Naomi Wolf, blogger and author of such New York Times bestsellers as The Beauty Myth, The End of America and Give Me Liberty, has added her name to the list of over 5,000 people endorsing Alan Grayson’s campaign to audit the Federal Reserve.
Also endorsing Grayson’s efforts is OMB Watch, the nonprofit research and advocacy organization which seeks to increase transparency and accountability surrounding the Federal budget.
Dean Baker writes at the Guardian in support of the bill and the need for transparency at the Fed:
[I]t is not possible to find out in detail how much money Goldman Sachs borrowed, for example, at what interest rate, and which assets it posted as collateral. The Fed has explicitly refused to make information about specific borrowers public. In fact, the inspector general who has the responsibility for overseeing the Fed told congress that she does not have this information. Apparently the Fed doesn’t even trust its inspector general with information on its lending practices.
It is difficult to understand the rationale for this secrecy. There may be times where it is necessary for America’s central bank to lend money to a bank without immediately making the information public in order to avoid a panic. However, it is difficult to understand why this information cannot be made available weeks or even months later. After all, this money does not belong to the Fed – it belongs to us.
The proposal for a GAO audit of the Fed is a first step towards reasserting democratic control over this institution. In many respects, the Fed has more direct control over the direction of the economy than the president or congress, yet it carries through its actions largely outside of the public’s view.
The Federal Reserve Transparency Act currently has 181 cosponsors. You can add your name in support here. Your name will be circulated to members of Congress in order to solicit more cosponsors for the bill.
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oh good, the more the merrier!
Jane,
Thank you again for this action alert for better fiscal policy. This is wonderful work.
As always, Jane, thanks for doing the leg-work on this and giving me the chance to participate.
Awesome! I recently read Give Me Liberty and thought it was a fantastic book — I gave a copy to my sister-in-law who teaches 8th grade history.
OT — does anybody know about the conference call with Obama (Organizing for America) going on right now on healthcare?
I got the call to join on my cell phone, but something went wrong and I wasn’t able to actually join in.
Did the Fed give the banks money to speculate on the price of oil which explains all the oil tankers just sitting there. Did the banks loan money to oil speculators?
High oil prices do hurt the economy.
Not really they are doing something they know we won’t like.
At what rate of interest will we be paid back and under what time frame? You can’t get a home loan without agreeing to those conditions up front.
Agreed that we have a right to know what the Fed is doing. However, the shareholders of the banks have a more pressing and inviolable claim and need to know. If I owned bank shares, I’d want to know what kind of shape it was in.
Everybody in those upper strata always seems to forget who they are working for.
At some point, these executives become more like clerks trying to hide a shortage in their cash drawer. At least the clerks will often pony up the difference themselves to avoid getting written up.
Jane, This is why I love FDL!
We take action.
Thank you,
es
In the 9th grade civics sense, I suppose you mean, ‘they work for us.’
Legitimacy is derived from the consent of the governed, etc.
Maybe it is time to do a little review of this presumption, and back it up with some real world evidence?
In what sense can it be demonstrated that ‘those upper strata” are working for anyone but themselves?
Like Fox Mulder, libloggers want to believe that the system they were taught about in 9th grade is basically sound, just needs a few tweaks here and there, and the Democratic Party is just the guy to do it!
maybe one day the evidentiary basis for this nostrum will be laid out for us doubters, but it seems to work better as one of those catechisms that is best left unquestioned.
The Fed and Secrecy go together. Whatcha gonna do about it? Threaten to do anything but support the Party of the Least Worst? not likely.
The tiger did not go crazy, it just went tiger, as Chris Rock says.
so why, again, do we have the ‘right’ to ask the tiger to start chewing cud and consent to be milked every morning?
Seconded.
Responding too late as normal.
I was actualy talking about shareholders, who are the owners of the corporations.
I remember when Enron went down the tubes, it was revealed that Kenny Boy talked to Some Bigshot in the administration about how badly hee needed help. He was assured of confidentiality by said Bigshot. My question was always, why wasn’t he asked what he had disclosed to the shareholders. It was to them that he owed the duty to disclose.
It is continuing with , for example, the relaxing of “mark to market” rules. There has been a term out there to describe some mortgage products as “Liar Loans”. This is an attempt to blame the victim for his using rules the elite promulgated.
When do we get to call common stock “Liar Shares”? That’s what they are now.