Sanders Sold Out on Audit The Fed Amendment

M

Mike Mitrosky

Verified User
Im very disappointed with Bernie Sanders.. He introduced the S.604 legislation into the Chris Dodd bill and theres been incredible resistance by everybody (except the legislature as a whole) They even had Rahm Emanuel the other day lobbying against it..

Now last night he pulls out the S.604 language from the bill (which is the language that ensures a REAL AUDIT of the federal reserve) and replaced it with bullshit.

One hour ago, magically Obama and the white house now turn around and say theyre all in favor of the new fed audit...

Its a lovely example of how the people get thwarted time and time again..

already a veto proof majority in the House.
32 co sponsors in the senate... a good chance of getting it passed and now more bullshit..
But It should be expected.. this same nonsense went on in the house, a senator or two has done some BS as well.. and Ill predict that if they get the language of S.604 back in the bill that OBama will veto it.. and then the veto will get overrided.. and then the courts will tie it up..

Doesnt anybody wonder WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY TRYING TO HIDE?

 
Mr. Spite said:
Whoops.

Seems like reality isn't hysterical enough.
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To be fair, the expectation was that the Sanders Amendment would be voted on yesterday, but the vote was postponed to allow Senator Bennett, who is likely to lose in his upcoming primary for not being conservative enough, to return to D.C. to vote on the amendment to prevent him from being hammered in his primary for not voting on it.

That's why these conspiracy claims are bubbling up.
 
I stand corrected:

The effort to audit the Fed got a big boost last night when Senator Bernie Sanders reached an agreement with Chris Dodd, the chair of the banking committee. Under the deal, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) would undertake a full audit of the special facilities created by the Fed since December of 2007. GAO would make the findings from its audit available to the Congressional leadership. It would also make most of the details of the Fed's transactions available to the public.

To cope with the economic crisis, the Fed created 13 different special lending facilities. At their peak last year, these facilities had lent out more than $2 trillion. The Fed has only disclosed aggregate data about these facilities, telling us how much each one lent out month by month. It has refused to disclose any information about the specific loans and beneficiaries. This means that we have no way of knowing how much Citigroup, Goldman Sachs or anyone else benefited from these facilities.

Under the terms of the deal, by December 1 of this year the Fed will have posted on its website all the loans that were part of these facilities. Any interested journalist, academic, blogger or generic snoop can read through the data and find exactly how much money Goldman Sachs got, at what interest rate, with what collateral and when they paid it back. This is a big victory.
The Fed had previously argued that disclosing this information would compromise its independence. It complained that the having their borrowings made public would put a stigma on dealing with the Fed, so that banks and other financial companies would be reluctant to use special lending facilities in future crises.

Of course these arguments made no sense. This is why a majority of senators stood behind Sanders and why the House of Representatives attached an audit bill sponsored by representatives Ron Paul and Alan Grayson to its financial reform bill. The basic point is simple: this is our money; we have a right to know what the Fed did with it.

Sanders did make some compromises. The audit has an arbitrary cutoff date of December 2007. The special facilities date from the summer of 2007. It also only has the audit as a one-off proposition, rather than establishing GAO audits of Fed operations as an ongoing principle. The compromise also explicitly exempts open market operations - the Fed's daily buying and selling of short-term assets to control interest rates - from GAO scrutiny.

These concessions are unfortunate, the Fed is a creation of Congress and for that reason it should be subject to the same investigative procedures as any other federal agency, but they certainly are secondary compared with getting a full accounting of the money lent out through the special facilities. It is also important to note that in one very important way the Sanders compromise goes beyond the original Paul-Grayson language. Under the compromise, the information about the lending facilities will be made fully public where everyone can scrutinize it. The original bill would just have this information made available to the relevant congressional committees. They would then have to make a further decision about what information, if any, would be made public.

There has been a long ongoing battle with the Fed over its policy of excessive secrecy. Over the years, Congress has pushed back at efforts to treat the Fed as a holy temple outside of democratic control. It has made progress at holding the Fed accountable through measures like requiring the semi-annual Humphrey-Hawkins testimony by the Fed chair before Congress, the release of full transcripts of Fed open market meetings (with a 5-year lag), and now this public audit of its special facilities. There will be further battles and we have a long way to go before the Fed is as democratically accountable as it should be, but the Sanders compromise is a big step forward.
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Still, I don't know that "sell out" is appropriate under the circumstances.


http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/07/unwashed_masses_1_fed_0_sanders_scores/
 
I know im going to hijack my own thread but...

I went to your link.. and found this article from robert reiche.. I had to share.

Robert Reiche was labor ssec under clinton and hes the guy who used to say that the dirty little secret in Washington DC is that the federal reserve dictates domestic policy...

And here he is defending apple when the banks are the real problem

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.co...he_problem_wall_streets_big_banks_are/?ref=c1
 
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