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MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan talks to Rep. Alan Grayson about the amendment passed by the House Financial Services Committee to allow an independent audit of the Federal Reserve. If Alan Greenspan is not happy about it, I take that as a good sign they did the right thing. It only took putting this country on the edge of financial ruin that we're not out of yet for the S.O.B. to ever admit he might be wrong about anything.

Ratigan: Alright first big newsmaker of the Meeting, Democratic Alan Grayson, better known for some of his fiery comments on Republicans and health care, now taking aim at the Federal Reserve along with so many others. He says the Federal Reserve is more secretive than the CIA, and his new amendment co-sponsored by Republican Ron Paul would allow the first ever independent audit of the Federal Reserve. The amendment edged out a competing proposal from North Carolina Congressman Mel Watt who wants to limit those very audits.

Congressman Grayson now joins the Morning Meeting. Your amendment approved by the House Financial Services Committee—a huge step forward. Where do you go from here and what’s your level of confidence Representative that you can continue to addendum behind this piece of legislation?

Grayson: Where we go is to stop the secret bailouts. There have been hints and hints now for more than two years that the Fed’s been conducting huge bailouts on the scale of hundreds of billions of dollars to favor large failed banks. Now we’re going to find out all about it, and we’re going to decide whether it’s good or bad.

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Frontline Oct. 20, 2009. The Warning:

In the midst of the 1990's bull market, one lone regulator warned about derivatives' dangers--and overnight became the enemy of some of the most powerful people in Washington.

You can watch the entire program on line here as well as additional invertiews with Brooksley Born, Gary Gensler, Michael Greenberger, Arthur Levitt and Joseph Stiglitz.

From Frontline's interview with Brooksley Born:

Q: What's the message that you're trying to spread now in the ashes of what happened in 2008 and '09?

BORN: I think we have to close the regulatory gap. ... We cannot afford as a society to go forward with an enormous unregulated market that poses this kind of danger because it’ll happen again if we don't take the appropriate steps. ... We need to take a lesson from the existing futures markets where exchange trading has been safe. As much as possible of the over-the-counter derivatives market should be traded on a regulated derivatives exchange. The transaction should be cleared on a regulated clearinghouse. There should be robust federal regulation of any remaining OTC derivatives market. And personally, I think that remaining market should be limited as much as possible to no more than the customized contracts that are needed for specific businesses to hedge particular business risks. ...

Q: If this moment passes again, the consequences are what from your perspective?

BORN: I think we will have continuing danger from these markets and that we will have repeats of the financial crisis. It may differ in details, but there will be significant financial downturns and disasters attributed to this regulatory gap over and over until we learn from experience.

Frontline also put together a video timeline of the events starting in 1987-today.

I highly recommend watching the entire hour at PBS's site, but here's one more portion I wanted to share here.

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Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan told ABC's George Stephanopolous that the economic recession was nearly over. "We're getting very close," he said.

You know, I've been doing this Sunday morning shift for a few years now and I'm feeling a lot of sympathy for Bill Murray's character in Groundhog Day. Every morning I wake up, and it's the same ol' participants and the same ol' conversations and the same ol' media bias. Look at this line up: Sen. John "I didn't get elected POTUS, but I'll get the Sunday shows!" McCain on State of the Union; former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan on This Week (not to mention the ever-unbalanced and factually-challenged Michelle Malkin as part of the roundtable); National Economic Council's Larry Summers on both Face the Nation and Meet the Press and Senators Jim DeMint and Mike Pence on Fox News Sunday. Most egregiously, Tweety poses the question whether overt and extremist racism might actually help the Republicans. I can hardly stand it. Balance? A liberal perspective? Some journalistic integrity? Ha!

Doesn't it sound eerily familiar to pretty much every Sunday?

ABC's "This Week" - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Summers; former Reps. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn., and J.C. Watts, R-Okla.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Eugene Robinson, Norah O'Donnell, Jennifer Loven, Howard Fineman. Topics: Why is President Obama losing public support for health care reform? Could racist talk from extremists help mainstream Republicans in elections? At the end of 2009, will Obama be viewed as a change agent? YES: 8 NO: 4; Will a handful of Senate Republicans vote for the final health care bill? YES: 11 No: 1.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz; Christina Romer, head of the Council of Economic Advisers.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Will a new president help to stop the deadly downward spiral in Afghanistan? Fareed interviews the two candidates with the best shot at unseating President Karzai in this month's Afghan elections. Plus, is the U.S. government interfering in Iran? Spying? Supporting the opposition? Sending in radio and tv messages? All of the above?

"Fox News Sunday" - Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y.; Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.; Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind.

Luckily, I got you babes to let us know what you see this Sunday morning. Leave your tips in the comments.

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We're learning more and more about the man who walked into the Holocaust Museum in D.C. this morning and opened fire on a guard.

First, more personal details from MSNBC:

Law enforcement officials identified the suspect as James Wenneker von Brunn, 88, from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, NBC News reported. NBC said he may have had connections to hate groups or anti-government groups.

