Call for Fed Audit Prior to Vote on Bernanke Reappointment

12/06/09 Stockholm, Sweden – In a letter to US Senate members dated December 3rd, a coalition of leaders with diverse political leanings indicated “that the Federal Reserve should be held accountable to taxpayers”, and requested to “delay action on Mr. Bernanke’s reappointment until an audit of the Fed’s books takes place”.

More details are available from The Daily Bail in its coverage of the coalition for a Fed audit before the Bernanke vote.

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December 3, 2009

Dear Members of the U.S. Senate:

In the last two years, the Federal Reserve Board has lent several trillion dollars to banks and other private companies, financial and non-financial institutions through a series of special lending facilities. The total amount of loans made through facilities exceeds the annual budget of the United States. In addition, it guaranteed trillions of dollars of various assets and also made hundreds of billions of dollars available to several foreign central banks through currency swap arrangements.

At this point, neither the public nor members of Congress has any information about who benefited from these loans, guarantees, and swap arrangements. There is no information available on the specific terms of the loans – the interest rate charged, the collateral posted, and whether or not they were repaid. There is no information available on how it was decided who would qualify for the Fed’s help and who would be denied assistance.

Almost three quarters of the members of the House of Representatives have co-sponsored a bill calling for an audit of the Federal Reserve Board. This audit will allow Congress to assess how the Fed, under the leadership of its chairman Ben Bernanke, performed in this crisis and whether it acted appropriately in its disbursement of an enormous amount of money and guarantees.

Without this audit, Congress lacks the information it needs to evaluate Mr. Bernanke’s performance. Therefore the Senate should delay action on Mr. Bernanke’s reappointment until an audit of the Fed’s books takes place, the results are made available to the Congress and Mr. Bernanke answers a serious inquiry into the actions he took.

Sincerely,

Ryan Alexander, president, Taxpayers for Common Sense

Chris Bowers, founder, OpenLeft

Dean Baker, co-director, Center for Economic and Policy Research

Robert Borosage, co-director, Campaign for America’s Future

Danielle Brian, executive director, Project On Government Oversight

Mark Calabria, director of financial regulation studies, Cato Institute

Mark Cohen, executive director, Government Accountability Project

Tom DeWeese, president, American Policy Center

Tyler Durden, founder, Zero Hedge

Sandra Fabry, executive director, Center for Fiscal Accountability

James Kenneth Galbraith, economist

Adam Green, co-founder, Progressive Change Campaign Committee

George Goehl, executive director, National People’s Action

Jane Hamsher, founder, FireDogLake

Gary Kalman, Washington director, Public Interest Research Group

Matt Kibbe, president, FreedomWorks

Grover Norquist, president, Americans for Tax Reform

Duane Parde, president, National Taxpayers Union

Aaron Swartz, co-founder, Progressive Change Campaign Committee

Phyllis Schlafly, president, Eagle Forum

John Tate, president, Campaign for Liberty

John Taylor, CEO, National Community Reinvestment Coalition

Stephanie Taylor, co-founder, Progressive Change Campaign Committee

Robert Weissman, president, Public Citizen

John Whitehead, president, The Rutherford Institute

SOURCE Campaign for America’s Future

Rocky Vega

Rocky Vega is publisher of The Daily Reckoning. Previously, he was founding publisher of UrbanTurf and RFID Update, which he operated from Brazil, Chile, and Puerto Rico, and associate publisher of FierceFinance. He specialized in direct marketing at MBI, facilitated MIT Sloan School of Management programs, and has been featured on CBS. Vega graduated with honors from Harvard University, where he was on the board of Let’s Go Publications and directed business programs involving McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, and Harvard Business School faculty. He is also enrolled at the Stockholm School of Economics.

View articles by Rocky Vega

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• August 5, 2011 -- The Debt Supercycle

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