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What many people don't realize is that the Federal Reserve Banks are private, for-profit banks, with only very tenuous oversight by Congress. It's a very stran

by cpr 10y ago

What many people don't realize is that the Federal Reserve Banks are private, for-profit banks, with only very tenuous oversight by Congress. It's a very strange set-up and I think high time for a serious audit of what they've been doing for decades. For example, though Congress authorized $600B of bank bail-out money during the 2008 crisis, the Fed actually extended $6T to domestic and (many) foreign banks. It's clear the whole notion of privately-controlled "central banks" is a very dubious one, with profits lining a few people's pockets, all the while exerting a huge influence over a whole country's economy.

milcron 10y ago
The Fed is already rather audited... from Bernanke's blog: The Fed is already thoroughly audited in the usual sense, by an independent inspector general and by an outside accounting firm (currently, Deloitte and Touche), and the resulting financial reports are made public online. Every security owned by the Fed, up to the detail of the identifying CUSIP number, is also available online. Moreover, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which does in-depth reviews and analyses (“audits” of a different type) of government activities at the request of Congress, has wide latitude to review Fed operations, including supervision and regulation as well as other functions. For example, as required by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, the GAO conducted reviews of the Fed’s emergency lending programs during the crisis and of the Fed’s governance structure. Since the financial crisis, the GAO has done some 70 reviews of aspects of Fed operations. What other sorts of auditing do you want? It's also worth mentioning that the US Fed acts as central bank to the world -- US taxpayers are not on the hook for that $6T.
kahirsch 10y ago
The Federal Reserve Banks are sort-of private, but making a profit is not their goal and almost all of the profit goes to the federal government. Most important policy decisions are made by the Board of Governors or the Federal Open Market Committee, where the Governors make up the majority of members. The Board of Governors is not private, it is an independent federal agency led by the 7 governors who are nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate.

by cpr 10y ago

milcron 10y ago

The Fed is already rather audited... from Bernanke's blog: The Fed is already thoroughly audited in the usual sense, by an independent inspector general and by an outside accounting firm (currently, Deloitte and Touche), and the resulting financial reports are made public online. Every security owned by the Fed, up to the detail of the identifying CUSIP number, is also available online. Moreover, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which does in-depth reviews and analyses (“audits” of a different type) of government activities at the request of Congress, has wide latitude to review Fed operations, including supervision and regulation as well as other functions. For example, as required by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, the GAO conducted reviews of the Fed’s emergency lending programs during the crisis and of the Fed’s governance structure. Since the financial crisis, the GAO has done some 70 reviews of aspects of Fed operations. What other sorts of auditing do you want? It's also worth mentioning that the US Fed acts as central bank to the world -- US taxpayers are not on the hook for that $6T.

kahirsch 10y ago

The Federal Reserve Banks are sort-of private, but making a profit is not their goal and almost all of the profit goes to the federal government. Most important policy decisions are made by the Board of Governors or the Federal Open Market Committee, where the Governors make up the majority of members. The Board of Governors is not private, it is an independent federal agency led by the 7 governors who are nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate.