Tag Archives: End the Fed

S. 604 The Federal Reserve Sunshine Act 2009 has 13 co-sponsors

H.R. 1207, Ron Paul’s Federal Reserve Transparency of 2009, which would audit the Federal Reserve has over 260 co-sponsors (a majority of the house!), yet the house leadership ignores it.

S. 604, The Federal Reserve Sunshine Act of 2009, is the companion bill in the senate. Getting thirteen co-sponsors is encouraging.

It won’t be easy for our political leadership to continue ignoring this public mandate. On the other hand, the masters of the universe behind the federal reserve are very powerful, and usually get what they want from politicians and media.

Co-Sponsors so far:
BARRASSO, JOHN (R – WY)
BENNETT, ROBERT F. (R – UT)
BROWNBACK, SAM (R – KS)
BURR, RICHARD (R – NC)
CHAMBLISS, SAXBY (R – GA)
CRAPO, MIKE (R-ID)
DEMINT, JIM (R-SC)
FEINGOLD, RUSSELL D. (D – WI)
HOFE, JAMES M. (R – OK)
ISAKSON, JOHNNY (R – GA)
LINCOLN, BLANCHE L. (D – AR)
MCCAIN, JOHN (R. – AZ)
SANDERS, BERNARD (I – VT)
VITTER, DAVID (R – LA)

(Read more at dailypaul.com)

Have you written to your Senator?

DeMint Audit the Fed amendment blocked by hypocritical Senate Leadership

With Sanford disgraced, and Ron Paul unlikely to run for president again, Senator Jim DeMint may be our best hope for 2012. I hope he runs.

Description from a campaign for liberty email: “Seizing on a chance to take quick action to bring Audit the Fed up for a vote, and with the GAO provisions in mind, Senator DeMint attached the full text of S 604, the Senate version of Ron Paul’s Audit the Fed bill, to HR 2918 as Senate Amendment 1367 before it was considered for final passage.

However, Senate Democrats refused to even allow a vote on the amendment! That’s right. The internationalist, Fed-loving elite in the Senate used a parliamentary tactic to shut down DeMint’s amendment.

After Senator DeMint brought Audit the Fed to the floor, Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska raised a ‘point of order’ to prevent a vote, claiming that the amendment violated Senate Rule 16 by ‘legislating’ on an appropriations bill. The Senate president agreed, and the amendment was shot down.

Senator DeMint did not back down, though, and directly challenged Senate leadership by pointing out the other GAO audits contained in the bill. As Senator DeMint listed them off, the Senate president was forced to agree with Senator DeMint that each one he described, all of which would be left in for final passage, also violated Senate Rule 16.

Which tells us at least one thing: the problem wasn’t with ‘legislating’ on the bill or violating Senate Rules (which is commonly done). Shooting down the amendment was about preventing a thorough audit of the Federal Reserve for the first time in its history!”

Bernanke comments on HR 1207 – you can’t handle the truth!

There’s a lot of subtext in Bernanke’s last comment. I think he’s laying some rhetorical ground work. If HR 1207 passes, and we get to actually see the abuses and excesses of the Fed, it may trigger a run on the dollar, or an extreme downturn in the economy. Bernanke will then be able to say “see, I told you so,” as if the cause of the downturn was not the Fed’s crimes, but their revelation.

Fed engaged in “cover-up” of BofA-Merrill deal-lawmaker

WASHINGTON, June 24 (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve sought to hide its extensive involvement and concerns about Bank of America Corp’s (BAC.N) acquisition of Merrill Lynch amid the latter’s worsening financial condition, a top Republican congressman said on Wednesday.

‘The committee has already learned that Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve made inappropriate threats to fire Bank of America management unless they went ahead with the “shotgun wedding” that was the Merrill Lynch acquisition,’ Rep. Darrell Issa of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said in a statement released to Reuters.

