Barney Frank Say Ron Paul’s Audit The Fed Bill Will Pass In October
Courtesy of Mish
Occasionally, even the most hopeless of politicians get something right. Here is stunning proof:
Barney Frank:
I have been pushing for more openness from the Fed. I want to restrict the powers of the Federal Reserve. First of all, the Fed will be the major losers of power if we are successful, as I believe we will be, setting up a financial product protection commission.
The Federal Reserve is now charged with protecting consumers. They were supposed to do subprime mortgage restrictions.
Congress in 1994 gave the Fed powers to ban subprime mortgages. Alan Greenspan refused to do it. They had the power to ban credit card abuses. Under Greenspan they did nothing. Under Bernanke they started but only after Congress acted.
That’s one of the reasons why in the new consumer protection agency, we will take away from the Federal reserve the power to go consumer protection.
Secondly, they have has since 1932 a right under Herbert Hoover to intervene in the economy whenever they could. Last September, the Federal Reserve they were going to advance $82 billion to AIG.
I was kind of surprised and said Mr Bernanke do you have $82 billion? Mr. Bernanke replied I have $800 billion and under section 13.3 of the Federal Reserve Act they can lend anything they want.
We are going to curtail that lending power. We are going to put some restrictions on it.
Finally we will subject them to a complete audit. I have been working with Ron Paul, who is the main sponsor of that bill. He agrees that we don’t want to have the audit appear as if influences monetary policy as that would be inflationary.
One of the things the audit will show you is what the Federal Reserve buys itself. And that will be made public, but not instantly because if it was made instantly people would be trading off it, so the data would be released after a time period of several months, enough time so it will not be market sensitive.
This will probably pass in October.
This is clearly not perfect. However, it is a step in the right direction. The only reason it it may happen is people are overwhelmingly in support of it. Change is possible, over time, at least occasionally, if public opinion is solidly behind something.
If you have not yet done so, or even if you have (please do it again) Speak Out – Audit the Fed, Then End It!
