RSS
Home
NYC Congressional Delegation in Minority in Opposing Federal Reserve Audit
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
.jpg)
Rep. Carolyn Maloney still has Fed chairman Ben Bernanke's back (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
This week, the number of co-sponsors for H.R. 1207 – otherwise known as the Federal Reserve Transparency Act – reached 224. With 435 members in the House of Representatives, a majority of the House nominally supports Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Federal Reserve.
Moreover, 36 of the 71 members of the House Financial Services Committee are now co-sponsors, meaning there is a very good chance that the bill could get voted out of committee and go before the full House for passage.
Conspicuously absent from this majority are any members of the New York City congressional delegation. As I noted in a previous column, there are 6 members of the Financial Services Committee from New York City and Long Island, and not one of them has yet to sign on as a co-sponsor of this increasingly popular reform.
As my previous column also noted, it’s easy to understand why our local representatives are reluctant to support greater government transparency, once you follow the money. Many of them owe their political careers to the financial largess of the major Wall Street banks, who in turn control the Federal Reserve and directly benefit from its policies. Nevertheless, the pressure on our congressional delegation to get on board the transparency bandwagon must be growing, as their position becomes both politically and morally indefensible.
There has never been an audit in the 95-year history of the Federal Reserve, and its policies and actions are shrouded in secrecy. The Fed has refused a request from Bloomberg News under the Freedom of Information Act to disclose the recipients of trillions of dollars in government-backed loans from the Troubled Asset Relief Program and similar “emergency” programs.
According to Bloomberg, "The Federal Reserve so far is refusing to disclose loan recipients or reveal the collateral they are taking in return." The Fed argues that it can withhold “internal” memos as well as commercial and trade secrets information. Bloomberg has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, demanding the information.
The Fed’s Board of Governors has refused to comply with Bloomberg’s FOIA requests. Moreover, the Fed’s regional Reserve Banks argue that they are private institutions beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act.
In response to questions from Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL) recently, Fed Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman testified she could not account for “$1 trillion-plus that the Fed extended and put on its balance sheet since last September…”
An email to Bloomberg by Coleman’s office claimed, “By law, we are the Office of Inspector General for the Board of Governors only… Consistent with our authority, we cannot conduct a direct audit of Reserve Bank operations.”
A majority of the House of Representatives wants to change that. New York City’s congressional representatives, on the other hand, prefer the status quo.
I guess they didn’t get the White House memo about “change we can believe in.”
Related Articles:
Comments
