Expose the Trillion-Dollar Secret Giveaway to Banks

If Congress does pass a financial reform bill, the surrenders to big-money interests required to get it through are likely to be as vomit-inducing as the ones that distort the health reform bill, if not more so.

But not just because the desperately-needed consumer financial protection act is likely to be the first sacrifice.

Because President Obama is likely to pass on the best opportunity in more than 70 years to force real transparency and accountability on the Federal Reserve.

And thus fail to reveal to the public trillions of taxpayer dollars the Fed handed to private banks in secret subsidies.

John Nichols in The Nation explains:

President Obama is wrong, really wrong, about the Federal Reserve.

A remarkable left-right congressional coalition – which includes everyone from true-blue progressives like Florida Congressman Alan Grayson to bleed-red conservatives like Texas Congressman Ron Paul -– has formed to demand an end to Fed secrecy.

In particular, members of the coalition want to force the Fed to identify banks that took trillions of dollars in secret subsidies.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has taken the side of elite and irresponsible Wall Street interests, as well as Fed insiders, to oppose open discussion of what is being done behind closed doors and without congressional consent with taxpayer funds.

"When it comes to openness vs. secrecy, Wall Street vs. Main Street, taxpayers vs. the big bankers, I am sorry to say that the White House has come down on the wrong side," says Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who has long been critical of the Fed and of the bailout of big banks with tax dollars. "With growing support for this amendment from both the left and right, I hope that the administration reconsiders."

No one who knows Washington is holding their breath for Obama or Fed-friendly Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner to do the right thing.

The Fed will only be held to account if Congress acts.

SNIP

The Fed is injecting U.S. tax dollars in the accounts of big banks.
Congress has a responsibility to demand accountability, and citizens should prod senators to act by sending an "Audit the Fed" email.

Sanders is right when he says: "This money does not belong to the Federal Reserve. It belongs to the American people, and the American people have a right to know where their taxpayer dollars are going."

Read the whole thing.

Then call or email your members of Congress here.