‘The Federal Reserve also engaged in a cover-up and deliberately hid concerns and pertinent details regarding the merger from other federal regulatory agencies,’ the statement said.

The committee has obtained a number of emails and documents from the U.S. central bank about its behind-the-scenes role in the merger, according to sources familiar with documents.” (Read more from reuters.com)

HR 1207?

Fed Hires Lobbyist to fight HR 1207

“As HR 1207 gains momentum and co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, the Federal Reserve is planning to fight the tide calling for an audit of its books by hiring a veteran lobbyist to ‘manage its relations with Congress,’ according to Reuters.

The Fed plans to hire Linda Robertson, who previously worked for now-defunct energy company Enron, as well as the Clinton administration.” (Read more from blacklistednews.com)

I think and hope she will lose this fight. We are very organized and very passionate. The only question is: what mighty levers can the money-printers pull with our government?

See Also: Ron Paul’s HR1207 (The Federal Reserve Transparency Act) now has 224 co-sponsors!

Federal Reserve Cannot Account for $9 Trillion

Old news, but important to remember:

“Momentum is building with 179 co-sponsors for Congressman Ron Paul’s bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to audit the Federal Reserve System (Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009) not just because of the growing unrest over the Fed’s gigantic and reckless expansion of trillions of dollars in credit during the past eight months but because of the increasing awareness that the Fed itself is unable to account for where this money has gone. According to a report from Bloomberg News on February 9th:

The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages.

The Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have lent or spent almost $3 trillion over the past two years and pledged up to $5.7 trillion more. . . .

Only the stimulus bill to be approved this week, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program passed four months ago and $168 billion in tax cuts and rebates enacted in 2008 have been voted on by lawmakers. The remaining $8 trillion is in lending programs and guarantees, almost all under the Fed and FDIC. Recipients’ names have not been disclosed. . . .

Bloomberg requested details of Fed lending under the Freedom of Information Act and filed a federal lawsuit against the central bank Nov. 7 seeking to force disclosure of borrower banks and their collateral.

At a hearing in early May, Federal Reserve Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman was asked by Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL) to account for the $9 trillion in off-balance sheet transactions ($30,000 for each man, woman and child in the U.S.) plus a $1 trillion expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet since last September. Her answer is that no one at the Fed knows or is keeping track of where the money has gone.” (from independent.org)

HR 1207 up to 212 cosponsors!!!

From a Campaign for Liberty email:

“Congressman David Loebsack of Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District has joined Congressmen Latham, Boswell and King as a co-sponsor of HR 1207 The Federal Reserve Transparency Act. We have confirmed with Congressman Ron Paul’s office that as of right now there were 212 co-sponsors of this vital legislation. This information is direct and is ahead of the Thomas.gov website. Without the hard work of all Campaign for Liberty members this accomplishment would likely not have been possible. A special thanks to those of you live in the 2nd Congressional District, all of your hard work with petitions, writing letters, calling and personally visiting the congressman’s office has finally paid off. ”

YEEEAH!!!

GAO Gains Some Powers to Examine Federal Reserve’s Actions

Part of me is concerned this is weak legislation designed to not really do anything besides take steam away from the much stronger HR 1207 Federal Reserve Transparency Act. They are very scared.

“On May 20th, President Obama signed into law a ‘Fed clause’ giving the Government Accounting Office (GAO) the ‘power to examine the Federal Reserve’s emergency aid to specific companies, such as AIG, Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc.’.

As Bloomberg writes:

The new law is designed to give the GAO access to records and people at the Fed’s Board of Governors in Washington as well as the 12 district banks, such as the New York Fed, which has been the government’s lead day-to-day supervisor of AIG.

