Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Federal Reserve Audit Bill Overwhelmingly Passes in House

The U.S. House of Representatives easily passed a bill that the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve should be audited.

Republican representative Ron Paul was the author of the legislation, which passed the House by a vote of 327-98. A total of 238 Republicans approved of the measures while 89 Democrats approved.

Paul said this during the debate before the vote: "I don't know how anybody could be against transparency."

Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, has been fighting desperately to keep an audit of the Fed from happening. He has attempted to paint it as a disaster if the Fed were to have its independence compromised.

Paul is especially concerned about how Americans may be on the debt hook for the Fed's support of foreign central banks, as well as the details of the rescue of giant banks.

"They're sick and tired of what happened in the bailout and where the wealthy got bailed out and the poor lost their jobs and they lost their homes," said Paul.

Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat who has visibly supported auditing the Fed added, "It's time that we stood up to the Federal Reserve that right now acts like some kind of high, exalted priesthood, unaccountable to democracy."

What would happen if the bill were to pass the Senate would be for the Government Accountability Office to perform a complete review of the Fed. This office is a nonpartisan congressional agency.

The bill is expected to die in the Senate because of the unexplainable opposition of it by the Democrats. If the Senate is won back by the Republicans in the elections, it's a surety the bill will be brought back in some form for vote at that time.

Asset purchases held by the Fed have soared from $800 billion to $2.8 trillion since the economic crisis began.

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