The first ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill(HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out.
First Audit Results In The Federal Reserve's Nearly 100 Year History
By Patrick Follow Thu, 29 Nov 2012, 9:29am 1,832 views 41 comments
In Menlo Park CA 94025
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Patrick c'mon we cannot trust the harvesting of the sheeps labor to common folk. This is best left to top notch sociopaths, and sociopaths prefer to work in secret.
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That's a goddamn lie Iwog told me it was all paid back.
Though I can understand why Iwog would believe him, he is a handsome devil, and they speak the same language, Outofmyassanese.
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South Pasadena, CA
And they complain about food stamps expenses.
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CaptainShuddup says
I said nothing of the sort.
CaptainShuddup says
Wow, mentioned twice in one post in a thread I wasn't participating in. I'm honored!
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47 male
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47 male
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I dug deeper into the actual audit itself and found numerous misunderstandings and misrepresentations by the article.
For example here's a breakdown of the $16 trillion:
Unless you read the explanation however, these numbers are totally meaningless and DO NOT represent $16 trillion lent by the fed. From the audit:
Overnight lending by the federal reserve to banks and governments has ALWAYS been a function of the federal reserve. The only significant difference between now and days past is that the money is essentially at 0%.
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CaptainShuddup says
I've had Iwog on ignore for a while, but I'm glad to see things haven't changed. :)
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iwog says
What, you mean to tell me a Paulbot blogger misrepresented a story about the evil Federal Reserve?
The hell you say.
I had this same conversation on patrick.net a few months back about a (I think was a) Forbes article re: TARP.
That article was the same thing: Banks borrowed money, they paid it back, borrowed again. The article reported the total loaned money, not the maximum loaned at any time.
The maximum risk to the taxpayer at any one time was many times less than $16T.
The audit found that the Federal Reserve made overnight loans to banks? What? Who authorized them to do that?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Act
Oh.
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iwog says
Provide a link pleeeeese!!!!
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michaelsch says
If you follow the link in the OP, you have it. He posted a screenshot of it.
Aw fuck it.
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/GAO%20Fed%20Investigation.pdf
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Patrick says
Blasphemy! Before the creation of the federal reserve, the country suffered an economic depression / deep recession roughly every 2 to 3 years. One of them as 5 1/2 years long, several others longer than 4 years. Since the creation of the Federal Reserve recessions have been shorter in duration (averaging 1 year) and farther apart (an average of every 6 years).
The Federal Reserve does a lot to stabilize the economy. The federal reserve may not be perfect, but it is certainly better than anything we had before.
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46 male
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The Federal Reserve itself caused the latest recession with irresponsibly low interest rates after the dot-com bubble.
I have not seen any convincing evidence that the Federal Reserve has benefitted anyone except bankers.
And just as a matter of principle, central planning of the economy is offensive.
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TechGromit says
Like that little recession known as the Great Depression? As I recall, the FED was around back then.
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46 male
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Yeah, they weren't too good at preventing the Great Depression either, were they?
Funny I forgot about that one. Myopia.
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Patrick says
This is incorrect. Rising interest rates of 2006 did not cause the crash, so saying the corresponding cuts were responsible is not getting at the true dynamic going on last decade.
The crash came from all the suicide lending running out of borrowers able to overpay for the houses, ca 2007.
This topped out the home equity withdrawal cycle in 2007, and then Down Goes Frazier.
The Greenspan interest rate cuts certainly got the used home market moving up, but so did the 2001-2003 tax cuts.
That was just the boom. The bubble of 2005-2007 was from the unsustainable suicide lending. Fraud, basically: negative-am borrowing, stated income loans, and qualifying people on the 2 year teaser rates (all lending practices that have been banned now).
The Fed had oversight responsibility here, but nobody cared. The Dems in the minority like Barney Frank didn't cover themselves in glory raising any red flags in protest. Quite the opposite in Frank's case.
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http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=dh6
blue shows home values topped out in 1Q06.
but red shows borrowers kept borrowing money through 2007 -- homedebt rose $1.4T in 2006-2007 period, ~$60B per month.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=dh8
makes it appear that the Fed was overstimulating the economy 2004-2006, but looking at fed rates too (red):
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=dh9
shows that loan rates were decoupled from Fed policy during the bubble years.
