Bernanke Fights Federal Reserve Audit

As a pertinent follow-up to our series of articles exposing the Great American Mortgage Scam, the head of the US central bank said Saturday he was "concerned" by some congressional proposals aimed at regulating the US financial system that infringe upon the powers of the Federal Reserve. SURPRISE! SURPRISE!

"I am concerned, however, that a number of the legislative proposals being circulated would significantly reduce the capacity of the Federal Reserve to perform its core functions," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke wrote in an op-ed piece in The Washington Post.

He said some proposals considered by the US Senate as part of attempts to strengthen US government regulation of the financial sector would strip the Fed of all its bank regulatory powers.

He also noted that a House committee had recently voted to repeal a 1978 provision that was intended to protect monetary policy from short-term political influence.

Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), who has sought to audit the nation's largest bank for nearly 27 years, does not believe Bernanke's fears are substantiated.

"There is no reason why the world can't know, eventually, what the Fed is doing," he said recently.

His legislation, House Resolution 1207, cleared a key congressional panel on Nov. 19 by a vote of 43 to 26.

"[It] would require the Government Accountability Office to audit the central bank's interest rate policy, agreements with foreign governments, foreign central banks and the International Monetary Fund," according to MarketWatch. "It also would permit audits of a roughly $800 billion Fed mortgage-backed securities purchase program, which could grow to $1.25 trillion, Paul said."













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Is There Any Gold in Fort Knox?

That is the $137 Billion Question

My wife and I watched the James Bond classic film, "Goldfinger" the other evening and began discussing Fort Knox and whether or not it is still a gold depository for America or if it has been "raided" by one of our leaders. This coincides with a movement being led by Congressman and former Presidential candidate Ron Paul to determine the same thing. Is there any gold there?

Since its construction in 1937 the treasures locked inside Fort Knox have included the US Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, three volumes of the Gutenberg Bible and Magna Carta.

It is not the security of the facility in Kentucky that is a cause of concern: it is the matter of how much gold remains stored there - and who owns it. They are worried that no independent auditors appear to have had access to the reported $137 billion stockpile of brick-shaped gold bars in Fort Knox since the era of President Eisenhower. After the risky trading activities at supposedly safe institutions such as AIG they want to be reassured that the gold reserves are still the exclusive property of the US and have not been used to fund risky transactions. In other words, they want to be certain that the bullion has not been rendered as valueless as if a real-life Goldfinger had stolen it.

“It has been several decades since the gold in Fort Knox was independently audited or properly accounted for,” said Ron Paul, the Texas Congressman and former Republican presidential candidate, in an e-mail interview with The Times. “The American people deserve to know the truth.”

Mr Paul has so far attracted 21 co-sponsors for a Bill to conduct an independent audit of the Federal Reserve System - including its claims to Fort Knox gold - but an organization named the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) is taking a different approach. It has hired the Virginia law firm William J.Olson, PC, to test President Obama's promise to bring “an unprecedented level of openness” to the Government and next month it will file several Freedom of Information requests for a full disclosure of US gold ownership and trading activities.

CONFLICTING INFORMATION

A website at LiveScience.com states,

"To keep up with the country’s mounting gold reserves, the United States Bullion Depository opened at the Fort Knox U.S. Army Garrison in Kentucky in 1937. The first shipment of gold arrived from Philadelphia in trains surrounded by military troops. Fort Knox is framed in steel with walls of concrete.

Despite the defense of a 20-ton steel door, a dirty rumor in the 1970s suggested that the gold in Fort Knox was gone. To quell people’s fears, the director of the United States Mint guided congressmen and journalists through one room of the vault, and its 8-foot-tall stacks of 36,236 bars of gold. Each bar weighs 400 troy ounces according to the U. S. Department of Treasury. One troy ounce equals about 1.1 avoirdupois ounces. The entire stockpile now weighs 147.3 million troy ounces, which is worth about $130 billion at today's prices.

The Fort Knox inspection visit of several congressmen and newspeople on Sept. 23, 1974 is still the source of more questions than answers. It was the first time any average citizen had been allowed inside the Ft. Knox bullion depository in memory. However, no experts on gold were allowed, no assays were run, and some of the witnesses complained that they were only allowed to look at the gold through small peepholes, and a few added that the color of the gold seemed to be wrong.

The website of the US Mint says that the 147.3 million troy ounces of gold in Fort Knox “is held as an asset of the US”. It does not elaborate.

Another website reports an entirely different story:

There is no gold at Fort Knox. When Ronald Reagan was President he assigned a committee called the "Gold Committee" to investigate this matter. The results was staggering. There is no gold at Fort Knox. It is being held by the Federal Reserve Bank (which is privately owned by international bankers) as collateral for America's debt. This explains why there has been no audits of Fort Knox. THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AND THE INTERNATIONAL BANKERS DO NOT WANT THE AMERICAN PUBLIC TO KNOW THIS. Do you know there was a time in American history when it was illegal to have gold coins? Did you know Americans were required to turn in their gold coins to the federal government for $20.00 an ounce? This gold was melted down and sold to foreign companies and countries for $35.00 an ounce while it was illegal for Americans to buy any gold from Fort Knox. This is and was the biggest robbery of monies ever from the American people.

O.K. so we'll leave it up to our readers until such time as Ron Paul is or is not able to make a determination. Do you have opinions or information to share? Just post it under "Comments" and let's see if we can make some headway. It IS over $130 billion.


















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Ron Paul: America Must End War on Drugs

Perhaps he has been reading The Candid Blogger. First Barney Frank introduces a bill to decriminalize marijuana and now Congressman Ron Paul steps up AGAIN. He has been a constant opponent of the War on Drugs and its disastrous effects on the American people. It is time. Here is the article:

"Congressman Ron Paul is the most conservative, grandfatherly man to ever be admired by America's marijuana enthusiasts. On Friday night's episode of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, he reminded those who may have been suffering an impaired short-term memory at that late hour why, exactly, they should like him.

Speaking live from Clute, Texas, the libertarian-leaning Republican did what few other members of Congress will and openly called for the United States' War on Drugs to be abolished.

"What about when FDR came to office in '33," asked Maher. "One of the first things he did was repeal prohibition. He said we can't afford this anymore. Well, we have prohibition in this country. ... When he was making radical changes he said look, we're serious now. We're going to make serious changes and people like liquor."

"Well, in this country, people like pot," said Maher to a wave of cheers and applause. "If we ended that prohibition, that would be a giant pooling of money."

"I don't like pot," said the congressman. "But I hate the drug war, so I would repeal all of prohibition. But, I wouldn't even bother taxing it. People have the right in a free country to make important decisions on their own lives. If they want to make mistakes, they can. They just can't come crawling to the government to get bailed out or taken care of if they get sick."

"I believe in freedom of choice in all that we do, as long as the individual never hurts anybody else. So that means I would get rid of all the federal laws. I would dispose with the drug war. We're spending tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars on this, then we march into places like California, override state law, arrest sick people and put them in prison."

"It makes no sense whatsoever," he insisted.

"Amen, stoner," joked Maher.

Filed by David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster
From Raw Story: http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=14476


This video is from HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, broadcast Feb. 20, 2009.


















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