The new, improved 'Eliot Ness of Wall Street,' has just asked all Americans for their help in his efforts to stop the confirmation of Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Congressman Alan Grayson wants a simple question answered: What Banks or individuals were given over $ 2 trillion dollars of tax payer dollars in 'secret loans' out the back door of the Federal Reserve.
Where is our money? What did you do with our money Mr. Bernanke, and who the hell are you to tell the American taxpayer that it is none of our business? Oh, the temerity of it all. How dare a young upstart from the House of Representatives have the 'balls' to go after the 'man behind the curtain' who was more responsible for the great 'Heist of 2008' than any other person, with the exception of his predecessor, Alan Greenspan.
Congressman Grayson is asking that people contact their Senators to voice their support in his efforts for Senator Bernie Sanders Bill - S604 (The Sunshine Auditing Act) to insist on an audit of the Federal Reserve. There are now 300 co-sponsors for RS 1204 to Audit the Federal Reserve in the House bill. Below is some additional information that Congressman Grayson is looking to find out:
It's important that the Senate hear from you. That's why we've launched UnmaskTheFed.com, an easy on line tool to let you contact your Senators.
Visit UnmaskTheFed.com and ask your Senators to vote NO on Ben Bernanke's confirmation until the Federal Reserve comes clean on what it has done with OUR money.
It would simply be unreasonable for the Committee to confirm Bernanke to another term given how little is known about what he has actually done. Remember, Ben Bernanke didn't see the crisis coming and has added $1.2 trillion to the Fed's balance sheet through covert bailouts.
The Senate cannot hope to have a full debate over his record if nothing is public. That's why I'm asking them to refuse to move forward until Bernanke releases the following:
1. Information that Bloomberg reporter Mark Pittman has requested via a Freedom of Information Act Request on the Bear Stearns rescue and that the Federal Reserve is contesting in the courts.
2. Information I requested in February on which institutions received the additional $1.2 trillion, how much each institution received, and what was promised in return.
3. All Federal Reserve documents that went to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office relating to the Bank of America/Merrill Lynch merger in which potentially illegal and coercive activity might have occurred, as well as all Federal Reserve documents relating to the lawsuit pursued by Merrill Lynch shareholders in the US District court for the Southern District of New York.
4. Transcripts of all Open Market Meeting Minutes up to and including that of September, 2009.
5. Full disclosure of all terms and conditions of all off-balance sheet Fed transactions in the past three years.
It's the Senate's responsibility under the Constitution to properly question and debate any of the President's nominees. Without these documents, I don't see any way they can live up to that responsibility. Help me make sure they do.
We deserve to know what the Fed did with OUR money. Visit UnmaskTheFed.com and tell your Senators to vote NO on Ben Bernanke's confirmation until the Fed comes clean.
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
I've got to the website and signed on today, and I urge you to do the same. For those of you who do not realize just how Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner simply stood by, without lifting a finger to stop the 'financial meltdown' and great 'Heist of 2008' from occurring here is some additional information:
During the years of the housing boom, complaints failed to move the Fed, the sole federal regulator with authority over the businesses. Under a policy quietly formalized in 1998, the Fed refused to police lenders' compliance with federal laws protecting borrowers, despite repeated urging by consumer advocates across the country and even by other government agencies.
The hands-off policy, which the Fed reversed earlier this month, created a double standard. Banks and their subprime affiliates made loans under the same laws, but only the banks faced regular federal scrutiny. Under the policy, the Fed did not even investigate consumer complaints against the affiliates.
"In the prime market, where we need supervision less, we have lots of it. In the subprime market, where we badly need supervision, a majority of loans are made with very little supervision," former Fed Governor Edward M. Gramlich, a critic of the hands-off policy, wrote in 2007. "It is like a city with a murder law, but no cops on the beat."
Between 2004 and 2007, bank affiliates made more than 1.1 million subprime loans, around 13 percent of the national total, federal data show. Thousands ended in foreclosure, helping to spark the crisis and leaving borrowers and investors to deal with the consequences.
The Federal Reserve is best known as an economic shepherd, responsible for adjusting interest rates to keep prices steady and unemployment low. But since its creation, the Fed has held a second job as a banking regulator, one of four federal agencies responsible for keeping banks healthy and protecting their customers. Congress also authorized the Fed to write consumer protection rules enforced by all the agencies. During the boom, however, the Fed left those powers largely unused. It imposed few new constraints on mortgage lending and pulled back from enforcing rules that did exist.
snip...
