Free Republic

The Treasury Department has been disclosing financial information about bailout programs in press releases only if the initiatives are expected to bring money in to the government, a new federal audit has found. The Government Accountability Office found that financial information for Troubled Asset Relief Program initiatives that are projected to cost the government money long-term – like the injection of capital into the American International Group – were not included in Treasury releases. “Although press releases for programs expected to result in a cost to Treasury provide useful transaction information, they exclude lifetime, program-specific cost estimates,” G.A.O., Congress’ investigative...

The first ever GAO(Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent socialist Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill(HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out. Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke(pictured to the right), former chairman, Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied...

So, the latest whispers are that the DOJ was shocked that an email their San Diego US Attorney wrote one afternoon ended up moving at the speed of shit through a goose to the Issa Committee and, here, featured in the pages of Sipsey Street the next morning. Pursuant to this outrage, I am told that I will be the focus of a forensic email audit to find out who tipped me off.

So, the latest whispers are that the DOJ was shocked that an email their San Diego US Attorney wrote one afternoon ended up moving at the speed of shit through a goose to the Issa Committee and, here, featured in the pages of Sipsey Street the next morning. Pursuant to this outrage, I am told that I will be the focus of a forensic email audit to find out who tipped me off. Although, I must add, whether or not they have obtained a court order to do this remains unclear at this hour. But then the wiretaps mentioned in...

A nonprofit founded by Mayor Dwight C. Jones owes the federal government $27,566.70 in unpaid taxes. On March 27, the Internal Revenue Service placed a lien against property owned by the Imani Intergenerational Community Development Corp., which Jones founded and until recently served as board president.   As pastor of First Baptist Church South Richmond, Jones founded the nonprofit in 1989 to develop affordable housing for low-income residents in the Manchester area. During his campaign for mayor, Jones frequently cited the group's success luring new commercial and residential development into the blighted Hull Street corridor. Imani's main holding is a...

An audit of the Federal Reserve has revealed that the privately owned Federal Reserve secretly doled out more than $16 trillion in zero interest loans to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world. The non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress also determined that the Fed acted illegally. In fact, according to the report, the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to its employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans. The report is evidence that reveals major securities fraud...

Energy Dept. weatherization programs rife with waste, fraud, inspector general audits showThe Daily Caller – Wed, Sep 21, 2011 **SNIP** “I guess I don’t understand, when the state of Illinois literally cannot pay its bills and is going bankrupt, is this really the best use of money?” Duffy added. “I don’t care if its state or federal. Why are we spending millions of dollars with absolutely no credibility of how the spend that money?” The story of Illinois’ weatherization program, however, doesn’t stop there. The state-run program is being promoted by four separate public relations firms. Two of those firms...

Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder voted to send $2.5 million in state funds to a non-profit company he headed, giving the appearance of a conflict of interest, according to auditors. Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich’s office said today in a report that Kinder served as chairman of the board of Tour of Missouri, Inc., which promoted state-wide cycling races in 2008 and 2009. At the same time, auditors noted, Kinder served as chairman of the state’s Tourism Commission and voted for budgets that sent $2.5 million in state money to the corporation for the events. “The commission minutes do not indicate...

DOJ AUDIT: $16 muffins, cups of coffee for $8.25… (First column, 2nd story, link ) Related stories: Spent $121 million on conferences in two years.. Read the original here: DOJ AUDIT: $16 muffins, cups of coffee for $8.25…

For a moment, imagine that there is a privately-owned organization in the United States that can create U.S. dollars out of thin air whenever it wants and can loan that money to whoever it wants to. Imagine that this organization is able to act with the full power of the U.S. government behind it, but that nobody in the organization is ever elected by the American people, and that for all practical purposes the organization is not accountable to the president or to Congress. Imagine that the organization is able to make trillions of dollars of secret loans to banks,...

"In September, Treasury completed its latest audit, showing that U.S. gold reserves total 9,300 tons with a market value of $320 billion, Thorson said. The recent run-up in gold prices -- the precious metal is trading at about $1,515 an ounce -- puts the market value at $340 billion as of Wednesday, according to Thorson's testimony. He added that each gold bar weighs about 27 pounds and is worth around $500,000. Paul said that his questions were partly in response to the numerous Internet conspiracy theories, including those that accuse the government of secretly selling all of the gold in...

