Sen. Harry Reid has his reasons that reason does not know.
Well, Nick Gillespie of ReasonTV (and .com) doesn’t know them. But he has his suspicions.
While the House has passed the Federal Reserve Financial Transparency Act, aiming to audit the Fed, Senate Majority Leader Reid balks at bringing the proposal up to a vote in Congress’s upper chamber. (Gillespie says it won’t happen, not while Reid has his say.)
In the House, both parties supported the audit — a majority of Democrats, and all Republicans save one lone holdout giving a Nay vote. But Reid, whose commitment to corporatism and opacity is well known, presumably fears the upwelling of good old republican values in the Old Man’s Club that is the U.S. Senate — Reid’s romper room for so many decades.
Egads, he must be thinking, even Senators Elizabeth Warren and Rand Paul agree on the need for some sunlight into the dark corridors of America’s bank cartel.
And they don’t agree about much of anything!
Gillespie spells out the whys of transparency. He also explains the basic context: “The central bank is explicitly tasked with the fundamentally incompatible duties of conducting stable monetary policy, promoting full employment, acting as a lender of last resort, and regulating the banks it works with. Good luck with all that.”
Who needs luck when you have power? Some do benefit from the current Old Boys’ system. They’re just not the general citizenry. Or republican governance.
A free society would have a very different banking and monetary system. Adding transparency might begin the process toward such a system.
Next step? Boot Harry Reid out of his cushy position of power.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.