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Ron Paul has released a statement on Bernie Sanders’ decision to gut his Audit the Fed amendment:
Bernie Sanders has sold out and sided with Chris Dodd to gut Audit the Fed in the Senate. His “compromise” is what the Adminstration and banking interests want: they’ll allow the TARP and TALF to be audited, but no transparency of the FOMC, discount window operations or agreement with foreign central banks. We need to take aciton and stop this!
The audit is only allowed back to December 2007, which leaves most of the work of the Fed’s Open Markets Committee in the dark — they were the ones who were supposed to be watching over Wall Street when they were laying the groundwork for the collapse. And according to Jay Newton-Small of Time Magazine, there will only be one audit — it will not be ongoing.
Ron Paul and Alan Grayson worked like dogs to get this through the House. And the White House would not have gone to Sanders if they’d been able to peel off the votes to tank the amendment. But with 68 Senators having voted for it or cosponsored it in the past year, that was a heavy lift. Bernie was the weak link.
Moral of the story? Even when you have 60 votes, you don’t have 60 votes. We did what we were supposed to do. For a year. We whipped cosponsors. We beat back efforts to torpedo the bill. We worked with the libertarians to form a right-left coalition, the true “bipartisan” kind that you never see, on an issue that the public overwhelmingly supports: accountability for the banks. The votes were there in the Senate.
Bernie traded it all away. He was singing the praises of the Campaign for Liberty today from the floor of the Senate, and now they’re saying he sucks. They’re right. Ron Paul is calling for this to be stopped, but I frankly don’t know what can be done.
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ONE audit?
Really?
How easy is it to hide any hinky stuff from ONE audit? I’ll tell you: it’s very very very easy, just move stuff off the books for ONE audit.
And the Fed knows how, they see it every day in the banks they oversee.
Wow Bernie. That is some weak tea socialism there…
hey ‘dogs, is it uncool or in any way unethical for me to post a comment I just read on another site – as long as I don’t identify the commenter ?
I was just heading back over here to fetch Scarecrow’s fabulous response when I saw Jane’s post
I would provide a link to the original comment/person who you are quoting.
thanks ES.
Socialism in the US:
From each according to his earned income*,
To each according to his campaign contributions.
* Carried interest taxed at 15%, suckers.
Totally bites.
Eric Albert Schwing
As a real socialist, leftist, I would agree with Ron Paul, that, in general, liberal class whores sell out to class interests, corporations, but as you have seen, already, almost all so called “Progressives” have capitulated to Wall Street criminality and Empire, by Obama, who is even worse than Bush on Empire and corporate criminality.
I do believe that on this … See Moreone issue, auditing the Federal reserve, to point out the corruption, criminality of all liberal and conservative class elites, appeasing corporate fascism and military fascism, Empire, the two class parties are just criminal. Even the so called “independent” leftists, Kucinich and Sanders, have both capitulatied to the corporate, class markets and their class despotism, proving they are not real opposition leaders, but phony socialists, phony anti war activists.
I do not agree with the philosophy of Ron Paul and his idealized market, but because he has principles on what a social market should look like, ” free markets” which Adam Smith and Marx shared in the Enlightenment and Post Enlightenment, I agree with Ron Paul that we need to see the class market despotism, corruption by demanding an audit of these corporate DESPOTS
Eric Albert Schwing As a real socialist, leftist, I would agree with Ron Paul, that, in general, liberal class whores sell out to corporations, but as you have seen, already, almost all so called “Progressives” have capitulated to Wall Street criminality and Empire, by Obama, who is even worse than Bush on Empire and corporate criminality.
I do believe that on this … See Moreone issue, auditing the Federal reserve, to point out the corruption, criminality of all liberal and conservative class elites, appeasing corporate fascism and military fascism, Empire, the two class parties are just criminal. Even the so called “independent” leftists, Kucinich and Sanders, have both capitulatied to the corporate, class markets and their class despotism, proving they are not real opposition leaders, but phony socialists, phony anti war activists.
I do not agree with the philosophy of Ron Paul and his idealized market, but because he has principles on what a social market should look like, ” free markets” which Adam Smith and Marx were part of in the Enlightenment and Post Enlightenment, I agree with Ron Paul that we need to see the class market despotism, corruption by demanding an audit of these corporate DESPOTS
ron paul seems to be the only one who does what he says, thank you RON PAUL. Dennis K. and Bernie S. just cogs in the political machine
this is just another example of why Ron Paul is the only sane choice for 2012, Join the Revolution it has already been started by some brave patriotic Greeks deterrmined to fight the pillaging of their country.
The ads are beyond tired.
I read all three versions of the Sanders amendment carefully, and I believe Sanders made a good call if the decision was compromise with Dodd or have no amendment at all.
The big differences with the compromise are:
-Single audit covering December 1,2007 to May 2010 rather than open-ended audit until all bailout funds are recovered.
-Specific parameters on the audit focusing on whether proper procedures were followed and what could be done to improve Fed governance. However it is not clear that the audit is limited to these items.
-Fed website still must report lots of previously undisclosed details about the bailout measured–who got what and why.
perfectclue1,
This is slightly off-topic but the free market is not like Adam Smith and Marx wrote about. Adam Smith and Marx made some mistakes in the fundamentals of economics theory like the theory of value, marginal utility, and the Cantillon effect. That was like a fork in the road. Adam Smith and Marx went one way and Carl Menger went another.
