Posted on 09/25/2009 10:45:34 AM PDT by Palin Republic
House lawmakers want to pry open the books of the famously secretive Federal Reserve with legislation that would subject the central bank to a sweeping congressional audit.
The effort is overwhelmingly bipartisan. Hardline conservatives and liberal Democrats have banded together in their criticism of the Fed as a major power broker in the financial system that doesn't answer to Congress.
Friday's debate comes as lawmakers consider a proposal by President Barack Obama that would give the Fed new powers to prevent another economic crisis.
"Nobody in my district thinks that the Fed has done such a wonderful job of running the economy that we should continue to cloak them with secrecy for the purpose of protecting them from second-guessing criticism," said Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat.
The Fed is pushing back, warning that its ability to stabilize prices and monitor interest rates would be compromised if it knew politicians were looking over its shoulder.
The House proposal would "cause the markets and the to public to lose confidence in the independence and the judgments of the Federal Reserve," Scott Alvarez, the board's top lawyer, told the House Financial Services Committee in testimony.
The legislation is championed by Rep. Ron Paul, a Texas Republican whose extreme libertarian bent usually doesn't generate consensus in Congress. But as of Friday, Paul's legislation had attracted 295 co-sponsors with a range of political philosophies, including Hawaii liberal Rep. Neil Abercrombie and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, an outspoken conservative from Texas.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Nailed it. I had an unsettled feeling about this, even though I know its a Good Thing ... and you've expressed it perfectly.
There is no way in heck the Pelosi crowd could "Audit" the Fed in a useful way. Worst case - a political shakedown and the destruction of the independence of the Fed. Best case - Grandstanding and Bush-bashing.
WE'll know we are toast when the Fed bankers are found on a video singing a Barack Hussein Obama song.
“Reinstating Glass-Steagall is probably a good step.”
Nope. That regulation was useless, dangerous, counterproductive and harmed our prosperity.
It prevented the useful combination of financial services products that other international bank enjoyed and as a result our banking sector fell behind others prior to the 1990s.
“Oxley/Sorbanes, to my recollection, was an attempt to cut down some on the ignorance defense.”
That regulation also has proved to be counterproductive and harmful to our prosperity. It killed the IPO market.
What a coincidence.
“The Federal Reserve, like all private central banks, serves no useful purpose”
Regulating the money supply is pretty danged useful.
” but to chain a government and the taxpayers who support it to an unpayable debt and perpetual inflation.”
- Inflation is less thanks to a Fed outside political control. When Jackson abolished the national bank, inflation ensued. Countries without a central bank often suffered far worse economically.
“Someone needs to expose the whole debt-money system as the fraud that it is”
That would be tough because it’s not a fraud. Fractional banking has been in use for centuries and it works.
If you want the primer, re-watch ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’.
“We cannot create $1 without creating a $1 liability + interest to a bank. We cannot get out of debt”
Read a 10-K for a few companies. There are many companies out there that dont want nor need to get out of debt, so long as cashflow services that debt and the cost (interest) is less than their own return-on-equity.
” because to do so would destroy the money supply.”
Um .... NO.
” Our only hope is to out borrow our previous borrowing to keep the system afloat.”
Um .... NO again.
“Yeah, I wanna know who’s going to audit those clowns spending our and our kids precious trillions??”
Ah ... I have a brilliant idea. Congress Audits the Fed ...
AND THE FED AUDITS THE CONGRESS!
“It not being part of the government is a technicality given the power and authority it has.”
Good point. The structure has been dictated by Acts of Congress. Ultimately it is a creature of Federal Law.
Part of the reason for it being outside the Government framework is the desire for an independent institution.
“It is identical to having a bunch of government stooges behind closed doors spending trillions with no oversight. Same exact thing.”
Except they dont spend our money. They have their own balance sheet.
“I don’t think a market needs any help from a bunch of people who can at their whim drastically effect it.”
hmmm CONGRESS= “a bunch of people who can at their whim drastically effect it”
So ... “I don’t think a market needs any help from Congress.”
“So did you lose about half or more like the rest of us? Or are you just some pitiful penniless BS’r here with nothing else to do?”
I’m the brilliant investor. I’m up 100% since last fall.
I lost almost half, but then tripled from the low. I moved into the risky assets the hedge funds were dumping in December, it worked.
Advice: buy when others are selling.
I don’t think the market needs any help from congress. What is your point? I don’t want congress or the fed meddling with the markets.
