Cracks of transparency.

Daylight appears as Congress puts spotlight on the Fed
By Gerry McConnell

At long last and many years of effort, a light has been directed into the deep, dark secrets of the Federal Reserve; a breakthrough that could make government operations more above board and honest in future years.
As reported in the New York Times Business section on November 19, 2009, by Edmund L. Andrews, for at least the past 25 consecutive years, Ron Paul, Conservative Republican Congressman from Texas, has attempted to introduce legislation in every session of Congress to bring the Federal Reserve Bank under increased scrutiny and transparency.
Paul had been unsuccessful in all of his previous attempts to make this huge government financial operation subject to normal oversight and investigative services, the House Financial Services Committee, under the chairmanship of Massachusetts liberal Democrat Barney Frank, who has been very much opposed to any information being furnished to the public taxpayers.

Though the measure that was approved was short of what Paul had tried to bring into the light of day for all of the taxpayers information, it did provide for Congress to order audits of all the Fed’s lending programs as well as of its basic decisions to set monetary policy by raising or lowering interest rates, the Times reported.

Now don’t get your hopes up too high because of this good news. There is certainly a healthy attitude in Congress to finally rein in a maverick agency that has operated under more secrecy than the CIA for a long time. And we’re talking about a very, very large amount of taxpayer’s dollars that were being handled as if they were the personal bank accounts of the individuals within the Federal Reserve.

Also, don’t forget that the current, tax cheating Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner was the President of the Federal Reserve just prior to be named to Obama’s Cabinet. We all have heard about just how secretive that man was about his money, or rather, the taxpayers’ money that he refused to take out of his own wallet as all of the rest of us have to do.

This latest approval to bring the Fed, as it is commonly known, into the realm of public scrutiny, was merely the result of a Congressional Panel; it was not the result of a full House of Representatives vote, which will come after the bill is heard and discussed on the floor. If history is any indicator, I can foresee a majority of liberal Democrats voting to kill the measure and keep the Fed’s operations totally secret as in the past, while the conservative Democrats and Republicans sit and seethe in disgust with “more of the same” liberal deceitful trickery.

One encouraging sign is apparent in the fact that the ultra-liberal, ‘to hell with what the public wants’ New York Times had the decency for once to make public a matter that their chosen political company has usually denied to for public consumption. The fact that the panel of the House Financial Services Committee that voted for the conservative Ron Paul’s legislation contained a good number of Democrat votes of approval may have helped the Times to go along with this legislation for the public.

Whatever it was, conservatives all over the country welcome the Times to the right side of the discussion for a pleasant change.

Jerry McConnell is a long time New Hampshire resident, a Marine veteren of Iwo Jima, and a published novelist. He resides in Hampton New Hampshire