Fed Privately Lobbies Senate to Kill Audit; What You Can Do!
by ilene - May 4th, 2010 2:46 pm
Fed Privately Lobbies Senate to Kill Audit; What You Can Do!
Courtesy of Mish
A bill sponsored by Ron Paul and Alan Grayson to thoroughly audit the Fed, passed the House. However in a brazen move that ought to offend the sensibilities of every citizen, the Fed is lobbying Senate members to water down the bill so that it is meaningless.
The Huffington Post tells the story in Fed Privately Lobbying Against Audit.
The Federal Reserve is privately lobbying against a bipartisan Senate amendment that would open the central bank to an audit by the Government Accountability Office, according to documents distributed to Senate offices by a Fed official.
In order to obtain the documents, HuffPost agreed not to reveal the name of the Federal Reserve official who did the specific lobbying in question.
"As I mentioned, we believe that the bipartisan Corker-Merkley provision in the Dodd Bill is quite strong and addresses issues of transparency and disclosure without impinging on the independence of monetary policy," the official goes on.
Merkley teamed with Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) on an audit provision, but Merkley himself says he’d prefer to go further. "I appreciate Representative [Alan] Grayson’s concerns over accountability at the Federal Reserve. I have been a strong proponent of Fed reform and voted against the re-confirmation of Ben Bernanke because the Fed has been so lax in using its regulatory powers," Merkley said in a statement to HuffPost, responding to an analysis from Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) showing that the Senate bill did not meaningfully expand transparency.
The Fed argument is a replay of a tactic that the bank tried in the House. Instead of outright opposition, the Fed backed an amendment in the lower chamber from Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.), which the bank said would expand transparency but not interfere with monetary policy. It became clear, however, that the amendment would not expand transparency and was an attempt to defeat the audit in general. The Watt amendment was soundly defeated.
The Corker-Merkley amendment is the Senate version of the Watt amendment and the Fed is once again arguing that the broader amendment will impinge on the independence of monetary policy.
"The Sanders amendment, however, would directly interfere with monetary policy," argues the Fed official. "The amendment removes the current statutory protection for core monetary policy activities from GAO audit and would permit the GAO to
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The Fed’s Lacker: More Threats
by ilene - January 17th, 2010 2:23 pm
The Fed’s Lacker: More Threats
Courtesy of Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker
If you’ve done nothing wrong, why are you threatening people Mr. Lacker?
Lacker criticized legislation before Congress that would rescind an exemption on government audits of monetary policy and give politicians a greater say over the appointment of Fed bank directors and presidents.
“Such moves would present very serious risks to the effectiveness of monetary policy and ultimately to economic growth and stability,” Lacker said in a speech today to the Risk Management Association in Richmond, Virginia.
In a word: Why?
If The Fed has made "policy mistakes", which Lacker acknowledges, why doesn’t he want exposed to public view why those mistakes were made, who wanted them to be made and what happened as a consequence?
While the Fed has made “policy mistakes” leading up to the financial crisis, its structure has “given us a good record over the better part of three decades.”
I challenge Mr. Lacker to prove that.
To expose the entire structure of monetary policy decisions.
To "bare all."
See, I think he’s lying.
I believe that an honest examination of The Fed’s monetary policy will show that The Fed has willfully and intentionally blown asset bubbles for the last 30 years. That it has willfully and intentionally ignored risks to the economy posed by those bubbles. That despite more than 30 years of knowledge of the below graphs and facts (all drawn from The Fed’s own data!) the institution has chosen a path of knowing monetary ruin, and wishes to conceal not only the "who" but also the "why."
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It is my believe that the displayed willful and intentional ignorance of the above chart, along with an intentionally-blind eye toward the reality of compound growth in credit beyond that of GDP, will, if examined and audited, prove that The Fed has intentionally and willfully violated its lawful mandate:
The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee shall maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy’s long run potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site