Passage of "Audit the Fed" bill step to rebuilding economy

Transparency is an idea whose time has come

On July 25, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, 327-98. The bill would allow for an independent and nonpartisan audit of the Federal Reserve for the first time in the 100-year history of the engine of money supply growth.

This would be the first time that U.S. taxpayers would be allowed to know exactly who benefited from Federal Reserve bailouts. It would also be the first time since the 2008 crash that investors and businessmen would be able to accurately predict the current and future money supply — information critical to a functional economy.

Transparency is an idea whose time has come. The bill passed the House with the vote of all but one Republican (yes, he was from New York) and 89 Democrats. Eight Democrats who had co-sponsored the bill turned at the last second and voted against it.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid was vocally for a Federal Reserve audit in 1995 and again in 2010. Now that the bill has passed, he has joined the high-ranking House Democrats in backstabbing the Senate version, swearing never to let it come to a vote.

Presumably he has received 30 pieces of … well, probably not silver.

Federal Reserve transparency does have friends in the Senate. Sen. Rand Paul, son of the House bill’s principal supporter, is a co-sponsor. So is Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina.

But just as in the House, it isn’t only conservatives who are demanding financial transparency. Sen. Bernie Sanders supported Ron Paul’s push for an audit of the Federal Reserve last year.

Federal Reserve secrecy is justified with vague hand-waving about “saving the financial system.” But corporations that lose money shouldn’t be “saved.” We have this thing called “bankruptcy” that transfers assets away from companies that lose money to managers that know what they’re doing, and it works just fine.

If GM hadn’t been “bailed out,” would the GM factories have disappeared? Of course not. Without subsidies, the GM factories would have been sold off to solvent firms. We would now have 10 small profitable car companies instead of one big loser … and no taxpayer would have had to pay for it. It’s called “capitalism”, and it’s an idea that works everywhere from Shanghai to Singapore, from Botswana to the Czech Republic.

Let’s try it here. Call your Senators and demand that they allow a vote on the S.202, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2011. Transparency is the first step toward national solvency.

Bill Walker of Plainfield is a Republican candidate for state representative in Sullivan County House District 1.