Yes, that’s sixteen trillion dollars in “emergency� loans to financial institutions from the beginning of the recession in December 2007 to just one year ago. The long-awaited GAO audit shows that the Federal Reserve loaned more than the worth of the annual US economy, and not just to American banks, although US institutions got the lion’s share. Citibank was the largest beneficiary: Of the $16.1 trillion loaned out, $3.08 trillion went to financial institutions in the U.K., Germany, Switzerland, France and Belgium, the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) analysis shows.Additionally, asset swap arrangements were opened with banks in the U.K., Canada,...

The man Congress put in charge of auditing the billions of dollars dumped on Iraq after Saddam Hussein was toppled has told the Los Angels Times he can't rule out the possibility that $6.6 billion in cash sent from the U.S. was stolen. Special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction Stuart Bowen told the Times the missing money may represent "the largest theft of funds in national history." It was not, it is crucial to note here, U.S. tax-payer dollars which have gone missing in Iraq. The money came from a special fund set up by the Federal Reserve Bank of...

Fed chairman Ben Bernanke likes to [*expletive*] about Congressional interference in Fed monetary policy yet Bernanke repeatedly tells Congress what to do regarding fiscal policy. I think neither should tell the other what to do because the Fed should not exist at all. More through link....

# The nonpartisan analysis of an audit conducted by Ernst & Young on the balance sheets of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for FY2010, was included in HHS’s FY 2010 Agency Financial Report, dated November 15, 2010. The audit revealed concerning conclusions, among the many findings were the following: * HHS Is Not In Compliance With Federal Financial Management Law. According to the HHS Inspector General’s review of Ernst & Young’s financial audit of HHS, “HHS's financial management systems are not compliant with the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act of 1996.” * Nearly $2 Billion Taxpayer...

<p>Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) introduced U.S. Senate legislation Wednesday to audit the Federal Reserve while his father, long-time Fed critic Rep. Ron Paul (R., Texas), re-introduced similar legislation in the U.S. House.</p> <p>“We must take a critical look at the Fed’s monetary policy decisions, discount window operations, and a host of other things, with a real audit–and not just pay lip-service to the idea of an audit,” Sen. Paul said in a statement. “It is more crucial than ever that we have real transparency at our own central bank.”</p>

If there is one thing that the one-time GAO audit of the Fed disclosed, is how woefully insufficient the extremely superficial data discovery was. Another thing uncovered was just how needed this disclosure was: it provided extended material into how the Fed subsidizes banks (both domestic and international) on an ongoing basis, not to mention substantial number crunching for the blogosphere. Either way, if Bernanke was hoping that the Frank-Dodd bill would take care of the Fed opacity, pardon, transparency issue in perpetuity, he may be disappointed: Ron's son, Rand, has just announced he is introducing legislation to, well, Audit...

State agencies over-reported stimulus jobs, audit findsDecember 22, 2010 | Deia de Brito **SNIP** According to recovery.gov, California has received $12.8 billion in stimulus funds and reported over 54,000 jobs since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was enacted in February of 2009. But yesterday’s audit report, which analyzed jobs data from five state agencies, found that those agencies overreported the number of full-time jobs created by 617. **SNIP** According to yesterday's state auditor's report, titled "The California Recovery Task Force and State Agencies Could Do More to Ensure the Accurate Reporting of Recovery Act Jobs": •The Water Resources Board...

It's official. The United States' financial projections are on such shaky ground that to audit them would be an exercise in futility. In so many words, that was the conclusion of the Government Accountability Office this week as it threw up its hands when asked to issue an opinion on the Treasury Department's government-wide financial statements for 2010. The wonky watchdog office cited several problems with the government's numbers but particularly called out its projections on Medicare in explaining its ultimate decision not to release a decision. Though projected Medicare savings were used to build the case for the Obama...

People with a record of sexual misconduct are often able to land positions in public and private schools as teachers, support staff, volunteers or contractors, slipping through a system of background checks meant to thwart them, federal investigators reported Thursday. Among the 15 cases the Government Accountability Office reviewed was that of former Manassas teacher Kevin Ricks, who pleaded guilty this year to abusing a male student and faces other sex and pornography charges related to his long career in education. The Washington Post in July disclosed questions about Ricks, his school employment record, and allegations against him of sexual...

