Posted on 09/29/2009 1:07:43 AM PDT by rabscuttle385
Last week I was very pleased that the Financial Services Committee held a hearing on the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, HR 1207. The bill has 295 cosponsors and there is also strong support for the companion bill in the Senate. This hearing was a major step forward in getting the bill passed.
I was pleased that the hearing was well-attended, especially considering that it was held on a Friday at nine o’clock in the morning! I have been talking about the immense, unchecked power of the Federal Reserve for many years, while the attention of Congress was always on other things. It was gratifying to see my colleagues asking probing questions and demonstrating genuine concern about this important issue as well.
The witness testifying in favor of HR 1207 made some very strong points, which was no surprise considering the bill is simply common sense. It was also no surprise that the witness testifying against the bill had no good arguments as to why a full audit should not be conducted promptly. He attempted to make the case that the fed is already sufficiently accountable to Congress and that the current auditing policy is adequate. The fact is that the Fed comes to Congress and talks about only what it wants to talk about, and the GAO audits only what the current laws allow to be audited. The really important things however, are off limits. There are no convincing arguments that it is in the best interests of the American people for anything the Fed does to be off limits.
It has been argued that full disclosure of details of funding facilities like TALF and PDCF that enabled massive bailouts of Wall Street would damage the financial position of those firms and destabilize the economy. In other words, if the American people knew how rotten the books were at those banks and how terribly they messed up, they would never willingly invest in them, and they would fail. Failure is not an option for friends of the Fed. Therefore, the funds must be stolen from the people in the dark of night. This is not how a free country works. This is not how free markets work. That is crony corporatism and instead of being a force for economic stabilization, it totally undermines it.
If the Fed gave its actual arguments against a full audit, they would not have mentioned anything about political independence or economic stability. Instead they would admit they don’t want to be audited because they enjoy their current situation too much. Under the guise of currency control, they are able to help out powerful allies on Wall Street, in exchange for lucrative jobs or who-knows-what favors later on. An audit would expose the Fed as a massive fraud perpetrated on this country, enriching a privileged few bankers at the top of our economic food chain, and leaving the rest of us with massively devalued dollars which we are forced to use by law. An audit would make people realize that, while Bernie Madoff defrauded a lot of investors for a lot of money, the Fed has defrauded every one of us by destroying the value of our money. An honest and full accounting of how the money system really works in this country would mean there is not much of a chance the American people would stand for it anymore.
Awww... c'mon what's a few economic collapses between friends?
Ya know historically what happens soon after these collapses?
Global War.
It's sad, isn't it?
But then again, it's not surprising, since I know there are plenty of Big Government "conservatives" here on FR, quite a few of whom still defend the Federal bailouts of the "too big to fail" New York banks, at the expense of individual taxpayers and "too small to give a d*mn about" firms. Then again, many of those so-called "conservatives" also support establishment Republicans like McCain, Romney, Giuliani, etc. so as I said, it's not surprising.
Perhaps those folks should throw overboard Michele Bachmann, who agrees with Ron Paul on monetary policy, including the need for a careful, complete, and transparent audit of the Federal Reserve System, as well as all of the House Republicans (who, last I checked, have all signed on to Ron Paul's bill) and Jim DeMint (a primary sponsor of the Senate counterpart).
Ping
Sad indeed, and it gets old really fast.
It's from the crazies who had nothing reasonable or convincing to say to refute Ron Paul so they used to post stupid photoshopped photos of Ron Paul. When they got called on that behavior they stopped it and started anonymously attaching insulting keywords to articles involving RP, as vengeance for their wounded pride.
Accept them for what they are -- stupid cowards with nothing intelligent to say-- and ignore them.
Greed is good.
Most of them really seem sincere though. Can you be a statist and not realize it? From my observations the people in this group seem to think big government is just fine as long as "conservatives" are in control, unconstitutional laws are fine as long as they serve the "conservative" agenda. Truly puzzling.
It's not that puzzling.
A statist always thinks that political power is good when "in the right hands". They haven't yet figured out that once you give away political power, you aren't always going to be able to control whose hands it's in.
The more power you give your guy ("right hands"), the more likely he is to abuse it. And once your guy abuses/uses that power (in an unpopular way), there will often be a public backlash that throws your guy out and elects his opposite -- "their guy" ("wrong hands"). Now the power is in "the wrong hands", and when & if their guy uses/abuses that power, they'll throw him out and put another one of your guys in who'll use/abuse it again -- and so there is election after election, reactively bouncing back and forth between political users & abusers .
Instead of focusing on limiting the political power over us so that no politician can abuse us, we keep ping-ponging back & forth between "our guy" & "their guy", neither of which were ever in it for us to begin with -- they were in it for themselves and for their own personal use of our power.
I like how the sign-up date pops up when you put the cursor over a Freeper's name.
Can we get the same feature enabled for keywords?
That would put some accountability into the system.
Although, I must admit I like seeing that we're getting under the crazy stupid cowards' skins.
It's sad, isn't it?
Not really. It's a strong indication Dr. Ron Paul is winning the argument against the fed. The fed lap dogs aren't fools. They've feverishly reviewed their playbooks for the perfect play. They can't find one. They've already tried everthing in the book. Well, there's always the "hail mary."
Meanwhile, keyword insults are a sure sign they are as desperate as they are fatigued.
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