The market had a mind of its own.
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Bellingham Bill says
True, everyone concentrates on the Fed's role in interest rates, but from working at Wells Fargo I remember that they also have oversight over lending standards, and can choose to look the other way or not when banks loosen up lending.
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I can't believe somebody "Disliked" my 7:55pm above.
What I said was completely factual on all points.
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Bellingham Bill says
That and eight bits will buy you a coffee at McDonald's.
You gotta make people laugh here or say something amazingly profound to get the likes. Apocalypsefuck is a professional at it.
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That says everything. The entire debt could have been paid back and there would have been more than enough money to eliminate the deficit as well. Instead, we bailed out a few too-big-too-fail banks for getting greedy during the housing bubble that has kept us all renters or fucked borrowers.
And where did the Fed get that $16 trillion from? Was it from producing goods and services? No. They got it from you and me through inflation. They literally stole this $16 trillion from our pocketbooks. That's $53,333 from every man, woman, and child in America. That's $140,060 from every household in America according to the 2010 census.
Geeze, couldn't you do something better with $140K tax free than bail out some old banker? You could buy a house for that. And that's just what the Federal Reserve stole from you this one time. Over your lifetime, they steal the majority of your money. No wonder they don't want to be audited. In other news, rapists cry out against DNA tests.
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Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)
and many many more including banks in Belgium of all places
These banks should have to pay credit normal 17% credit card rates on those loans and a cash-advancement fee of 4%, just like these banks charge.
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47 male
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$16 trillion was never lent/given to anyone. It's an aggregate total that is being misused in the political press.
While I agree that Citigroup should have been nationalized and carved up instead of bailed out, they did not in fact receive $2.5 trillion and they have paid most or all of what they did receive back to the fed.
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Didn't we decide this was a myth?
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/var/ezp_site/storage/fckeditor/file/pdfs/centers-programs/centers/taubman/PB_housing_2010_final.pdf
Patrick says
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iwog says
Sure looks like Citigroup did in fact receive $2.5 trillion, most of which was via the Primary Dealer Credit Facility:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_Dealer_Credit_Facility
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Patrick says
PDCF loans are overnight loans and the $2 trillion is aggregate. That means if Citigroup borrowed and paid back $10 billion per day for a whole month, it would be counted as $300 billion.
Citibank would have no use for $2.5 trillion since their total liabilities from all sources do not exceed $1.2 trillion. That's what I mean by these numbers being misused.
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iwog says
With all due respect, when any of the NY bankers say they "paid it back" they need to change that statement to, "savers were forced to pay it back through financial repression." Until the FED opens it's lending window to the general public who will then be able to borrow unlimited sums at negative real interest rates, the banks did nothing. The public, and especially savers, still pays for their mistakes. As far as I'm concerned banker compensation needs to be capped at USG civil servant wage scales because without the USG and the FED and the taxpayers, most would not even have a job and the remaining would be in an industry a fraction of the size it is today.
All of the NYC money center banks that had to borrow funds from the FED should have been nationalized, held in receivership, bondholders haircuts to all and then resold!
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JohnLaw says
I agree with you completely that the government and the fed should not be in the business of enriching banks. I think that it's an abomination that the CEO of Citibank is paid millions of dollars a year for doing nothing more than taking free money and charging Americans interest on it.
I just want to make sure we're not feeding the media trolls by insisting $16 trillion was printed up and distributed around the world. It wasn't.
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Ah, I see the explanations now, above and below this table:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/60553686/GAO-Fed-Investigation#outer_page_144
So while the total loans made to Citigroup were indeed $2.5 trillion, most of them were very short. So when you multiply out the days times amounts, Citigroup alone got the equivalent of $58 billion loaned to them at near-zero interest for one year.
For all the banks, the term-adjusted loans were $1.139 trillion for one year, at public expense.
Still very good work if you can get it.
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Patrick says
If someone loaned me $100 billion for a month, I guarantee I would pay it back and never have to work again.
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iwog says
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/DGS1MO
(even 0.16% on $100B is a cool $13M in yield)
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Bellingham Bill says
Exactly. You pick up on things pretty quick. ; )
Risk-free return on $100 billion in a single month is just over $13 million. No wonder the banks got solvent in a hurry.