Rep. Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who has passionately called for dismantling the Federal Reserve, will be running the panel that oversees the central bank when Republicans take the House majority next year. Mr. Paul has introduced legislation to abolish the Fed, wrote the book, “End the Fed,” and rallied support for eliminating it. Rep. Spencer Bachus (R., Ala.), who will take over the House Financial Services Committee from Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.), announced today that Mr. Paul, a libertarian who won a fervent following when he ran for president in 2008, will head the Domestic Monetary Policy Subcommittee....

Nearly 50 workers in South St. Paul lost their jobs Wednesday as a result of stepped-up workplace audits by the federal government trying to ferret out undocumented workers. The union that represents the workers, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1189, is protesting the Department of Homeland Security's enforcement strategy, saying the federal government is going after well-paid, taxpaying meatpackers, janitors and factory workers instead of targeting criminals and "bad actor" employers. Wednesday was the last day of work for those who process hides for Twin City Hide who could not provide documentation of their legal status to work. Another...

nvestors should steer clear of GM's IPO due to auditing problems, says Francine McKenna, re: The Auditors

Money provided in the stimulus bill for making buildings more energy-efficient is finally starting to flow, the Department of Energy’s inspector general says. But in a report released Tuesday, his office says that in some cases it has been badly spent. An audit by the inspector general focused on some work done by the Community and Economic Development Association of Cook County, one of 35 agencies in Illinois that are expected to share $91 million over three years. The audit looked at 15 homes and found that 12 failed final inspection “because of substandard workmanship.” In some cases, technicians who...

The Federal Election Commission is unlikely to conduct a potentially embarrassing audit of how Barack Obama raised and spent his presidential campaign’s record-shattering windfall, despite allegations of questionable donations and accounting that had the McCain campaign crying foul. Adding insult to injury for Republicans: The FEC is obligated to complete a rigorous audit of McCain’s campaign coffers, which will take months, if not years, and cost McCain millions of dollars to defend. Obama is expected to escape that level of scrutiny mostly because he declined an $84 million public grant for his campaign that automatically triggers an audit and because...

2 little words started race for mayor: forensic auditJohn Kass October 6, 2010 Before we feast on the tribalism and intrigue of the upcoming Chicago mayoral campaign, let's not forget something. Let's not forget the guy who may have started it all. He did it by uttering two little words, and they echoed ominously through Chicago's political sub-basements. Just days after the two little words were said, Mayor Richard Daley announced he wouldn't seek re-election. Remember those two little words? "You mean, 'forensic audit'?" said Ald. Scott Waguespack, 32nd. "Those two little words?" Precisely. Forensic audit. **SNIP** And Emanuel? He's...

Audit discloses Cahill campaign failed to pay $15G in state income taxBy Matt Murphy Posted: 09/02/2010 08:54:28 AM EDT BOSTON -- State Treasurer Tim Cahill took responsibility Wednesday for failing to pay state income taxes on interest earned from his campaign account, calling the gaffe "an oversight" that he moved quickly to correct. "The good news is that when it was pointed out to us, we paid it, and it was not a huge mistake," he told WHYN radio in Springfield yesterday morning. "I'm not perfect. Nobody is." Cahill's mismanagement of his own campaign funds, however, gave critics broad leverage...

BAGHDAD – The U.S. Defense Department is unable to properly account for over 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraqi oil money tapped by the U.S. for rebuilding the war ravaged nation, according to an audit released Tuesday. The report by the U.S. Special Investigator for Iraq Reconstruction offers a compelling look at continued laxness in how such funds are being spent in a country where people complain basic services like electricity and clean water are sharply lacking seven years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

(Video) The fact that Jay Inslee (and multiple others) would, 'be favor of auditing the fed before they were against it', (vintage John Kerry) is appalling.

Stimulus-related construction spending is up in the city of Portland -- but it's not clear how many jobs have been created from that uptick, according to a city audit released Monday. City Auditor LaVonne Griffin-Valade said a key reason is the city did not require contractors to track the number of people hired for projects. In 2009, state lawmakers borrowed $172 million for "Go Oregon" public works projects, and required contractors to submit forms detailing the number of people hired and for how long. As a result, state officials boasted that more than 7,500 jobs were "created or retained" with...

Plaquemines Parish President, Billy Nungesser, tells Fox 8 News he’s already talked to the FBI about at least some of the findings in a legislative audit released today. The four findings include both personal and government deals the president made in his first couple of years in office.

