Sen. Sanders voted for a dangerously flawed tea party bill Tuesday
...supporters can post all they want about the need to 'audit' the Federal Reserve, but supporting Rand Paul's bill was the absolute wrong way to go about it.
The issue isn't whether the Fed should be audited, the issue Tuesday was whether to support a Rand Paul, tea party bill that he's been parading around for his conservative allies.
from Salon:
Like his father, Paul is a monetary-policy paranoiac, the sort of person who goes on about the debasement of the dollar and flirts with the idea of linking our currency to a commodity. (Though not necessarily gold. Because, you know, the man's not that crazy.) He has referred to the Fed as an “an enormous creature, a creature that creates its own money,” as if he were describing Cthulhu with a printing press. He has fretted about Weimar-like hyperinflation just around the corner, even though prices are rising at less than 2 percent per year. He has delivered a factually challenged rant suggesting the Fed would be considered insolvent if we judged it like a normal bank (it wouldn’t be).*
While Paul acknowledges that the Fed is, in fact, already audited—its books are verified by Deloitte & Touche, and Congress can and does request separate audits by the Government Accountability Office—he says that the scrutiny isn’t enough, that those are “a bunch of fake audits.” Sure, you can go online and see every asset on the Fed’s balance sheet, including its serial tracking number. But, Paul says, that doesn’t tell readers “who they bought them from or whether they were bought at fair market price or whether they were bought at a haircut and whether or not there were any conflicts of interests in the buying and selling.”
That argument might be more convincing if Paul’s bill were focused just on conflicts of interest. But it’s not. In large part, it’s geared toward letting the Government Accountability Office “audit” the Fed’s monetary policy decision-making, one of the few areas of the central bank’s business it’s not allowed to assess. In plainer language, it gives the GAO the power to produce a lengthy report criticizing the central bank’s handling of interest rates, which might theoretically put political pressure on it to change its policy direction. In a small but meaningful way, it would chip away at the central bank’s independence.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/02/24/the_absurdity_of_rand_paul_s_quest_to_audit_the_fed_if_he_succeeds_it_will.html
Paul Krugman:
Right now, the most obvious manifestation of money madness is Senator Rand Paul’s “Audit the Fed” campaign. Mr. Paul likes to warn that the Fed’s efforts to bolster the economy may lead to hyperinflation; he loves talking about the wheelbarrows of cash that people carted around in Weimar Germany. But he’s been saying that since 2009, and it keeps not happening. So now he has a new line: The Fed is an overleveraged bank, just as Lehman Brothers was, and could experience a disastrous collapse of confidence any day now.
This story is wrong on so many levels that reporters are having a hard time keeping up, but let’s simply note that the Fed’s “liabilities” consist of cash, and those who hold that cash have the option of converting it into, well, cash. No, the Fed can’t fall victim to a bank run. But is Mr. Paul being ostracized for his views? Not at all...
read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/13/opinion/paul-krugman-money-makes-crazy.html?_r=0
Tell me why you believe voting for Rand Paul's tea party bill was correct; not an argument for holding the Fed accountable, but an argument in favor of Paul's bill.
= new reply since forum marked as read
you know, call him out for voting to audit the Fed. I look forward to that....
I really do 
And he stood with Rand Paul and most of he other Republicans?
WTF?
That's what the implication is and why the op changed the title of the article. Bernie's a traitor who votes with the tea party and if we don't hang him out to dry we're just as guilty.
Not only is he a closet tea partier, Bernie's trying to take away our health care too!
...Bernie was able to single out all of the good stuff in the legislation and just vote for that...right?
Bernie Sanders voted for tea party sponsored legislation which sought to politicize and undermine the independence of the Federal Reserve in setting monetary policy. Paul has been very clear about the intent of his bill. His conservative allies have been cheering it on. It's well-known what Tea Party Paul intended with this bill.
Yesterday, Sen. Sanders sidled right up alongside the prevaricating right-winger, obscuring the pernicious, dangerous provisions in the bill and posturing like the sham represented real reform.
That aid and comfort for this tea party creep deserves characterization, but what I'm thinking of might be better left unwritten here.
Go ahead, keep digging, we're almost there!
Yep it worked, I'm convinced!
Bernie is dead to me!
You're converting us in droves, keep it up!
Omg, STOP IT! You're killing me here!
Trust me, big tree, this thread has kept me rolling on the floor for over an hour.
Bernie is a closet TEA PARTY SYMPATHIZER and we just can't handle the TRUTHINESS!
And now I'm bored with this so I'm done with you.
Ciao!
That's what the Fourth of July is all about!
