Ron Paul takes on the Fed (again).

Rather than just tilt at the windmill that is the Fed, Representative Ron Paul has decided he might try a different tactic this year and attempt to see just what it is that goes on inside it. To that end, he has proposed The Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009 (H.R. 1207).

According to the OpenCongress Blog:

Far from ending the Fed, the bill calls for a full Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit of the central bank to be completed before the end of 2010 and submitted to Congress for review.

After his annual frontal assault attempting to destroy the Fed fails year after year, it appears Paul is now attempting his own form of institutional asymmetric warfare.

I have added the widget on the right where you can access the latest information on the bill as it makes its way through Congress.

The OpenCongress blog sums up nicely why this is so important:

In the past year or so, the Federal Reserve has given banks more than $2 trillion in loan guarantees in an attempt to forestall the economic crisis. But information on where all this money has gone and what kind of securities the Fed has accepted in exchange is unavailable. Since the Fed is a quasi-public institution, they aren’t obliged to tell us, even though they are pushing around public money. “The contrast is pretty clear,” says Sen. Bernard Sanders [I, VT], who is sponsoring the Senate version (S.604), “if you want to know who received the money under TARP, go to the website, it’s there. If you want to know who received the money from the Fed, it ain’t there.”

In the Politico, Ron Paul writes, “if this audit reveals what I suspect and Congress has finally had enough, it can also pass my legislation to abolish the Federal Reserve.” Whether you support ending the Fed, like Ron Paul, or fixing the Fed in order to restore the health of our financial system, finding out what the Fed is up to – and where they have been failing – is essential to moving forward. It may sound trite, but transparency is crucial for solving our economic crisis.

It was White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel that advised not to let the current crisis go to waste. Who knew that Ron Paul would take this advice to heart.