(Initial Focus on Employment Tax Compliance) When the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released its five-year strategic plan last year it promised a flurry of new attacks on the public in a variety of areas. Referred to by the IRS as “enforcement initiatives,” these attacks constitute the key areas the agency will target for increased audit attention in the years to come. What was a mere promise last fall of more audit activity is now a reality. The IRS just recently launched the first wave of audit attacks. In reviewing the IRS’s strategic plan it came as no surprise to me...

Restaurants Targeted in New Audits; 'I Will Fight That Until My Last Breath' State sales-tax officials are turning up the heat on restaurateurs, auditing 60% more of the city's eateries in the fiscal year that just ended than the year before and leaving the industry with a case of agita. The cash-strapped state conducted 1,077 sales-tax audits of New York City restaurants in fiscal year 2010, which ended March 31, compared with 646 the previous year. Those reviews found the restaurants owed the state $71.9 million in sales tax, compared with $40.6 million the year before, a 77% increase. About...

For the first 10 years the state's flagship economic development program didn't do any audits of businesses that were collecting tax credits, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation CEO said Wednesday. Greg Main of the MEDC said that is now changed and every tax credit since 2006 will be reviewed by the end of this fiscal year. Main testified at a House tax committee hearing in Lansing about two weeks after an Auditor General report pointed out lax oversight of the tax credit program. State Representative Tom McMillin, R-Rochester Hills, estimated the MEDC may have given out $150 million in erroneous...

WEST JORDAN -- Authorities say a former Garfield County School District official has been arrested in the alleged theft of thousands of dollars of district funds. The sheriff's office says Justin Baugh was arrested Thursday night in West Jordan on felony charges of misuse of public money, communications fraud, and tampering with a witness. Baugh's contract The Garfield County Attorney's office says that Utah state auditors found that Baugh had allegedly stolen between $50,000 and $80,000 while working as the school district's business administrator. The audit found multiple checks that Baugh had written to himself and his wife. One was...

WASHINGTON – A top Treasury official says the Obama administration opposes a proposal to audit the Federal Reserve, a plan that has bipartisan Senate support. Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin said an amendment to a pending financial regulation bill could encroach on the independence of the central bank. The amendment's sponsor, independent Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont, has criticized the Fed for secrecy in its assistance of banks.

For all the phony talk coming out of the White House this past year about transparency and accountability, there actually is an institution outside of the executive branch which does a pretty darn good job at this most of the time: the Inspector General system. In fact, IG’s may do too good of a job by producing lengthy and meticulously detailed reports, difficult even for politically-attuned readers to digest, and which usually do not contain the types of partisan zingers that attract a lot of media attention. Yesterday the Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) released their...

he Internal Revenue Service, trying to recoup some of the estimated $14 billion that companies underpay in employer taxes each year, plans to wage a three-year campaign to audit 6,000 businesses. The cash-strapped government, which separately said it wants to put a levy on large financial companies that received bailouts, will zero in on worker classification, fringe benefits, reimbursed expenses and executive compensation. The selection of the audited companies will be random, and both big and small businesses will be scrutinized. Defining who is, or isn't, an employee might be the biggest challenge for the IRS and the companies it...

Ben Bernanke is widely expected to win Senate approval for a second term as Federal Reserve chairman, but opponents are hoping to use the debate on his nomination to curtail his autonomy at the central bank. The Senate Banking Committee is poised to clear Mr. Bernanke's nomination on Thursday, sending it to the full Senate for a vote. Several lawmakers plan to use the proceedings to gain momentum for a bill that aims to subject the Fed's monetary-policy making to congressional audits. The measure, crafted by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), mirrors one written by Rep. Ron Paul (R., Texas)...

A single mom in Seattle made $18,992 in the previous year cutting hair at Supercuts. The IRS audited her because they claimed she was too poor to live in Seattle. She lived with her parents and has two children. The IRS claimed she owed the government more than $16,000 in back taxes. It took two years and $10,000 in accountant bills to get the IRS to admit she was just being honest. They still won't let her claim her children because they can't determine who is really supporting them. If we could only get the IRS to be as tough...

The financial reform bill working its way through the House of Representatives, that includes Ron Paul's "Audit the Fed" provision, has gotten so morphed and horrific that Ron Paul is not even going to vote for it. The evil bastards have added an amendment to the Bill that will allow the Fed to pump any amounts of money it so chooses to "financial holding" companies deemed TBTF, without approval from anyone. William Greider explains: The sales pitch for financial-reform legislation pending in the House claims it would put a stop to “too big to fail” bailouts for the leading banks....

