Thursday, February 12, 2015

Panicked Fed Governors Desperate to Keep Their Machinations Secret


Panicked
Fed Governors Desperate to Keep Their Machinations
Secret

By
Duncan Clark

The stage is set for one of the
most important legislative battles of the 114th
Congress.

On the first day of the new Congress last
month, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) reintroduced
H.R. 24, the popular “Audit the Fed” bill, a measure first
championed by former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.

Shortly
thereafter, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced the Senate
version, S. 264, with 30 co-sponsors. 

 
It
didn’t take long for the Washington Establishment to react
with outrage – maybe because they know this bill now has an
excellent chance of becoming law.

Shortly after Sen.
Paul introduced S. 264, the Wall Street Journal online, in a
column that reports on Global Central Banks, carried a
headline “Yellen Prepared to Fight a Revived ‘Audit the Fed’
Movement.”

Wall Street Journal reporter Jon Hilsenrath
noted that former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke had strenuously
resisted such a proposal and that current Fed Chairwoman Janet
Yellen recently went on record saying that she would
“forcefully make the case” against it.

Surveying the
opposing forces, the Journal reported, “Ms. Yellen will have
President Obama on her side again if the bill gets new
life.  She will also have the central bank’s 12 regional
bank presidents, an influential but little seen force in
Congress with strong connections in the deep-pocketed business
and banking communities around the
country.”

Apparently, the Fed isn’t taking any chances.


In the past few days, nervous Fed Governors have
fanned out across America to denounce the effort on TV and in
high-profile speeches.

Philadelphia Fed President
Charles Plosser warned that it would empower Congress “to
audit and question monetary policy decisions in real
time.” 

 
"Audit the Fed"
sponsor Sen. Rand Paul
(R-KY)
Apparently forgetting the
secretive and intensely political deals the Fed made with big
banks during the 2008 financial crisis, Plosser added with a
straight face, “This runs the risk of monetary policy
decisions being based on short-term political considerations
instead of the longer-term health of the economy.

Of
course, it’s preposterous for the Fed to suggest it is not
"political" while simultaneously lobbying elected officials at
full tilt, including huddling in secret meetings with members
of the Democrat Party.

Underscoring how nervous
Washington’s power players are, Alan Blinder [appropriate
name], a former Fed Vice Chairman who is currently advising
Hillary Clinton, penned an insulting op-ed in the January 28
print edition of the Wall Street Journal, headlined “Beware of
Woolly-Minded Attacks on the Fed.” [Beware of Americans
breaking free from Debt-Slavery at the hands of the
Rothschild-owned Fed!]

Blinder, a Princeton University
economics professor, specifically targeted the “Audit the Fed”
proposal, calling it “an old standby that has been rejected by
Congress several times.”

Blinder is deliberately
twisting the facts.  Let’s review the
record.

Former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) introduced the
original “Audit
the Fed
” bill in the 112th Congress, and it passed the
House of Representatives by an overwhelming majority of
327-98 on July 25, 2012.  In the 113th Congress, Rep.
Paul Broun (R-GA) reintroduced Dr. Paul’s bill and once again
it passed the House of Representatives on September 17, 2014
by a crushing margin of 333-92.

On both
occasions, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) employed
his usual obstructionist tactics and refused to schedule the
popular bill for a Senate vote.

So Professor Blinder is
lying when he argues Congress has rejected the bill.  The
truth is that one senator, Harry Reid (acting at the behest of
Barack Obama and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke), scuttled the
legislation.

 
It is likely that
H.R. 24 will once again pass the House of Representatives by
an overwhelming margin.  If it achieves just 75% of its
prior House support, the bill will still enjoy a veto-proof
majority.  Then the action will move to the Senate, where
Harry Reid, now the Minority Leader, will no longer be able to
bury it.

The Sound Money Defense League is firing up
grassroots pressure to persuade Senate Banking Committee
Chairman Richard Shelby (R-AL) and especially Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to schedule a vote. 


Your support for the Sound
Money Defense League
is needed to make sure this
happens.

Senate Democrats, possibly joined by some
Establishment Republicans, could still derail the bill by
mounting a filibuster.  In that case, the bill would need
60 votes to pass.

Even if the bill passes the Senate,
it is certain that President Obama will follow the advice of
Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen and veto the bill.  Congress
could only override the veto by a 2/3 vote.

Achieving
that will be a challenge, especially with the Fed using any
means necessary to defeat the bill.  Get ready for the
Big Banks (remember they literally own the Fed) and the
Washington politicians to flood the media with predictions of
economic doom if the bill passes.  Alan Greenspan, Ben
Bernanke, and Janet Yellen will all play a major propaganda
role.

 
The
key to success is to fire up enough grassroots pressure that
the bill receives bipartisan support in the Senate, as it
already has in the House.

So far, one Senate Democrat,
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D–HI), has broken ranks and signed on to
co-sponsor the bill with Sen. Paul.  With enough
grassroots pressure, more Democrats are likely to join
her. 

After all, the Federal
Reserve Transparency Act
(the bill’s formal name) is
hardly a revolutionary idea.  Congress and its accounting
arm, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), routinely
perform oversight, including audits, on federal agencies that
are a lot less powerful than the Federal Reserve.

Of
course, that’s really the point. 

The Federal
Reserve has become so powerful and so immune from critical
scrutiny that its central role in economic policymaking is
zealously hidden from public view.

That’s why this
battle is one of the most crucial fights of this
Congress.  With your support today the Sound Money
Defense League will mobilize the vital grassroots pressure
needed to defeat the power brokers in Washington and on Wall
Street.

WILL YOU HELP US?

Join
the ranks of the Sound Money Defense League with a gift of $10
or more, and we'll even send you one free silver coin (or even
4) as a symbol of Sound Money! Please do it now:

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