Bill Posey

WASHINGTON, DC – In a recent letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Congressman Bill Posey (R-Rockledge) joined with 25 of his fellow House Members in calling for documents detailing the Fed’s handling of the AIG bail-out to be made available to Members of the House Financial Services Committee and its staff. Aides to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs have already been granted access to such documents on the matter, but not in the House.

“We still have many serious questions surrounding the AIG bailouts,” said Posey. “Every taxpayer has the right to know the role of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury in these monumental and costly decisions.  I join my colleagues in calling for transparency and accountability in this and other actions by the Federal Reserve throughout the financial crisis. The American people deserve to know all the facts and by continuing to withhold information on how billions of dollars in taxpayer money was spent, the Federal Reserve is further abusing the taxpayer.”

The letter to Chairman Bernanke states “the ongoing government rescue of the American International Group, Inc. (AIG) has raised serious concerns regarding a lack of transparency surrounding the commitment of billions of taxpayer dollars, including the payment of over $60 billion to AIG’s counterparties on certain credit default swap transactions. Recent disclosures that the New York Fed attempted to prevent public disclosure of information related to these transactions by directing AIG to delete the counterparty names and payment information from the company’s draft regulatory filing are extremely troubling.” To view the letter in full, click here.

Alan Grayson

(Washington, DC) – Congressman Alan Grayson successfully steered an important bipartisan amendment through the House Financial Services Committee today.  The Paul-Grayson amendment clears the way for the first independent audit of the Federal Reserve since the central bank was created in 1913.

Congressman Grayson said, “The Federal Reserve has conducted secret bailouts that range in the hundreds of billions of dollars.  Congress never voted on them, and the President never approved them. This cannot go on any longer.  It’s bad enough that we have bailouts at all.  But it is really bad if they are secret, with the Fed transferring money to banks without the public knowing about it.”

The amendment will be part of a larger bill aimed at reforming and regulating the financial markets, in order to prevent another massive collapse.  Exposing how the Federal Reserve operates is a crucial component to any meaningful reform.  “We need to figure out what they’ve done and then we can figure out how to respond,” Congressman Grayson said.

The non-partisan Government Accountability Office will conduct the audits.  The Paul-Grayson amendment closely mimics H.R. 1207, the Audit the Fed bill.  Representative Ron Paul first introduced the idea of auditing the Fed 26 years ago.  It never garnered much support until this year, when Congressman Grayson became the first Democrat to co-sponsor H.R. 1207.  He literally walked it around the floor of the House during votes, encouraging Members to support it.  The bill now has 310 co-sponsors out of the 435 Members, including well over 100 Democrats and every single Republican.

The amendment passed the Committee by a vote of 43-26.  You can read the entire Paul-Grayson amendment here.

“I did not support this because it is a Democratic bill or a Republican bill, I supported it because Ron Paul is right,” Congressman Grayson said.