Who Got the Money? Congressman Grayson Grills Fed Reserve Chair Bernanke on Half-Trillion Taypayer Dollars Going to Unknown Foreign Banks (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on August 1, 2009
In the video below from late July 2009, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) grills Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke during a meeting of the House Financial Services Committee. The results of his inquiry are troubling, as Bernanke admits that he has no idea as to where nor to which foreign banks received a half-trillion dollars. Bernanke also claims ignorance on a host of other Fed-related issues.
Is that an easy cop-out, like voting “present” in Congress?
Rep. Grayson wants details on the $553 billion in foreign central bank liquidity swaps that were issued last fall in response to the global financial crisis. These swaps grew from $24 billion at end of 2007 to $553 billion at the end of 2008. Bernanke claims he does not know where a half-trillion dollars of that money went.
My oft-used word for the weekend: Disturbing.
And paint me ignorant, but I’m sorely baffled about all this foreign lending and dollar-swap stuff. Aren’t we borrowing tons of money from China like unemployed, unwashed hick cousins? Then, why, please tell me, why we did we turn around and lend money out to ANYONE? Yes, it happened last fall, but that coincides with the housing bubble bursting and the implementation of the first TARP and bailouts, the beginning of America’s downward financial spiral and the value of the dollar plunging. I’m sure there is a reasonable, difficult-to-understand-for-laypersons answer, but since my background is American literature and not finance, I’m just askin’…
It’s also disturbing and/or questionable that Bernanke was unable to name which countries we lent the half-trillion to. Heck, can he name the CONTINENT? Knowing just that bit of information seems like the sort of thing that most would expect the Federal Reserve Chairman to have some kind of inkling.
Congressman Grayson Grills Fed Chair Bernanke on Half-Trillion Dollars to Foreign Banks | July 2009
Commentary from The Daily Bail:
…they might want to investigate the possibility that the foreign central bank swaps are for the purposes of propping up the Treasury market. Notice, too, that the Treasury has changed the criteria by which it reports “indirect” bids (formerly an indication of foreign interest in our bonds) so that it is well-nigh impossible to determine the level of foreign interest in our debt. Some analysts suspect that the currency swaps with foreign central banks are part of a Treasury monetization scheme. Is this just a “conspiracy theory”? Without full transparency at the Federal Reserve, we have no way of knowing — and if the Fed sets off a currency crisis, the last to know will be ordinary Americans with savings accounts in dollars.
Cheeky video at PJTV, check it out: Sonja Schmidt, Left Exposed, PJTV: Ouch! Paying for DC’s Culture of Spending (Who’s in Your Wallet?)
Additional financial and American economy information:
Christopher J. Petherick, AmericanFreePress: Fed Chairman ‘Forgets’ Banks He Loaned Half Trillion $
Liberty Maven: Alan Grayson grills Ben Bernanke on Foreign Lending
The Daily Bail: Alan Grayson: “Which Foreign Banks Got The Fed’s $500 Billion?” Bernanke: “I Don’t Know.” (Video 7-21-09)
Newsweek: The Monster That Ate Wall Street – How ‘credit default swaps’—an insurance against bad loans—turned from a smart bet into a killer.
Hepsy’s Kuleana: Lost: $30,000 for every man, woman & child in our country
The Patriot’s Mind: Yippee! Obama to Nominate Bernanke to 2nd Term!
Naked Capitalism: Guest Post: Representative Alan Grayson on His Questions to Bernanke Over Dollar Swap Lines
The Weekly Standard: Know-Nothing-in-Chief – There’s no evidence Obama has even a sketchy grasp of economics.
Huffington Post: Obama Ineffective On The Economy: NYT/CBS News Poll
Ben Stein, Yahoo Finance: Here’s What Works in Any Economy
FOX News: ANALYSIS: States Hit Hardest by Recession Get Least Stimulus Money
The Epoch Times: Wall Street Is the Problem: Is Bernanke the Answer?
Frugal Café Blog Zone: Billions, Trillions, and More: CBO Releases Appalling Dollar Amount for Crappy ObamaCare and The Homeless Leavin’ on a Jet Plane: One-Way Ticket Out of NYC to Save City Money
Chris Martenson: Alan Grayson grills Ben Bernanke on Foreign Lending
Frank DeMartini, Big Hollywood: Obama’s Six-Month Report Card
Doug Powers, Michelle Malkin: Did ‘Cash for Clunkers’ just put Obamacare on the junk heap?