If you believe in capitalism you wouldn’t either.
However, giving that power to a secretive organization that barely has to answer to anybody is ridiculously stupid. Far worse than the congress being in charge of it.
Your prayer just described 60% of the U.S.
Why dont you just cut to the chase and ask for a peaceful Secession instead? Conservatives on one side, Liberals on the other.
Only God could succeed in doing this peacefully! Haha
They create money out of thin air so they do spend our money because the money they create is legal tender which means that all of our money gets devalued when they spend it.
Once again, why not have every part of our government run by a secretive bunch of elites who answer to no one or if they answer to someone its about something immaterial.
Why vote? Eh? You like secretive organizations running everything? You would prefer that to congess?
There is no value to independence when you are not independent of the people you are allowing to be independent.
If independence is good, how about they can’t mess with our money supply eh? Oh right its only good when they are untouchable and can hold power over us.
Its a pretty obvious principle that a balance of power is a good thing and that some people have to know what other government-granted power-holders are doing with their power. We have a right to know that that power is being wielded correctly.
However, since I am a capitalist I don’t want a federal reserve at all. I believe in this thing called a free-market. May be a foreign concept to some.
I believe that the entire government should be audited every congressman, senators, and their families and all their dealing in the stock market all their votes on bills and how they have affected them personally. I believe that there is lots of inside dealing in banking and the stock market that is illegal. This should all be done by people who are outside of the government and have no ties with it at all.
Yeah, you read that from the same leftists who screwed up the whole thing in the first place.
Read about it from Thomas Sowell, a conservative. You are a conservative, right?
Here. I'll even give you some links.
Please pay special attention to this part from the last link:
The word repeated endlessly in these political charades is "deregulation." The idea is that it was a lack of government supervision which allowed "greed" in the private sector to lead the nation into crises that only our Beltway saviors can solve.What utter rubbish this all is can be found by checking the record of how government regulators were precisely the ones who imposed lower mortgage lending standards-- and it was members of Congress (of both parties) and who pushed the regulators, the banks and the mortgage-buying giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into accepting risky mortgages, in the name of "affordable housing" and more home ownership. Presidents of both parties also jumped on the bandwagon.
Don't swallow the anti-Capitalist Kool-Aid, FRiend. It was Washington, not Wall Street, who engineered this disaster.
Remember what Ronald Reagan said: "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem!"
I agree, I do believe the Fed needs to be investigated. In fact we are in such a mess we should probably jail half of Congress and the Senate, and maybe BO too! There is so much wrong where does one begin?
Excerpt:
I am speaking this morning in support of HR 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act. As the Committee knows, this bill would require a full audit of the Federal Reserve by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).The Fed's willingness to talk suggests they finally realize momentum is strong enough that something will change. Nonetheless all the Fed is offering is talk, perhaps hoping that talk will make the problem go away.On November 10, 2008, Bloomberg News ran the following headline: “Fed Defies Transparency Aim in Refusal to Disclose.” The story pointed out that the Fed was refusing to identify the recipients of trillions of dollars in emergency loans or the dubious assets the central bank was accepting as collateral.
When the initial $700 billion congressional bailout was being debated last September, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson couldn’t emphasize their commitment to transparency strongly enough. But “two months later, as the Fed [lent] far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn’t require approval by Congress, Americans [had] no idea where their money [was] going or what securities the banks [were] pledging in return.”
There is no good reason for Americans not to know the recipients of the Fed’s emergency lending facilities. There is no good reason for them to be kept in the dark about the Fed’s arrangements with foreign central banks. These things affect the quality of the money that our system obliges the American public to accept.
Perhaps the most frequent of the claims is that a genuine audit would jeopardize the alleged independence of the Fed. Congress could come to influence or even dictate monetary policy.
This is a red herring. The bill is not designed to empower politicians to increase the money supply, choose interest-rate targets, or adopt any of the rest of the Fed’s central planning apparatus, all of which is better left to the free market than to the Fed or Congress. It seeks nothing more than to open the Fed’s books to public scrutiny. Congress has a moral and legal obligation to oversee institutions it brings into existence. The convoluted scenarios by which merely opening the books will lead to an inflationary catastrophe at the hands of Congress are difficult to take seriously.
Moreover, try to imagine a Fed chairman doggedly seeking to maintain the value of the dollar even if it meant refusing to monetize a massive deficit to fight a war or “stimulate” a depressed economy. It is not possible.
