surging – 110 Co-Sponsors –
** If Congress believes that Americans have no right to know who receives trillions of dollars of de facto government benefits, then the only decent step is to end any pretense of representative government in this nation.
Is there any proof that those banks claiming to have repaid bailouts have actually done so? As good submitizens perhaps we are expected to accept the assurances of Fed Chairman or some other official as irrefutable. I think that popes had a similar “understanding” with the unwashed masses during the Middle Ages. Perhaps a new political science law should be established: The larger the amount taxpayer money involved, the less the accountability.
I think the charmingly orchestrated roll-out of GM “paying back” taxpayer bail-out money a couple weeks ago…simply paying bail-out money “A” with bail-out money “B” is a prime example of the duplicity afoot. First both the business and the White House trumpet the great success of the company paying back the loans quickly because of a successful turnaround and then when discovered for their legerdemain, they trumpet the idea that they don’t need to use as much bail-out money…or words to that effect. I suppose an audit might be swell, but who will audit the auditor and who, furthermore, will report on it in the media? The fact that this smoke and mirrors on the Auto bail-out passed with barely a notice confirms that no amount of auditing will clean house in the pirate dens of our vaunted leadership.
Hmmmmm… OK, maybe the audit wouldn’t be a panacea.
Could someone give me some URLs that illuminate the hidden, backroom machinations of bankers pocketing the bail-out money ?
yes@nope9.com
hoping obama will do the right thing on anything is utterly fruitless at this point. just assume that he won’t and go from there.
Jim, you’re right, of course that abjuring something just because it aint perfect is a little arrogant but I’m peevish which is, by definition, knee-jerk arrogant.
The gradualism afoot is unfortunately not like the old tale of the Tortoise and the Hare. Plodding along like we are is leaving the ground to the Hare. Unfortunately for the Hare, while he is standing there at the victory line, pointing and giggling at the tortoise he leaves behind…he don’t see the big hammer of “un-intended circumstances” about clang down on his pointy head, whereupon the buzzards in his pit crew will commence to fighting and feeding.
Dirk, I think your hunch that the Fed Audit could be blunted is on the money. But I suspect that enough dirt may come out that it becomes far more difficult to keep the lid on some of the worst outrages.
On the other hand, I thought that about several earlier scandals and my optimism misled me.