Blue America's Alan Grayson Grills Fed Vice Chair Donald Kohn over 1.2 Trillion
By John Amato Thursday Jan 15, 2009 9:00am
Blue America's Alan Grayson showed us how it's done and grilled Fed Vice Chair Donald Kohn over 1.2 trillion dollars that has been lent or spent and Kohn won't tell us where the money has gone. It's a bottomless pit. Matt Stoller now works for Grayson as his senior policy adviser and helped do a bang-up job on this video.
Stoller explains:
Congressman Alan Grayson needs your help to find $1.2 trillion of Federal Reserve money. Since September 1, 2008, the Federal Reserve balance sheet has expanded from $800 billion to $2 trillion, or $4000 for every man, woman, and child in America. Where did this money go? No one except Fed officials know.
Now, one of the neat things about being a Congressman on the Financial Services Committee is that you get to ask Fed officials questions. And yesterday, Donald Kohn, Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors testified before the House Financial Services Committee and refused to tell my boss where the Fed has put $1.2 trillion of Federal Reserve money. Watch this grilling.
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I would support water boarding Kohn with out a doubt.
That's probably the only thing that will get the truth out of this condescending POS. You tell from his answers that he thinks anyone earning less than a million a year are too ignorant to comprehend his bullshit.
Lewis Black on the Daily Show last night? Once again, only comedians show what true reporting is about.
Well of course he refused to tell! He'd go to prison if he confessed! But don't worry I'm sure we'll see that money again in GOP campaign donations in 2010 and 2012.
The idea that letting people know which banks borrowed how much is bad because it lets people know which banks are having difficulties is wrong on several levels.
1. EVERYONE already knows we're in the middle of a HUGE financial crisis and ALL the banks are having trouble and face failure. Its absurd to think people are walking around thinking their banks are doing ok.
2. The money was supposed to FIX the crisis of confidence. Banks should be crowing, "Trust us, we're being backed by the Fed!" The idea of keeping the bailout fund secret runs counter to the reason for their existence.
Welcome to the largest theft in human history. We all got robbed.
banks are insolvent?
Remember Schumer made a call concerned about Indy mac's solvency. At the time Limbaugh and some cnbc analysts blamed him for the banks failure.
It did not matter that it was very insolvent, possibly run by crooks and the first of many more large failures.
The bastards put the money in their swiss bank accounts for their personal use for jets, trips, hookers etc.
That was just tip money they left at a Pizza Hut.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqQh60V48WI
It started last March with the insolvency of an investment group that you should all know.
http://www.reuters.com/article/bankingFinanci...
Damn I'm glad I voted for Grayson! This is what I expect of my Democrats.
Take a drink every time Kohn corrects himself from "spent" to "lent".
One of the invented pretenses of legitimacy crafted by the crooks who created the "Federal" Reserve - a private banking cartel that is about as federal as Federal Express - was that it could only exist and operate if subject to congressional oversight (that little game was played so that the crooked congresspersons of the day could attempt to cover the fact that they were selling out the country). If the Fed now refuses to submit to that oversight, then the principal enabling justification for its existence evaporates into thin air. Given that the Fed already serves the exclusive interests of the private banking interests of which it is composed, and no others, to my mind it has now become time to abolish the Fed and return the functions that it has usurped back to government institutions and agencies, where it belongs per provisions of the Constitution. This is unbelievable hubris. Donald Kohn needs to be held in contempt of Congress and be removed from his post; as a taxpayer, I demand such.
not bail time.
I like it. You could run for office on a slogan like that.
that's his line.
Too little too late as far as I'm concerned.
Some how, the Wolf convinced the Farmer to give him the keys to the hen house. Now the Farmer acts surprised when all of his chickens are eaten and asks him all kinds of naive questions like: "I trusted you with my chickens, Mr. Wolf, why did you let all your friends in to eat my chickens?"
Stupid Congress is Stupid.
"Ummm, Congressman, what are you doing? You know the drill, we bail our best friends on Wall Street, you guys look the other way, or better yet help, and you get all the special interest favors you want. That's how we've been doin it for decades. This isn't being televised is it?"
as much as my stomach turns inside out when I have to listen to a Ron Paul fanatic, but there is some truth to their arguments about abolishing the federal reserve.
The treasury should be running the money business, not a consortium of banks and their puppets.
