"There’s nothing left, it’s been gutted. This is not a partisan issue. People all over the country want to know what the Fed is up to, and this legislation was supposed to help them do that." -US Representative Ron Paul, R TX.
HR 1207, the bill in the House that allows for a full audit of the Federal Reserve, has been ripped apart. Want real transparency? As of now, you won't find it here.
Let's forget about the upcoming elections to look at the one important issue for a moment. More below the fold.
The bill, with 308 co-sponsors, has been stripped of provisions that would remove Fed exemptions from audits of transactions with foreign central banks, monetary policy deliberations, transactions made under the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee and communications between the Board, the reserve banks and staff.
Very little ever comes out of Congress that is truly bipartisan. Yet the movement to audit the federal reserve was the exception. In the House, its sponsor is radical free marketeer Ron Paul, a Republican. In the Senate, self-avowed socialist and independent Bernie Sanders has sponsored the sister legislation, S 604. This bill is probably the definition of trans-partisan.
Many thought that the Federal Reserve would finally get a full audit, especially after it has avoided releasing the names of banks that received billions of dollars from special emergency programs after a FOIA request by Bloomberg News. Apparently the Fed doesn't believe that the court system has more authority than it has.
This is especially significant when we consider the actions of the Federal Reserve in regard to our economic recession. During the Bush years, Alan Greenspan had artificially kept interest rates low to finance a boom economy after 9/11. Of course, every boom must bust.
But we thought we had a moment where the little man could finally look inside the big mess of our corporate government. Even Rep. Alan Grayson, famed for his description of the GOP's healthcare plan, had fought whole-heartedly to bring Democrats to support the measure.
This isn't new. The last substantive measure to expand oversight over the Federal Reserve was watered down to irrelevance by Senator Richard Shelby. Just recently Senator Corker(R-TN) and Senator Merkey(D-OR) sponsored their own, much less thorough, legislation to audit the Federal Reserve.
Still, it is disturbing to think that government is above the will of the people. So President Obama's administration can release the visitor logs to the White House, it doesn't matter. Real transparency is just allowed to slip away.
By the way, notice the details on the representative who actually gutted HR 1207 in the first place (from the Bloomberg article):
Keith Kelly, a spokesman for [Representative Mel] Watt, declined to comment and said Watt wasn’t immediately available for an interview. Watt’s district includes Charlotte, headquarters of Bank of America Corp., the biggest U.S. lender.
Add another tally for corporatism.
EDIT: BTW, there is one ray of hope. Ron Paul will probably reintroduce the original text of the bill on the floor as an amendment. If your representative doesn't vote for the amendment, they aren't really for the legislation they signed onto; they are just posturing. Tell them to back the amendment to change the bill back to its original text!