Rep. Mel Watt of Charlotte, whose campaign coffers are well-stocked with banking and financial industry money, yesterday tried, but failed, to derail an amendment to a House Finance Committee bill which would open the Federal Reserve to public audits. The longtime friend and ally of former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt, and favorite of many local progressives, proposed his own amendment, presented as a “compromise” that would still increase transparency at the Fed. A close reading by the Huffington Post, however, showed that Watt’s amendment would have in fact decreased transparency by adding more restrictions. Watt’s amendment was supported by frantic, last-minute lobbying from Federal Reserve officials and a letter from a group of eight economists who were presented as a “political cross section of prominent economists,” although seven of the eight have extensive connections to the Fed, and half of them are on the Federal Reserve payroll.
Watt’s amendment was voted down, and the amendment to audit the Fed — proposed by two of the farthest-left and farthest-right Congressmen, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) — passed in a bipartisan vote of 43-26. Democrats’ support for the Paul/Grayson plan to audit the Fed was solidified after leading progressive economists and labor leaders posted a letter calling for a rejection of Watt’s amendment.
Watt gets much of his campaign money from businesses with intense interest in what happens at the Federal Reserve. In the 2008 campaign cycle, Watt’s four top contributors were Bank of America, Wachovia, American Express, and the American Bankers Association. Of the $458,000 received by Watt by PACs, $217,000 came from banking, finance, insurance and real estate PACs. Figures are from the Center for Responsive Politics.
This article appears in Nov 17-23, 2009.
I hope ‘The People’ show Mr. Watts the door in the next election cycle. And to be frank, I hope the door hits him square in the ass on his way out.
The first thing to audit is the way the full monetary rent is hidden in the liabilities side of the balance, here:
A better way to account for fiat money at the Central Bank
http://leconomistamascherato.blogspot.com/2009/11/better-way-to-account-for-fiat-money-at.html
This is awesome news…the Federal Reserve could be on its way to being audited. Hopefully it will eventually be abolished. Ron Paul’s decades of work are starting to come to fruition.
Too bad Mr. Watt….
Why no multiple mentions of what political party Watt is a member of???
Watt is a democrat but also there was very strong push against this legislation by a great many “self proclaimed conservative” Republicans in the senate led by Corker in TN.
Mr Watt told me he is not willing to say if he supports bring our troops home from Afghanistan.He told me he wanted to see what the presidents plan is first. He is on the fence regarding our boy and girls coming home from Afganistan. I’m a democratic and will NEVER vote for him again.
Audit or no audit. What does it matter when Israel owns this country and most of the world via globalization? If they have an “independent” audit then the elite will just bribe or blackmail everyone to do their bidding. You cannot reform this system any longer. The same thing happened when they “audited” Fort Knox. No one knows where that gold is but some of it has turned up in Germany.