While this is a good first step, Bloomberg correctly points out:

The new Fed audit law differs from more intrusive legislation introduced in the House by Ron Paul, a Texas Republican, and in the Senate by Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent. Those bills, which haven’t made it past the initial stage of being introduced in Congress, would remove limits on GAO audits of the Fed and direct the agency to issue a report on the central bank by the end of next year…

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke indicated in testimony May 5 that he wouldn’t object to GAO audits of the central bank as long as there was no examination of monetary policy. Fed officials are wary of political interference into their ability to tighten credit and contain inflation…

‘I certainly would resist any attempt to dictate to the Federal Reserve how to make monetary policy,’ Bernanke said.

Senator Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who sponsored the amendment allowing the Fed audits, said May 6 that while the authority was narrower than he would have liked, ‘it is a reasonable step in the right direction, and it does not threaten monetary policy independence.’

Of course, ‘monetary policy independence’ may not be such a good thing, given that the Fed presided over both the Great Depression and the greatest financial bubble in the history of the world (the one from 2001-2007), and the Fed has failed by its own terms to provide any counter-cyclical balance to the momentum economy.” (Read more from washingtonsblog.com)

End the Fed Update

Ron Paul asking Bernanke tough questions as he does here is nothing new:

Toward the end, Bernanke says he’d be open to provisions which limit the Fed’s secrecy. (Yeah, right.) He goes on to suggest they have oversight from the Inspector General. Well, lets see what Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman says when questioned by Rep. Alan Grayson:

Commentary from the Huffington Post article Fed Inspector General Knows Roughly Nothing About The Fed: Coleman could not tell Grayson what kind of losses the Fed has so far suffered on its $2 trillion portfolio, which has greatly expanded since September. She appeared unaware that the Fed engages in trillions of dollars in off-balance-sheet exchanges. She is not investigating the role of the Fed in allowing the collapse of Lehman Brothers. She did not know where the Fed has invested its $2 trillion on the liability side of the balance sheet. ‘I do not know. We have not looked at that specific area at this particular point on,’ she said.

Sounds like she doesn’t know much. Thank goodness we have the internet, so these criminals/useful idiots can be exposed for what they are.

There is some reason to be hopeful. Ron Paul’s HR 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act now has over 120 co-sponsors. This level of support would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.

H.R. 1207 – Federal Reserve Transparency Act

H.R. 1207, the bill introduced by Ron Paul to investigate the super-secretive private organization which controls our money, now has 28 co-sponsors. Write your representatives today!

Rep Abercrombie, Neil [D, HI-1]
Rep Alexander, Rodney [R, LA-5]
Rep Bachmann, Michele [R, MN-6]
Rep Bartlett, Roscoe G. [R, MD-6]
Rep Broun, Paul C. [R, GA-10]
Rep Burton, Dan [R, IN-5]
Rep Chaffetz, Jason [R, UT-3]
Rep DeFazio, Peter A. [D, OR-4]
Rep Duncan, John J., Jr. [R, TN-2]
Rep Foxx, Virginia [R, NC-5]
Rep Garrett, Scott [R, NJ-5]
Rep Grayson, Alan [D, FL-8]
Rep Heller, Dean [R, NV-2]
Rep Jones, Walter B., Jr. [R, NC-3]
Rep Kagen, Steve [D, WI-8]
Rep Kingston, Jack [R, GA-1]
Rep Marchant, Kenny [R, TX-24]
Rep McClintock, Tom [R, CA-4]
Rep Petri, Thomas E. [R, WI-6]
Rep Poe, Ted [R, TX-2]
Rep Posey, Bill [R, FL-15]
Rep Price, Tom [R, GA-6]
Rep Rehberg, Denny [R, MT]
Rep Rohrabacher, Dana [R, CA-46]
Rep Stearns, Cliff [R, FL-6]
Rep Taylor, Gene [D, MS-4]
Rep Woolsey, Lynn C. [D, CA-6]
Rep Young, Don [R, AK]
(Read more from DailyPaul.com)

Watch Sen. Bernie Sanders (I – VT) fail to get answers from Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. The law, in fact, protects the Fed’s secrecy, which is why a bill is needed before we can know anything about this secretive organization.