* Bernanke is ready to keep printing.
* STOP DEFLATION! STOP DEFLATION! STOP DEFLATION! (Deflation would actually be a very good thing. It would reveal who is productive, and who is unproductive.)
* Saint Louis Fed Chairman James Bullard DOES NOT ANTICIPATE A DOUBLE DIP RECESSION. Let’s remember he said this. Shall we?
* Bill Ford, former Atlanta Fed Chairman, makes the same prediction — no double dip recession, though he offers some good analysis. Perhaps that’s why no longer with the Fed.
Almost 200 members of Congress who care about Federal Reserve transparency voted for this motion to recommit. Unfortunately, they found themselves in the minority.
Any legitimate objections to the audit proposal were addressed in the language of the motion to recommit. Thus, it is clear that the real reasons for opposing it are unstated and indefensible. The real reasons are that politicians like to spend money far exceeding income and it is convenient to have an enabler of this in the Federal Reserve. The easier it is for the Fed to create money, hidden from public view and accountability, the easier it is for politicians to spend that money and make sure their friends and interests are taken care of through shady political processes.
The broader reasons for supporting this entire financial regulatory reform bill are just as sinister. This is not about cracking down on big banks as some claim. Rather, this is about not wasting a crisis. This is about using a traumatic event to increase government power and control over the economy. If it was really about addressing the causes of this recession, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would have been dealt with, or abolished. Failed companies would just fail, rather than being bailed out. Instead, a permanent bailout mechanism is being established. The Fed, and its ability to control interest rates and create cheap money, would be reformed or better yet, abolished. But instead its power is being increased and this Congress refuses to even fully audit it! (Read more from iowarepublican.com)
I was disappointed last week to discover that despite his co-sponsorship of the Audit the Fed amendment, Rep. Dave Loebsack voted against its inclusion in a package of financial reforms.
The Audit the Fed amendment had 320 co-sponsors and broad bi-partisan support. The fact that Loebsack and more than 100 other co-sponsors betrayed the amendment at its decisive moment reflects the power of the Federal Reserve.
The Fed is a semi-private bank that sets interest rates by an elaborate process that ultimately amounts to printing money and thereby diluting the value of the money in our wallets, bank accounts and mattresses. (Read more from press-citizen.com)
New Jersey
John Adler – NJ-3
Bill Pascrell – NJ-8
Steven Rothman – NJ-9
Donald Payne – NJ-10
New Mexico
Martin Heinrich – NM-1
Ben Ray Lujan – NM-3
New York
Timothy Bishop – NY-1
Jerrold Nadler – NY-8
Anthony Weiner – NY-9
Scott Murphy – NY-20
Paul Tonko – NY-21
Maurice Hinchey – NY-22
Michael Arcuri – NY-24
Daniel Maffei – NY-25
Brian Higgins – NY-27
Louise Slaughter – NY-28
North Carolina
Larry Kissell – NC-8
Heath Shuler – NC-11
Brad Miller – NC-13
Ohio
Steve Driehaus – OH-1
Marcy Kaptur – OH-8
Dennis Kucinich – OH-10
Marcia Fudge – OH-11
Betty Sutton – OH-13
John Boccieri – OH-16
Tim Ryan – OH-17
Oklahoma
Dan Boren – OK-2
Oregon
David Wu – OR-1
Peter DeFazio – OR-4
Kurt Schrader – OR-5
Pennsylvania
Kathleen Dahlkemper – PA-3
Jason Altmire – PA-4
Patrick Murphy – PA-8
Michael Doyle – PA-14
Tim Holden – PA-17
Rhode Island
James Langevin – RI-2
South Carolina
John Spratt – SC-5
South Dakota
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin – SD
Tennessee
Lincoln Davis – TN-4
Bart Gordon – TN-6
Steve Cohen – TN-9
Texas
Ruben Hinojosa – TX-15
Silvestre Reyes – TX-16
Ciro Rodriguez – TX-23
Lloyd Doggett – TX-25
Solomon Ortiz – TX-27
Henry Cuellar – TX-28
Eddie Bernice Johnson – TX-30
Vermont
Peter Welch – VT
Washington
Jay Inslee – WA-1
Brian Baird – WA-3
Jim McDermott – WA-7
Adam Smith – WA-9
Last-minute maneuvering in the Senate allowed the Federal Reserve to sidestep legislation that would have exposed its interest-rate decision-making to congressional auditors.
Pressure from the Obama administration led Senate lawmakers to alter a provision pushed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) that was gaining momentum despite opposition from the Treasury and the Fed. It would have largely repealed a 32-year-old law that shields Fed monetary policy from congressional auditors.
. . . . Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, while insisting on a commitment to “openness” at the Fed, said in a letter to Congress the Sanders measure would “seriously threaten monetary policy independence, increase inflation fears and market interest rates, and damage economic stability and job creation.” (Read more from online.wsj.com)
Judge Napolitano with Ron Paul gives a good overview of the issue here.
Ron Paul explains how Sen. Bernie Sanders sells out, calls for support.
Rep. Alan Grayson: You Own the Red Roof Inn, Thanks to the Fed
The ongoing troubles at the GSEs are no secret: it is public knowledge that Fannie had a 5.38% delinquency rate at December, while Freddie just passed the 4% threshold in January; both continue to rise rapidly each month. The fact that the mortgage-bond spread has just hit a record tight is merely an ongoing artifact of the Fed’s endless meddling in the mortgage market, with the sole purpose of keeping rates artificially low, and preventing banks from being forced to take massive writedowns on their entire loan book. This is all well known. What, however, seems to have escaped public attention is what the impact of these delinquencies is on the one largest holder of Mortgage Backed Securities, the Federal Reserve. What also seems to have escaped the public is that the Fed is now the world’s largest bank, with total assets near $2.3 trillion.
. . . .
A 5% realized haircut on MBS alone would result in a complete elimination of the Fed’s capital balance. Applying a 10% or even 15% haircut, results in a capital deficiency of $50 billion and $100 billion respectively. (Read more from zerohedge.com)
@ 0:00 – Half Trillion $ per year trade deficit. Our government continues to do all it can to prevent Americans from saving.
@ 0:45 – Bailing out Greece creates moral hazard for nations and creditors & punishes responsible states.
@ 3:45 – Jobs bill & payroll tax holiday is a gimmick. It creates incentive to fire someone and hire a replacement at a discount. All the bill does is let politicians take credit for hires that will probably happen anyway.
@ 8:00 – This alludes to the Fed’s reluctance to raise interest rates. The Fed has painted itself into a corner. It needs to raise interest rates to stop bank from leveraging and lending out the massive quantities of money which have been printed, which would precipitate the collapse of the collar. But our phony economy and the big wall street firms with rule Washington are surviving on the easy money of artificially low interest rates. Peter Schiff discusses the Fed’s latest gimmick — paying banks to not lend money. It won’t work.
@ 9:20 – The Fed’s claim that they haven’t lost money on TARP is another obfuscation. They’ve bought crap from irresponsible banks. They won’t take a loss until they try to sell the crap.
Almost 200 members of Congress who care about Federal Reserve transparency voted for this motion to recommit. Unfortunately, they found themselves in the minority.
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