The American Spectator: Gallup Suggests Obama Losing the Health Care Battle
Hot Air: Change: Obama’s approval rating hits new lows in Gallup and Rasmussen and The Peasant Plan and Democrats: You’re Stupid, So We’re Going to Blame Bush
Michelle Malkin: Stimulus…or smut-ulus? and The Obama-conomy: “It’s worse than you think”
National Black Chamber of Commerce: NBCC Study Finds Waxman-Markey Reduces GDP by $350 Billion: New study finds Waxman-Markey could cost 2.5 million U.S. jobs each year through 2030 and reduce earnings
All American Blogger: US government’s climate con-job | Obama administration “report” on climate change is deceitful, scare-mongering, bogus science
Peace and Freedom Promises: If you had told me some of these Obama stories three months ago I would have said “impossible!”
About the author
“Big Ben ” needs to to be grilled incessantly until he answers the questions he is being asked.
I’m sick of these “intellectuals” getting away with what you and I would never get away with in a court of law.
If he doesn’t know where the money has gone, or to which countries, he should be eliminated immediately.
We should suspend his pay until he can tell the American People WHERE OUR MONEY IS !!
The incompetents are ruling this country and it needs to stop !
In my Tract The Age of Turbulence: Plea for a New World Economic Order, I explain the nature and causes of economic depressions.
It proves that the ominous fate of this economy is Keynes’ Liquidity Trap.
Its consequences are a new, bigger Crash causing, this time, a real Great Depression II.
A turbulence in fluid mechanic is a chaotic state of a liquid.
It Owns Most of the Proprieties of The Liquidity Trap, Origin of The Crash.
Before The Crash:
Preparing for the Crash, The Age of Turbulence. Proposes a way to profit from The Crash.
Using the yield curve as a predictor that strategy covers Treasuries, Corporate Bonds, Minerals (Oil, Precious Metals and Base Metals.) and Stocks.
Its aim is to profit from both the Asset Price Bubble and Irrational Exuberance and The Crash and Economic Depression that will necessarily ensue.
It tries, and for the time being very profitably, to accomplish Alan Greenspan Mission Impossible:
“That is mission impossible. Indeed, the international financial community has made numerous efforts in recent years to establish such oversight, but none prevented or ameliorated the crisis that began last summer.
Much as we might wish otherwise, policy makers cannot reliably anticipate financial or economic shocks or the consequences of economic imbalances.
Financial crises are characterised by discontinuous breaks in market pricing the timing of which by definition must be unanticipated – if people see them coming, then the markets arbitrage them away.”
….
The clear evidence of underpricing of risk did not prod private sector risk management to tighten the reins.
In retrospect, it appears that the most market-savvy managers, although conscious that they were taking extraordinary risks, succumbed to the concern that unless they continued to “get up and dance”, as ex-Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince memorably put it, they would irretrievably lose market share.
Instead, they gambled that they could keep adding to their risky positions and still sell them out before the deluge. Most were wrong.”
Alan Greenspan
The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World [Economic Order?].
But what do we do After The Crash?
I propose a plausible alternative solution to the Depression: I designed a System that will allow us, when The Crash will come, to get out of Credit Based Free Market Economy, Capitalism, and transfer to my Adjusted Credit Free, Free Market Economy and Abolish the FED:
To participate in our new economy you need to Enter Your €5 in The Cra$h R€gi$t€r. Before The Crash.
I.10.82
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice.
But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.
I.10.83
A regulation which obliges all those of the same trade in a particular town to enter their names and places of abode in a public register, facilitates such assemblies. It connects individuals who might never otherwise be known to one another, and gives every man of the trade a direction where to find every other man of it.
I.10.84
A regulation which enables those of the same trade to tax themselves in order to provide for their poor, their sick, their widows and orphans, by giving them a common interest to manage, renders such assemblies necessary.”
Adam Smith
June 5th, 1723 – July 17tn, 1790
An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
Inequalities Occasioned by the Policy of Europe.
March 9th, 1776
Buy Now The Tract That Will Be Published September 17th, 2009.
You will enjoy my popular articles:
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Ron Paul vs. Bernanke.
Ben “Systemic” Bernanke.