Bush's October surprise was not a loan. Those banks are packaging their dead assets into separate units and preparing to sell them to the TARP program. They will skate with our money, we will be saddled with high interest debt to pay off those loans, and we will forever be indebted to the banking masters.
Nothing Bin Laden could have done could equal this criminal enterpirse.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/bios/board/kohn.htm
Donald L. Kohn originally took office on August 5, 2002, as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for a full term ending January 31, 2016. On June 23, 2006, Dr. Kohn was sworn in as Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for a four-year term ending June 23, 2010.
Dr. Kohn was born in November 1942 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received a B.A. in economics in 1964 from the College of Wooster and a Ph.D. in economics in 1971 from the University of Michigan.
Dr. Kohn is a veteran of the Federal Reserve System. Before becoming a member of the Board, he served on its staff as Adviser to the Board for Monetary Policy (2001-02), Secretary of the Federal Open Market Committee (1987-2002), Director of the Division of Monetary Affairs (1987-2001), and Deputy Staff Director for Monetary and Financial Policy (1983-87). He also held several positions in the Board's Division of Research and Statistics: Associate Director (1981-83), Chief of Capital Markets (1978-81), and Economist (1975-78). Dr. Kohn began his career as a Financial Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City (1970-75).
Dr. Kohn has written extensively on issues related to monetary policy and its implementation by the Federal Reserve. These works were published in volumes issued by various organizations, including the Federal Reserve System, the Bank of England, the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Korea, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Brookings Institution.
He was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Award from The Money Marketeers of New York University (2002), the Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Wooster (1998), and the Honorary Degree, Doctor of Laws, from the College of Wooster (2006).
Dr. Kohn is the Chairman of the Committee on the Global Financial System (CGFS), a central bank panel that monitors and examines broad issues related to financial markets and systems.
Dr. Kohn is married and has two adult children and four grandchildren.
Grand theft is committed when the money, labor, real or personal property stolen is valued at more than $400. Grand Theft can be charged as a misdemeanor or felony and is punishable by up to one year in county jail or 16 months in state prison, depending on the value of the goods stolen.
Simple math puts the jail time for such a theft (at the above listed low end of punishment) at somewhere around 300,000,000 years in county or 400,000,000 years in state prison.
I cannot think of an adequate adjective to describe the awe, respect for its brilliance, my abhorrence and sadness I have for this crime of the millennium. These are private bankers, all of them. The Fed is private, despite its name. This Swiss bank, the AIG derivatives group in London and some other anonymous bailed out "investment banks" are not even American. The list is endless.
Arrest the whole stinking bunch of slimy bankers using OUR tax money to put fuel in their new cars and planes. Arrest them all and give their money, houses, possessions and other property out to the taxpayers.
It is necessary that every American see this.
Not necessary in the sense that I like to drink my own urine "because it's sterile and I like the taste*" kind of necessary, but essential for folks who need to know a thing or two about a thing or two, ie; frigging dittoheads.
*footnote for whoever the genius was who wrote this wonderful line for Rip Torn in 'Dodgeball'.
What they are worried about is that people will learn that their bank received bailout money, which means that their bank is faltering. People pull money out of faltering banks. In other words, by releasing this information there is a very real possibility that those banks which received bailouts would get slammed by depositors wanting to withdraw their funds from a bank they rightfully see as close to failing -- otherwise known as a 'run on the bank'.
So the real question is whether the people have a right to 1) know where the taxpayer dollars went, and 2) know whether the bank they do business with is in bad shape -- bad enough shape that they had to have a federal bailout.
Furthermore, by injecting this much money into the economy, there will UNDOUBTEDLY be a resultant amount of price inflation. I've watched a loaf of bread jump nearly 30% in price at Wal-Mart over the past 2 years. And that was BEFORE these enormous amounts of additional 'credits' were pumped into the system. When these additional funds hit the system, look for a HUGE increase in prices in pretty much everything you buy.
As much as this crook wants to stress that these monies were 'lent not spent', what he isn't telling you is that the value of the monies WILL change by the time it is paid back. The dollars lent today simply have more buying power today than the dollars that will be repaid whenever the time comes for repayment. Ask yourself whether you'd take out a loan at 5% interest if you were allowed to repay it with money that is worth 20% less at time of repayment. Of course you would -- you will have an overall net profit of 15% (20% - 5%)
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