U.S. Senator Slams Washington Post Defense Of Fed Secrecy

From http://www.infowars.com/u-s-senator-slams-washington-post-defense-of-fed-secrecy/

U.S. Senator Slams Washington Post Defense Of Fed Secrecy
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Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday,
July 28, 2009

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), sponsor of S 604, the Federal Reserve Sunshine Act of 2009, has slammed a recent Washington Post editorial that contends the Federal Reserve should not be subject to a general audit.

Sanders vented his opinions in a letter to the editor which was published in the Post today.
“We must not equate ‘independence’ with secrecy.” Sanders writes in response to the Post’s Friday editorial entitled “Focus on the Fed” which attacked his own and Congressman Ron Paul’s efforts to enact the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, a move that would allow the American people to find out for the first time where trillions in taxpayer funded bailout dollars have been used.
“No matter how intelligent or well-intentioned the Fed chairman and his staff may be, it isn’t appropriate to give a handful of people the power to lend an unlimited supply of money to anyone it wants without sufficient oversight.” Sanders writes.
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The American people have a right to know what is being done with their hard-earned taxpayer dollars. This money does not belong to the Fed; it belongs to the American people.” Sanders urges.
The Washington Post’s editorial angered many readers late last week by essentially advocating the continuation of non-accountability in government.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t

“Though the bill has attracted 276 co-sponsors in the House and 17 in the Senate, it is wrongheaded in the extreme.” the Post’s anonymously written piece stated.
“By opening up the Fed’s most sensitive interest rate and credit policies to public second-guessing, the bill would create a risk — real and perceived — of monetary policy bent to suit congressional overseers. This would destroy financial markets’ faith in the Fed and, by extension, the value of the U.S. dollar, just as surely as a political ‘audit’ of the Supreme Court’s deliberations would undercut public faith in the justice system.” the piece claimed.
“This article makes comparisons that are utterly dissimilar.” Libertymage writer Robin Grammer succinctly points out.
“Not only does our justice system make available verdicts and vote counts the same day that the court votes on the issue, they also make public the dissenting parties with the articulated minority opinion. This is a a world of difference from the transparency policy of the Federal Reserve, who graciously offers us meeting transcripts five years after the meetings occur. The transparency policies of these two groups are in no way similar and making such a comparison is disingenuous at best.” he concludes.
Furthermore, as Ron Paul himself explained during the Financial Services Committee hearings last week, the bill would do nothing to further politicize the Fed’s decision making given that the Fed is already overtly politicized anyway.
“Just the fact that they can issue a lot of loans and special privileges to banks and corporations, that’s political. This idea that it would be political because we know what happened afterwards just doesn’t seem to add up.” Paul beseeched.

The bill would not give anyone in Congress or elsewhere the authority to sit in on Fed hearings, thus it would have no impact monetary policy. All it would do is provide answers to the American people as to where their hard earned money is being spent.
The Federal Transparency Act would also expose the fact that it is the Federal Reserve that is responsible for the artificial inflation of the debt bubble and the issuing of credit out of thin air, the driving force behind the financial crises.
The Truth is that the Washington establishment knows that an audit would set the stage for a return of honest money and fiscal policies, in which the privately run Federal Reserve can play no role.
It comes as little surprise therefore to see the establishment media in Washington advocating a continuation of unaccountability and blanket secrecy.