Throughout the lending boom, consumer advocates trooped regularly to the Fed's monumental marble headquarters on Constitution Avenue to offer specific accounts of abuses in financial transactions. But what seemed powerful to advocates often was dismissed as anecdotal by regulators.
"The response we were getting from most of the governors and the staff was, 'All you're able to do is point to the stories of individual consumers, you're not able to show the macroeconomic effect,' " said Patricia McCoy, a law professor at the University of Connecticut who served on the Fed's consumer advisory council from 2002 to 2004. "That is a classic Fed mindset. If you cannot prove that it is a broad-based problem that threatens systemic consequences, then you will be dismissed."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
This is a very long article about the Federal Reserve, and just how they continually ignored what was happening on Wall Street with the 'endless gambling casino from hell' that led us to where we are today.
Not only do I feel that Ben Bernanke should not be reconfirmed as Chairmen of the Federal Reserve, I think he should be 'dismissed' - just as he dismissed the millions of complaints that came to his office from various people though out regulatory centers in our nation about what was happening during the sub-prime meltdown.
This 'meme' that we are all being sold now - that somehow it was Ben Bernanke that 'saved us from a catastrophic meltdown' is the biggest bunch of bullshit that is out there as far as propaganda goes. No body can even get a straight answer from Timothy Geithner as to where the TARP money was sent to. All your have to do is to Google Elizabeth Warren to find that out.
Or read about what Neil Barofsky, the special Inspector General has to say about the Federal Reserve:
The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve lied to the American public last fall when they said that the first nine banks to receive government bailout funds were healthy, a government watchdog states in a new report released today.
In a new report obtained by ABC News, the chief watchdog for the government's $700 billion bailout program refutes the Treasury Department's claim that banks cannot be asked to account for their use of taxpayer money. The chief watchdog for the government's $700 billion bailout program says federal officials were trying to contain the worst financial crisis in decades last year with the Troubled Asset Relief Program, but they had concerns about the bank institutions' financial health.
Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), says that despite multiple statements on Oct. 14 of last year that these nine banks were healthy and only receiving government funds for the good of the country's economy, federal officials knew otherwise.
"Contemporaneous reports and officials' statements to SIGTARP during this audit indicate that there were concerns about the health of several of the nine institutions at that time and, as detailed in this report, that their overall selection was far more a result of the officials' belief in their importance to a system that was viewed as being vulnerable to collapse than concerns about their individual health and viability," Barofsky says.
http://abcnews.go.com/...
Both Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner have a great deal to answer to, and I support Congressmen Alan Grayson in his efforts to provide Senator Bernie Sanders with our 'voices' to be heard, to uncover the lies, and find out where the hell our money is now.
Here is the link: http://unmaskthefed.com/
And an additional link: http://unmaskthefed.com/
Why in the hell should we continue to reward 'the epic failure' of The Federal Reserve, when Ben Bernanke was right at the top of the pile of shit that through millions and millions of people out of the jobs, out of their homes, and lost millions of dollars in retirement funds?
Thanks.
UPDATE: Thanks for recommending people. We have been given the 'gift' of a true Democrat, a man with a 'conscious' - a man of the people who may, as he says 'never got the memo' to just go along to get along.
Grayson often says 'that I am just saying what other people are thinking in America, but no one else is saying in Congress' and I believe that it may well be Congressman Grayson who leads the ultimate fight to uncover the greatest 'Heist' in the history of our nation, and if this does happen, then we might just have a chance at actual real 'financial reform' that 'certain people' are now moving in to completely water down and kill, even before this reform has a chance to occur. We cannot let that happen no matter what, because Congressman Grayson is demanding that Accountability, Responsibility, and Credibility must start from the top down in our Government, and Chairman Ben Bernanke should not be confirmed until he starts providing 'an honest and open transparent report' to the American people and accepting responsibility for his part in the financial meltdown.
NO MORE FREE PASSES FOR LIES, COVER UPS AND CORRUPTION.
UPDATE 2: Thanks to alpolitics for reminding me to put up the link for Act Blue for Grayson: https://secure.actblue.com/...