There’s a strange political cocktail brewing in Washington, one that mixes top conservative strategist Grover Norquist and tea party organizers at FreedomWorks with democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), progressive activists and public interest advocates.

December 3, 2009

Dear Members of the U.S. Senate:

In the last two years, the Federal Reserve Board has lent several trillion dollars to banks and other private companies, financial and non-financial institutions through a series of special lending facilities. The total amount of loans made through facilities exceeds the annual budget of the United States. In addition, it guaranteed trillions of dollars of various assets and also made hundreds of billions of dollars available to several foreign central banks through currency swap arrangements.

For nearly a century the Federal Reserve has operated in the shadows, away from the prying eyes of Congress, journalists and the American people. Created in 1913, the Fed was given enormous responsibility to protect the value of our currency. Yet in the last 96 years the U.S. dollar has lost more than 95% of its purchasing power. The Fed's unprecedented actions over the past year in attempting to stabilize the financial system have now forced it into the spotlight, and caused millions of people around the country to question the opacity of the Fed's financial transactions.

Bloomberg News has filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking copies of the term sheets related to AIG’s counterparty payments, along with e-mails and the logs of phone calls and meetings among Geithner, Friedman and other New York Fed and AIG officials. The request is pending. Full Story

Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve must make records about emergency lending to financial institutions public within five days because it failed to convince a judge the documents should be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. Full Story

I agree with Judge Andrew Napolitano, who said last week, "We know more about the CIA than we do about the Federal Reserve." The Federal Reserve is the Freemasonry of government agencies.

It is a virtual secret society unto themselves – a group of unelected brokers who hold the value of our dollar in the palms of their hands. This one agency, with its power to raise and lower interest rates, has exercised more control over the economy than any other government body.

If Ron Paul succeeds in getting the Fed audited, the consequences could be far-reaching. Assuming the audit isn't rigged to protect the guilty, as a similar bill was in 1978, the Fed will need every obfuscating Keynesian to testify and write editorials on its behalf, to reassure the public that monetary matters really are best left to the gods who rule us, such as Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner.

Congressional Hearing