Reply #1: You gotta love Bernie Sanders.

[Segami]

The amendment would require Congress' investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office, to undertake a one-time audit of the Federal Reserve's emergency lending to financial institutions in the months leading up and after the financial crisis of late 2008.

The Federal Reserve and the Treasury had opposed such an audit, arguing it could interfere with the Fed's independence.

But Sanders has said the audit would focus exclusively on the Fed's short-term lending for financial institutions from December 2007 until the present. The audit would have to be completed within one year of the financial regulation legislation becoming law.

Sanders said he wants to see if there were conflicts of interest involving the institutions that received the money and members of the boards of the Fed's regional banks. Moreover, Sanders said the audit should examine whether financial institutions received no-interest loans from the Fed that they then used to buy interest-bearing government bonds.

"If that was the case, and I suspect it was, you're looking at a huge scam," Sanders said.


<http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0506/plan-audit-federal-reserve-attracts-bipartisan-majority-senate/>