Senate votes 96-0 to audit the Fed

This momentum to audit the Federal Reserve is long-overdue, after months of debate. If our election system involved public financing, the debate would have lasted five minutes. Now it's time to reconcile the House and Senate bills, then let the sun shine in. It's time to shine an especially bright light on the recipients of the the Fed's largess, and this will information must be produced pursuant to the Senate bill. Let's just hope that the audit is meaningful and thorough. Speaking of which, it's time to turn a sharp eye to the roll the Wall Street bond rating companies played in the meltdown. After all, how could it be that so many sub-prime mortgage-backed securities were so highly rated, despite strong evidence to the contrary? We're now seeing good momentum to reform the practices of these bond raters too:

A critical amendment to the Wall Street reform bill being debated in the Senate this week picked up a key Republican backer Tuesday. The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), would end the practice of banks choosing which credit rating agency they hire to rate a particular offering. Often, banks will ask raters for a preliminary review, allowing them to pick the rater most likely to look favorably on whatever bundle of products the bank wants to sell to investors.

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Massively dysfunctional enforcement at the SEC and the Fed

TMP has presented a terrible, yet not surprising, description of the enforcement arm of the SEC. Based on this detailed description of this dyfunctional enforcement arm, no wonder securities fraud has been running rampant. Oh, and on a related note, Huffpo reports that:

The inspector general tasked with overseeing and auditing the Federal Reserve knows pretty much nothing about what the Fed is doing. . . . She did not know where the Fed has invested its $2 trillion on the liability side of the balance sheet. "I do not know. We have not looked at that specific area at this particular point on," she said.

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