Matt Stoller, who worked on Capitol Hill from 2009-10, writes that the Dodd-Frank Act made no structural changes to the banking system, and that his main focus, the audit the Fed amendment, merely allowed “for the beginning of a real debate over our monetary system.” We don’t really have real debates on much of anything [...]

I have so many problems with the narrative that TARP and the bank bailouts in general were an unqualified success that I don’t know where to begin sometimes, but a few articles out today should provide a good place. First, it’s clear that the Federal Reserve nursed banks back to health far more effectively and [...]

I alluded to the Ben Bernank earlier, and he did sit down with 60 Minutes last night for a wide-ranging interview. Scott Pelley and Bernanke talked about quantitative easing (Bernanke promised more if necessary), unemployment (it could take four or five more years before a more normal rate, said Bernanke), inflation (we’re close to deflation), [...]

I think I’ve mentioned Zach Carter’s piece, “The Fed Lied About Wall Street,” at least a couple times here, but it’s important. Carter explains that what we learned from the disclosure of $3.3 trillion in emergency lending is that the Fed created a liquidity event for an insolvency crisis, and is now pretending like they [...]

(I’ll be on The Majority Report at this hour talking about the Fed release) The Federal Reserve’s release of who received $3.3 trillion in emergency lending from a variety of different special programs during the financial crisis yielded some surprising results. Here’s a sampling of what we’ve learned so far: • Bad collateral: The Fed [...]

Three events managed to converge today that spell increasing trouble for Bank of America. They appeared on Capitol Hill at a second Senate Banking Committee hearing on foreclosure servicing problems, and got predictably ripped to shreds. The best way to cover this hearing is to go back and read the #ffraud tag on Twitter. While [...]

We got the preliminary results of one of the better provisions of the Dodd-Frank bill today. The Federal Reserve has released the results of its first “audit” – information on all its emergency lending during the financial crisis. This contains over 21,000 individual transactions of over $2 trillion dollars outside of the so-called “successful” TARP [...]

Reid Wilson has the story: House GOPers will make a push to audit the Federal Reserve in a last-ditch effort to stop financial regulatory reform legislation, leaning on a popular proposal from Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) to make their case. The GOP will offer the Fed audit as a motion to recommit, the minority’s last [...]

After Bernie Sanders made his deal with the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve for a one-time audit of emergency lending programs, I figured that was about the outer edge of what the system would allow. I had people close to the process tell me “It could get better in conference,” but I didn’t think [...]

The Wall Street reform conference committee continues today with discussion on these topics: Title 9, subtitles E and G of base text: Executive Compensation/ Corporate Governance Title 11 of base text: Fed Audit and governance, and emergency liquidity provisions Title 9, subtitles A, B, F, H, I and J of base text: Investor protection/ Regulatory [...]

The Senate just passed the Sanders amendment, Audit the Fed, by a vote of 96-0. Though a weaker version than the Paul-Grayson bill that passed the House, the amendment calls for a thorough audit of the Federal Reserve from December, 2007 until the bill is signed into law. This period covers many of the Fed’s [...]