... Von Brunn is believed to have had contact with law enforcement in the past, according to NBC. A D.C. Superior Court jury convicted a man by the same name in 1983 of attempting to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve Board.

The case involved a 1981 incident in which police arrested Von Brunn at the board's headquarters carrying several weapons. He was convicted and later released from federal prison in 1989, records show.

What this tells us, of course, is that he was "sovereign citizen" -- just like Dr. George Tiller's assassin. If he was attempting a "citizen's arrest" of Alan Greenspan as far back as 1981, that almost certainly means he was an adherent of Posse Comitatus ideology, and very likely Christian Identity as well.

VonBrunn had a Website (now unavailable) where he promoted his online book, "Kill the Best Gentiles". Here's a screen grab:

Here's how he described his 1981 arrest:

In 1981 von Brunn attempted to place the treasonous Federal Reserve Board of Governors under legal, non-violent, citizens arrest. He was tried in a Washington, D.C. Superior Court; convicted by a Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys, and sentenced to prison for eleven years by a Jew judge. A Jew/Negro/White Court of Appeals denied his appeal. He served 6.5 years in federal prison. He is now an artist and author and lives on Maryland's Eastern Shore."

I contemplated putting up the first six chapters of his book so people could see how far gone this guy is, but it's too vile. Here's a sample of his short work:

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I saw this NY Times article on Digby's site and it's just awful. As Edmund, a NY Times economic reporter, writes: If there was anybody who should have avoided the mortgage catastrophe, it was I.

Read his personal saga of getting sucked into the mortgage crisis. It's riveting. I watched this thing from the start because I sold my house right before the mortgage lenders lost their minds and almost destroyed the world. They should have been the firewall that prevents the virus that infects the system, but they turned out to be the virus themselves.

If there was anybody who should have avoided the mortgage catastrophe, it was I. As an economics reporter for The New York Times, I have been the paper’s chief eyes and ears on the Federal Reserve for the past six years. I watched Alan Greenspan and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, at close range. I wrote several early-warning articles in 2004 about the spike in go-go mortgages. Before that, I had a hand in covering the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the Russia meltdown in 1998 and the dot-com collapse in 2000. I know a lot about the curveballs that the economy can throw at us.

But in 2004, I joined millions of otherwise-sane Americans in what we now know was a catastrophic binge on overpriced real estate and reckless mortgages. Nobody duped or hypnotized me. Like so many others — borrowers, lenders and the Wall Street dealmakers behind them — I just thought I could beat the odds. We all had our reasons. The brokers and dealmakers were scoring huge commissions. Ordinary homebuyers were stretching to get into first houses, or bigger houses, or better neighborhoods. Some were greedy, some were desperate and some were deceived...read on

He was so honest about his financial situation and his relationship with his wife that it lends the article the kind of credibility talking heads on TV will never have.

And I agree with Digby:

This is one of the bravest articles I've ever read. But it's important to read how an intelligent, successful person could get themselves caught in the maw of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. It wasn't just a bunch of illegals lying on their mortgage applications. There was a whole industry devoted to seducing people into believing they could easily have things they couldn't afford. After all, our whole society was screaming at the time that you were a sucker for not getting in on the game. And everyone has some capacity for believing what they want to believe. It was a perfect American scam.

I rent these days and was lucky enough not to have destroyed myself before the fools gold rush began. If the financial experts got blinded by it, what chance did the average American family have against this massive financial con game?

Former Fed Chairman destroys Randian "free market" principles in 16 seconds.

I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, was such as they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders.

Well, exactly. You said one cotton-pickin', bailout-belying mouthful. Use this as evidence the next time someone brings up "Atlas Shrugged" as the best way to save the economy. Dean Baker thinks he misses the point:

What would Ayn Rand expect to happen? On the one hand we have the hot shot executives, on the other hand the schmucks who own stock in these banks. Would Ayn Rand expect that the executives would put aside their ambition, their lust for success, their greed, in order to benefit shareholders who are too dumb to even know what a credit default swap is?

Not for a second; Ayn Rand would watch the Wall Street big boys run roughshod over their shareholders' interests and be applauding them every step of the way. That is how the game is played. If Greenspan didn't think the Wall Street crew would rip off their shareholders for every last penny, then he was not a worthy disciple of Ayn Rand.

Meanwhile, the Bush Treasury Department redacts more bailout contracts.

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Mrs. Andrea Mitchell was trying very hard not to take any blame for the economic meltdown this country faces.

Waxman: shock. That sounds like to me you're saying that those who trusted the market to regulate itself, yourself included made a serious mistake.

Greenspan: Well I think that's true of some products, but not all.

Waxman: Then where do you think you made a mistake?

Greenspan: I made a mistake in the presuming that the self interest of organizations specifically banks and others was such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders...

Waxman? Do you have any financial responsibility for the financial crisis?

(On his ideology)

Greenspan: ...to exist you need an ideology. The question is whether it is accurate or not and what I'm saying to you is "yes" I found a flaw...

He shucked and jived his way around this whole mess, but admitted I guess something. Who could have ever imagined that making millions of dollars a day with no oversight could possibly lead to greed and corruption and ultimate destruction?