If there is any truth to the idea of Fed independence, it lay in precisely this: the Fed may reward favored friends and constituencies with trillions of dollars in various kinds of assistance, while keeping the public completely in the dark. If that is the independence we’re talking about, no self-respecting American would hesitate for a moment to challenge it.
* * * My point is simply this: if our monetary system were really as strong, robust, and beyond criticism as its cheerleaders claim, why does it need to rely so heavily on public ignorance? How can it be a sound banking system that depends on keeping the public in the dark about the condition of its financial institutions?
Let me also make clear that supporters of this legislation are strongly opposed to a watered-down version of the bill – which, incidentally, would only increase public suspicion that someone is hiding something.
If the Federal Reserve Transparency Act passes and the audit takes place, the American people will have achieved a great victory. If the legislation fails, more and more Americans will begin to wonder what the Fed could be so anxious to keep hidden, and the pressure for transparency will simply intensify. A recent poll finds 75 percent of Americans already in favor of auditing the Fed. The writing is on the wall.
At the same time, as we hear this objection repeated time and again, we might wonder just how independent the Fed really is, what with its chairman up for reappointment by the president every four years. Have these critics never heard of the political business cycle? Fed chairmen have been known to ingratiate themselves into the president’s favor close to election time by means of loose monetary policy and the false (and temporary) prosperity it brings about. Let us not insult Americans’ intelligence by pretending this phenomenon does not exist.
The Fed enjoys a government-granted monopoly on the creation of legal-tender money. It is not an unreasonable imposition for Americans to demand to know about the activities of such an institution. It is common sense.
It won't. Talk is cheap. We don't need idle chatter, we need passage of HR 1207, which calls for a complete audit of the Federal Reserve and removes many significant barriers towards transparency of our monetary system.
“While I recognize the importance of accountability in the operations of the Federal Reserve, I strongly believe that monetary decisions should be made independent of political influence or motives. “
Uh, Diane, is that why employees of Goldman Sachs refer to the Federal Reserve as it’s D.C. office?
““Oxley/Sorbanes, to my recollection, was an attempt to cut down some on the ignorance defense.”
That regulation also has proved to be counterproductive and harmful to our prosperity. It killed the IPO market.”
Yep, O/S murdered the IPO market. A horrible law. But what would you expect from that old bolshevic Sarbanes? It’s like any bill with Kennedy’s name on it, a disaster.
“Talk is cheap. We don’t need idle chatter, we need passage of HR 1207, which calls for a complete audit of the Federal Reserve and removes many significant barriers towards transparency of our monetary system. “
B U M P
The Fed can create money by buying anything at all.
Have you ever borrowed money? You created money from debt.
What do you think of a debt-free, government-issued, fiat currency like Lincoln’s Greenback?
What benefit do you imagine that would give us?
“I don’t think the market needs any help from congress. What is your point?”
Then you misunderstand free market capitalism. It requires laws that protect the rights of property and tort law to enable trust in commerce. So, yes, it does need a limited amount of ‘help’.
Money and banking is also a matter of trust. Ideally, money should be a stable and consistent measure of value. A central bank is not required for this to happen, but it can be an enabler.
” I don’t want congress or the fed meddling with the markets.”
The Federal reserve policy should be stable value of money. Nothing more.
‘Meddling’ to support that goal is ok, meddling to try to micro-manage economic cycles or bail out institutions - not ok.
“Once again, why not have every part of our government run by a secretive bunch of elites ...”
Are you talking about CIA, the Supreme Court? No? The Fed?
You mean that group that testifies to Congress every 6 months, has a yearly audit and has the meeting minutes published 6 weeks after each meeting?
It’s no more ‘secretive’ than your average school board IMHO.
“Why vote? Eh? You like secretive organizations running everything? You would prefer that to congess?”
I would prefer a non-political organization determining the money supply. God standard, a bunch of bankers, a computer program - any of those choices is preferable to politicians misusing the supply of money.
“If independence is good, how about they can’t mess with our money supply eh?”
Because ‘money supply’ is not something you or anyone owns. I would certainly support Congressional legislation that dictates that the Fed cannot mess with our money supply but instead have one and only one goal - the maintenance of a stable value of the dollar.
“Its a pretty obvious principle that a balance of power is a good thing and that some people have to know what other government-granted power-holders are doing with their power.” - It’s obvious that much of the argumentation vis a vis the Federal Reserve consists of strawman arguments.
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