By Matt Holdridge
From The Huffington Post:
What secrets are hidden in the Federal Reserve’s trillion-dollar shadow? Economic recovery depends on confidence, and confidence requires knowledge. But Senators like Chris Dodd and Judd Gregg don’t want us to have that knowledge. They don’t even want it themselves.
In Sen. Dodd’s case, he’s trying to give the Fed more authority (over consumer protection) even as he fights to keep its activities hidden. Fortunately, the final decision may not be up to him.
A judge’s recent ruling in favor of two news organizations (Bloomberg and Fox) promised to shed light on $2 trillion in concealed Fed emergency loans to major financial firms. That’s a start. But Sen. Dodd is still fighting efforts to have a full-scale audit of the Fed’s other major bailout activities, including the $1.25 trillion program to buy mortgage-backed securities. That’s been going at the rate of $10 billion per week – a massive program which ends this Wednesday.
You could argue that giving $10 billion every week to the people that wrecked our economy is like giving Viagra to sex offenders. (Remember last week’s “controversy” about that?) And that $10 billion per week goes to buy the worthless assets of bankers who enriched themselves on loans that ranged from predatory to merely incompetent.
Who’s been able to avoid the consequences of their own bad business practices, thanks to the Fed? We don’t know yet, because Sen. Dodd promised GOP Senator Gregg there would be no audit of the bailout. Which just goes to show: Scratch a bad policy idea these days and you’re likely to find it was promoted under the guise of a false “bipartisanship.” Outside the Senate bubble, however, many progressives are aligned with conservatives like Ron Paul on the need for an audit. That makes it one of the few truly bipartisan movements out there.
Read the rest here.