Sad Day For America: H.R. 1207 – Audit the Fed Bill Has Been Gutted
Federal Reserve Policy Audit Legislation ‘Gutted,’ Paul Says
By Bob Ivry
Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) — Representative Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who has called for an end to the Federal Reserve, said legislation he introduced to audit monetary policy has been “gutted” while moving toward a possible vote in the Democratic-controlled House.
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, Paul said today.
“There’s nothing left, it’s been gutted,” he said in a telephone interview. “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.”
The Fed, led by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, has come under greater congressional scrutiny while attempting to end the financial crisis by bailing out financial firms and more than doubling its balance sheet to $2.16 trillion in the past year. The central bank is also buying $1.25 trillion of securities tied to home loans.
Paul, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, said Mel Watt, a Democrat from North Carolina, has eliminated “just about everything” while preparing the legislation for formal consideration. Watt is chairman of the panel’s domestic monetary policy and technology subcommittee.
Lew Rockwell weighs on in the fraud:
…. no surprise: Ron’s historic HR 1207, to audit the Fed, has been gutted by the powers-that-were in the house. If you are a constituent of Barney Frank (D-Big Banks) or Mel Watts (D-Fed) or any of the rest of them, by all means write and call to protest. (If you are not a constituent, your communication goes into the wastebasket, so there is no point in writing. Petitions and form letters are also useless, even to your own congressman.) Not that you will have the standing of even a very junior banker. You are merely a tax victim, after all. But what really counts is not the actions of the petty and not-so-petty crooks who comprise the congress, but the changes taking place in the hearts and minds of the American people and people around the world. There Ron Paul has won an historic victory, no matter what the official criminal class does. The Fed today stands on far shakier ground than at any time since 1913. Let’s have an earthquake. End the Fed!
PS: Need I note that Ron was taken to the mountaintop by these creeps, and offered rewards if only he would go along? When will the Dems learn, and the Repubs too, that they are dealing with a man of iron principles, and iron will, for liberty, sound money, and peace, who cannot be bought, nor influenced for evil? Never, I guess. To both government parties, he is an alien — a diamond in a dump.
It’s a sad day for Liberty and another victory for coercion, taxation, fraud, and theft.
Source: http://caps.fool.com/…
The Secretary of the Treasury, a very senior cabinet position, is appointed by the President and meets with the President in the Oval Office weekly. The governors of the Federal Reserve Board are also appointed by the President. Both cabinet officers and Federal Reserve governors are confirmed by the US Senate. There are supposed to be seven governors; politics has purposefully limited this to five throughout the three-year financial crisis period.
The Federal Reserve governors are supposed to serve staggered 14-year terms with all seven seats filled. Instead, we have been governed by the present five member politically configured board.
The original seven governor construction was designed to insulate them from political pressure for very good reasons. Decades of monetary history throughout the world have disclosed what happens when political influence on a central bank intensifies. The Weimar Republic and Zimbabwe are evidence of the worst inflationary effects of politics. The Great Depression in the US and the nearly two decade deflationary recession in Japan demonstrate that monetary policy is not only inflation-prone. When central banks are under political influence you can get fire or you can get ice.