Thanks to Alan Grayson and his odd partnership with Ron Paul, the GAO did an audit of the Federal Reserve Bank. The full audit can be found here:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11696.pdf
Grayson says $16,115,000,000,000.00 was given out, “no strings attached” to banks, playing favorites and rewarding failures. He points out that morally-ugly banks with a track record of illegal behavior like Citicorp received more than a trillion each, and that foreign banks like Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank also received between a quarter of a trillion and a trillion each. See page 131 of the GAO audit I have linked to above (you can also download the GAO report as a searchable .pdf).
I thought the purpose of the Federal Reserve was to support the currency of the United States – not to loot the United States. For the rest of the article, see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-alan-grayson/the-fed-bailouts-money-fo_b_1129988.html
Frankly, the coffers of the United States are empty in part because the Fed has given away the equivalent of the full GDP of the United States, no strings attached … leaving the cupboard bare at the same time that Americans saw their small businesses implode due to tight credit (one example locally appears to be the demise of Good Time Emporium in Somerville). http://www.goodtimeemporium.com/
You know what? I am personally grateful that Occupy Boston is right there by the Boston Fed. http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/29928487/detail.html Not that they can keep the FED from robbing us blind, but for bringing at least some attention to the reality that….{drum roll} the FED is not my friend, not your friend, and not even acting in the best interests of the United States of America. I can say that because in the enumerated winners and losers for receipt of these funds – the more unstable and predatory, the more money shoveled into that bank. But, as I said, you don’t have to take my word for it. Read the reports. And the reports make clear “no the money has not all been paid back, and no, there was not sufficient security to have backed all this risk.”
And the corporate-owned media seems to be blacking out the GAO report and the 16 billion dollar robbery. I have bad news for you – you have been robbed of $16 trillion, plus.
A brief bibliography:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/aug/03/royal-bank-of-scotland-fsa-biggest-fine
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/74c3de46-9eeb-11df-931a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1fl53TJxG
http://news.yahoo.com/next-financial-crisis-hellish-way-204303737.html
You write “$116,115,000,000,000.00”.
If I’m counting zeroes and commas correctly, that’s $116.1 T. The figure on page 131 of the GAO report is, I think, $16.1 T. Perhaps I’m quibbling, but that’s a significant overstatement.
Similarly, the text on page 130 includes this (emphasis mine):
Since the PDCF total of $8,951 B is more than half of the “Subtotal” of $15,826, it appears to me that the $16 T itself is a significant overstatement. The text says “don’t compare” while the table invites comparison.
I’m also not sure I would characterize these instruments as “no strings attached”. I strongly suspect (and hope) that each of those facilities came with thousands of pages of “strings” — I sincerely doubt that the Royal Bank of Scotland (to pick a name at random) could simply walk away from its loan.
This all strikes me as requiring financial and legal knowledge well above my own pay-grade. I agree that the GAO report is newsworthy. I think it requires more analysis than we’ve seen so far.
Is there a perhaps a middle ground between “I have bad news for you – you have been robbed of $16 trillion, plus.” and the silence of the media?
Just click on the link to it, and follow it down. I don’t claim expertise with these huge numbers, either. If you check the link, you will see I but copied the number from Grayson’s article. And there is always middle ground. The starting point is to drag the report out into public (I did) and try and start a conversation (I did that too) but Grayson’s conclusion is definitely that we have been robbed and his “pay grade” to use your term, is higher in this area than mine to be sure. And the “no strings” comment is repeated in some of the other articles by very high grade (as in with experience in high finance) commenters. Frankly, my hope is via comments that provide additional information, and commenters from academic and auditing communities, I will learn more AND bring this GAO report to the attention of this community.
I’m a programmer, and I tend to be nit-picky about numbers (billion is way different from trillion, etc). I think you may have a typo in your lead sentence … I think you have an extra “1” to the left of the “16”. Perhaps you intended to write “Grayson says $16,115,000,000,000.00 was given out, ‘no strings attached” to banks, playing favorites and rewarding failures.’ “?
I didn’t mean to sound too harsh, I apologize. I appreciate you bringing this report forward (hence my immediate recommendation). Perhaps a discussion among this community might help spur more discussion among a larger audience (BMG does have some fairly high-powered readers and participants).
I enthusiastically agree that this is important and should be getting more attention.
Funny – there is a donation advertisement for Alan Grayson’s congressional campaign popping up – at least Google is reading my post!