Part of Adam Smith’s and Marx’s theories are based on false premises like the labor theory of value.
See http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Menger.html
http://mises.org/daily/2422
I think that’s a false choice. There is much more to the crisis than only going back to 2007.
Oh what a surprise! The same Dems who caved on meaningful HCR caved on meaningful Financial reform. How much do Progressives have to be abused before they vote out ALL Dems come Nov? Honestly, any “Democrat” who votes for any Democratic incumbent this Nov. deserves every bit of what the Obama team and the Dem. Congress have been doing to us. This is shameful, just shameful.
Yup. It’s essentially a Get Out Of Jail Free Card for the banksters that got us into this mess.
Swamp the switchboards is what can be done!! They still think the public doesn’t know what is done behind the scenes. There is an election in November, for heaven’s sake!!
The Hill has reprinted it. Last I saw Huff po was still thinking Sanders’ language was heroic but was asking for people to ‘point out any holes” (I can’t post there). MAKE NOISE. There are a lot of us, between you and us. Heck, even Glen Beck jumped on the audit the fed bandwagen, ultimately. Take it to forums you go on, and social media. Spread the word. We’ll try the conservative side. We stopped the first House vote on TARP, remember? Let’s not sell ourselves short. If we do our best, at least we’ve done that when all is said and done.
At least we are making headway –
Per politico : ” The Senate had been set to vote on the Fed amendment late Thursday but Republicans requested a delay until at least Tuesday.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Republicans wanted to make sure Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah), who has been campaigning in his state ahead of a nominating convention Saturday, wouldn’t miss the vote. But a Republican leadership aide disputed Durbin, saying Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) wanted time to draw up an alternative to the new Sanders amendment, which some in the GOP viewed as “gutted.”
The original Fed amendment had gained broad support in the Senate – and a version is included in the House legislation. But if it had survived the Senate intact, Obama might have been forced to veto the entire bill.
Sanders told POLITICO Thursday night that the compromise included “very minor modifications, which in some ways strengthen the bill.” He pointed to provision requiring an audit of Fed bank governance, including whether the bank directors effectively represent the public and whether the election of bank directors presents a conflict of interest.
But Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), who teamed up with Sanders on the issue, slammed the compromise on his Facebook page. Paul wanted the audit to include the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets interest rates.
“Bernie Sanders has sold out,” Paul wrote. “We need to take action and stop this!”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36905.html#ixzz0nDLpcDKt
Why only one time. Why not annually. What is wrong to have oversight of FED by congress and if needed the results of the congressional oversight could be kept secret due to on-going activities as done for defense matters. No institution is perfect and it is always good to have checks and balances if the country needs to function smoothly and if we do not want some form of dictatorship from any branch to evolve slowly over a period of time. As usual no logical reason will be given out just like for dropping public option in HC bill.
Ron Paul is going to make a stink.
One persons stench is another persons perfume. I hope he would have some other people who would join him in raising a scent, including the citizens, who should contact their congress people (I would call them representatives, however their is proof that some do not represent their constituents).
Although Paul does stick to his principals, are those principals themselves sound? Remember Paul fully believes in the GOD market.
And you can bet the farm these same progressives who are so dissapointed today will be out there knocking on doors for Obama tomorrow. If progressives are tired of the double dealing they recieve from the dems then we need to stay home on election nite. Yes, I know repubs will win those seats, but it wont be forever. Obama and the dems need to learn a lesson that the repubs already know, you dont piss on your base and win elections. From now to Nov 2012 progressive groups shld emphasize staying home on election nite. If the president is going to govern from the center right then let the center right reelect him. It will take a lot of courage and you may lose some access to the dem social events but if enough groups start emphasizing to their members to stay home we will see some results.
Not trying to start an argument, just expressing my opinion on Menger.
Menger had a gaping hole in his process: aritificial scarcity. He relied almost entirely on the demand side and never addressed the fact that companies can (and do) produce less of an item to increase the price.
Also, I would argue that Menger never really refuted the labor theory of value effectively. Marx broke “value” into value and price and Menger really only addressed one side of that equation, which I think actually serves to reinforce the Marxian approach to economics.
Maybe “Progressive Sheep” would be more telling. Even Jane wouldn’t draw a line in the sand on the Coakley vote. So, who can expect posters to do more. Until Wash. Dems believe Progressives are NOT sheep and are to feared as much as Lieberman and Stupak, it will be the same old stuff – a lot of promises & staged anger, but not one single vote for what counts.
It’s absolutely amazing how many tv commercials we’re barraged with daily for cialis, viagra & levitra. I wonder how much is the Gov’t. pays yearly to keep men pretending to be young, while not one Dem finds it important to defend women’s rights. Shameful, simply shameful.
Sanders compromise is a no go. Full Dr Ron audit only.
How was that the decision? We had over 65 votes on this thing on the record. What even makes Sanders (and Dodd and Obama) think everyone is going to fall in line behind sellout Bernie. I’m missing something. (And I’m more than just a little curious as to what Sanders got in return for demonstrating just how small he is.)