A group of academic economists — including several Nobel Prize winners, leaders of respected economic journals and former Fed officials — is dialing up its call for lawmakers to drop plans to subject the Federal Reserve to more scrutiny by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress. In a letter to leaders on the Senate Banking Committee and House Financial Services Committee, the economists say a bill proposed by Rep. Ron Paul (R., Tex.) and Alan Grayson (D., Fla.) to let the GAO review Fed monetary policy would do “serious harm to the economy.” They warn increased congressional...

For many Americans, the financial crisis, and the recession it spawned, have been devastating -- jobs, homes, savings lost. Understandably, many people are calling for change. Yet change needs to be about creating a system that works better, not just differently. As a nation, our challenge is to design a system of financial oversight that will embody the lessons of the past two years and provide a robust framework for preventing future crises and the economic damage they cause. These matters are complex, and Congress is still in the midst of considering how best to reform financial regulation. I am...

"White House Defends Stimulus Act Despite Government Audit Questioning the Job Numbers" SNIPPET: "(CNSNews.com) - The White House defended the effectiveness of the economic stimulus act on Monday after a government audit last week called many of the reported job numbers into question. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that $173 billion of the $787 billion stimulus package had been paid out by the federal government as of Sept. 30. That’s about 22 percent of the total, and it indicates that 78 percent of the stimulus funds have not been paid out – at a time when unemployment was rising."

The House Financial Services Committee has approved Rep. Ron Paul’s measure to drastically expand the government’s power to audit the Federal Reserve. The measure, based on a Paul proposal that has attracted more than 300 co-sponsors, passed, 43-26, as an amendment to a financial reform bill. Florida Democrat and fellow Fed critic Alan Grayson co-sponsored the amendment with Paul and played a leading role drumming up support for it among committee members. The adoption of this amendment is an extraordinary victory for Paul, whose libertarian, anti-Fed leanings have often been dismissed by the political establishment.

This one is definitely worth a read folks. It appears that Representative Cummings, along with a half-dozen other Representatives, have had enough of The Fed's games. They are now calling for a FULL CONGRESSIONAL REVIEW of THE ENTIRE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM, including A FULL PUBLIC AUDIT. GET ON THE PHONE NOW TO YOUR REP AND RAISE HELL. MOMENTUM ON THIS IS BUILDING, AND IT IS UP TO **US** TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE. To this I say: It's about damn time. (click for larger images)

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has a bill with 300 sponsors that won’t pass, which is very unfortunate, but revealing. Let me suggest a variation that might pass, and would be extremely valuable: Let’s begin with a complete audit of all bailout programs initiated by the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and other relevant agencies. This audit would be all-inclusive, from top to bottom. It would include zero- to low-interest loans and financing facilities. It would include federal purchases of any form of financial instrument that was initiated in response to the financial crisis. It would include all...

NYT's Edmund Andrews has a curious piece out on Ben Bernanke and the Fed, which, I'm guessing was mostly supplied by Barney Frank. Since, Frank comes off as the hero in the piece. (Well, hero in the sense of power manipulator)Andrews writes: ...when [Bernanke] sat down shortly after 8 a.m. on Oct. 1 at the Rayburn House Office Building for coffee and muffins with Representative Barney Frank, the rumpled and wisecracking chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, he took in some blunt advice. Voters had become suspicious and unnerved by the Fed because of its trillion-dollar efforts to bail...

Rarely does a single piece of mail cause one's heart to flutter, face to flush and knees to buckle. But, then again, rarely does a piece of mail arrive with the dreaded return address: Department of the Treasury Internal Revenue Service That's the "Welcome Home" that greeted me this past Tuesday as I dragged myself through the front door after a rough day of earning a living, playing golf and ferrying adolescent infants from one suburban soiree to another. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I owed our esteemed and infallible federal government... $11,589.22! Holy smoke. What did I...

Last week a new bill was introduced in the Senate to audit the Federal Reserve. Some backers of my bill HR1207 and the existing Senate companion bill S.604 were a little miffed at this, but depending on how you think about it, this new legislation poses no great threat to our efforts. With the economy in shambles, people are looking for answers - not just because of lost savings on Wall Street, but because of lost houses on Main Street. Because of the many problems we face, the Federal Reserve and its powers over the economy have come under scrutiny....