The Fed on the hot seat

Post author:Erich Vieth
Post published:September 28, 2009
Post category:Economy
Post comments:1 Comment

Here’s a video of Rep. Alan Grayson interrogating the Federal Reserve’s General Counsel Scott Alvarez. The topic is the Fed’s alleged independence. It’s good theater, I will look for more of the same. It’s about time that we show some public snarkishness toward the Fed, given its chronic failure to make its operations transparent. A world-class audit of the Fed is long overdue.

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Tags: Fed Alan Grayson, federal reserve

Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in Maplewood with his wife Beverly.

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Erich Vieth September 29, 2009 Reply

I received the following email from the office of Alan Grayson, and made a contribution to his campaign:

With the banks looking everywhere for an opponent to bankroll, I need your help today to show them we'll be ready. Can you help?

Last Friday, when we held our first hearing on HR 1207, the bill to audit the Federal Reserve, I knew I was doing the right thing.

That's why I wasn't afraid to ask Fed General Counsel Scott Alvarez "whether it is within the Federal Reserve's legal authority to try to manipulate the stock market or the futures market."

I also knew that I was making a large number of people — people who have benefited from the Fed's refusal to tell me or any other member of Congress which banks got their money — pretty angry.

When you speak the truth about what needs to be done to fix the current mess we're in, you make a lot of friends. But you also make a lot of enemies.

And those opponents have put a big target on my back in 2010.

Will you help me fight back by making a contribution to my campaign before the September 30 fundraising deadline?

To give you a sense of the power of these banks, just look at what happened earlier this year. In June, the Wall Street Journal reported that a coalition of financial firms and trade groups donated $286,000 to the campaigns of members of the House Financial Services Committee in the first quarter!

Why?

They no longer liked an accounting rule that required them to report billions of dollars of losses on the mortgage securities that helped create our current mess. The banks and their deep pockets won, getting members of Congress to push for a change in industry accounting standards. The results were fatter "profits" for the banks in the second quarter.

These firms haven't given a dime to me because I don't abide by the pay-for-play rules of Washington.