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It was still a giant gift of money to badly run banks, exactly because they were badly run. That's very ugly.
You might say "it was an emergency and so we should give up our rights and our cash to stay safe" but why is it that when the little guy screws up he goes bankrupt or gets foreclosed on, but when the bankers screw up they get bonuses for it? And no CEO or other high-up banker went to jail at all.
If the banks can flip the coin over and over and it's always "heads we win, tails YOU all lose" then why shouldn't they keep doing that?
I want to see some banker heads on sticks, and the heads of the whole Federal Reserve board too.
Beyond that, I want mortgage lending limited by law to the amounts that could be recovered by renting places out.
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iwog says
This describes the strategy behind all "financial services" nowadays. Risk free skimming using other people's money.
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iwog says
Technically it was indeed printed up (electronically) and distributed around the world.
But I see your point about most of the $16 trillion loans being short term.
It's the >$1 trillion equivalent for a year that bothers me.
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JohnLaw says
Just look at the recessions in the 1800's. The long depression (Depression of 1873–79) was far worse then the so called Great depression in Aug 1929 to Mar 1933, it just that's no one is alive today to remember it. Look up the history of recessions and you'll see the the long list of recessions in the 1800's Before the Federal Reserve existed. After the federal reserve was created in 1913, recessions get shorter and farther apart.
Patrick says
I would disagree. The Federal Reserves contribution to latest recession is minor at best. The main cause was deregulation of the banking system. Which in turn allowed them to write risky loans and push them off to Wall Street investors that were rated as AAA securities. And we all know how that turned out.
What you need to remember is recessions are part of the economy. The Federal reserve wasn't created to eliminate recessions, but to minimize there impacts by making them shorter and not as severe as they were in the past.
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"Was there ever a people whose leaders were as truly their enemies as this one?"
-Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
"How did you go bankrupt?"
"Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly."
– Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
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TechGromit says
TechGromit says
sorta. The first several recessions in my lifetime (until 1991 and 2001) were caused by the Fed trying to stop borrowing from getting too overheated.
Which is odd, since in the micro if every loan is properly vetted why should the Fed care how much people are borrowing?
That's just it, though, the reason things get out of control is that lending goes bonkers and things get pushed out of balance in some sort of feedback loop (people chase stuff on borrowed money, and price moves enable them to borrow more money).
The 1991 recession was something different, but related, in that the 1980s was one helluva debt bubble:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=dov
I can't really explain the 2001 recession. We'd gotten overcommitted on speculation, and the destruction of the Nasdaq did put a pisser on everyone, which depressed demand. Things were kinda bad, but compared to the early 1990s things were pretty good:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=dow
shows that the problem was that the growth stopped, not that the absolute fall off was that big.
Thing is, the economy was basically heading into "full employment" in the late 1990s. . . anyone who wanted a job could probably get one.
But the real underlying problem in the economy is the money leaking out of the paycheck economy. That got going in the 1990s with our trade deficit:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/NETEXP
widening, and also Gini starting to take off for some reason:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GINIALLRH
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Bellingham Bill says
The demand for capital goods ended.. the buying of tech products by vast industries globally which started in the 80s and peaked by 2000-2001 and the projected 1000 Billion dollar enterprise ended with vast consolidations.
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Bellingham Bill says
The Federal reserve tries to keep the economy in check by raising or lowering interest rates. When the economy is too sluggish they lower interest rates to try to stimulate the economy, when the economy is booming they raise interest rates to try and slow it down. But your basic question is why slow down a booming economy? The answer is simple, without the fed slowing down the economy, a booming economy will eventually lead to inflation and an economic crash. The Federal reserve job is to balance the economy, to stabilize it. A long line of Economic booms and recessions from the 1800's has taught us that without checks and balances a booming economy (or a economy in a recession) is a bad thing.
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Debt is a great motivator. Especially for young couples ready to nest. A 30 year mortgage, the length of time a person is commercially viable, was the engine for responsible banking in a growing, resource flush economy. What no one wants to look at is the fact that the low hanging fruit is gone, competition is fierce, and the people in charge are grabbing what they can while their taxes are still the lowest in modern history. They have learned to counterfeit the script and legally launder it for their own benefit while mollifying those who would oppose them with a few crumbs.