The caption on the YouTube site says, “Rep. Alan Grayson asks the Federal Reserve Inspector General about the trillions of dollars lent or spent by the Federal Reserve and where it went, and the trillions of off balance sheet obligations. Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman responds that the IG does not know and is not tracking where this money is.”
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Are we missing something here? Is Grayson simply scoring points or is something seriously broken? Open thread.
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“Well, Duh…We were told to get rid of as much as we could as fast as we could and not to worry about where it went.”
I’m sure that the former Treasury employees now on Wall Street and the former Wall Street employees now at Treasury appreciate her attitude.
Who needs a bonus when you’ve got the Fed?
“Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman responds that the IG does not know and is not tracking where this money is.”
Sigh….
Just waiting for the day when it all unravels….
We have reached the end of days. The Daily Kos, Huffpo and BC all are in coherence and are all flabbergasted by our Inspector General’s performance.
Normally, i would chalk this up to covering the Exalted One’s rear, but I guess in this case maybe not. Just another day for the oligarchy.
Even without oversight, it’s still possible that the machine is working according to design…right?
It’s not like we elect or attempt to appoint criminals or their agents to position of oversight and authority these days…right?
Right?
Whatever you do in the next few years, don’t lend money to unionized companies, own debt denominated in US dollars (that includes your savings account), buy real estate or invest in any consumer good that only Americans purchase.
Did I miss anything?
So, my fellow Americans, at what point do we go Bartleby the Scrivener on government and when they ask for taxes, we simply say “I prefer not to”?
Let’s say you give your kid a very generous allowance weekly of $200, but each month he is asking for a few bucks more for gas money to get to work this week, and a hundred bucks next week to go to a concert with friends. So, you ask him: “Where’s the money going? I give you $800 a month, what do you do with it?” If his answer is, “Um, I’m not really sure. I am trying to puzzle that out and I’ll get back to you”, what’s an appropriate adult response?
Do you continue to fund the allowance? Do you keep coming up with the extra cash? What lessons would he learn if you did this? Do you conclude that the best case scenario is he is a fool and the worst case scenario is that he is either a criminal or drug user or a dupe for a criminal? Either way, why would you continue to throw good money after bad?
The answer is, you wouldn’t. The only reason we do is because the Feds are putting a gun to our heads with the letters “IRS” on the barrel and threatening to send us to jail and confiscate our homes if we don’t keep funding their amoral (at best) and immoral (at worst) behaviors on our backs. This, my friends, is Tyranny.
We need Walt on this one. Our minds are too “boggled” to discuss this sensibly without a bit of the rhyming clarity only he is able to provide.
Normally when a couple of the stars are aligned as pointed out by Unsk, we natives call it “earthquake weather”. But when all three are in sync maybe we should be looking for a volcano to suddenly erupt, or something. Or maybe both.
Watch out. Somethings gotta give.
The first thing to remember is that no one in Wash DC manages anything, not even their own time. Not even the concept of the 24 hour day has entered their consciousness. The Denizens of DC assign tasks for other people to manage – and then often do not let them do so.
Collectively, the Federal Govt in DC does not believe in management. There is so much PC, so much PN (Politically Necessary), so many regs, so many special interest groups, and so many watchdogs focusing on minutiae, that there is really nothing left for a manager to do. Except get yelled at for not doing it.
The bailouts were conceived, directed, produced, written by and starred the Denizens of DC. Hopeless.
So there was no one to manage the money and if there had been, they would not have been allowed to do so anyway.
By the way, the AP announced today that the Shovel Ready projects in Stimulus package were not actually doing anything to help people in the areas with the highest unemployment. Duh! Wonder how that happened?
The stabilizing the financial system part works fine without knowing where the money goes. The point is that it unwinds obligations that would result in the world’s most impossible interlocking legal chain of bankrupcies, which otherwise couldn’t be cleared up in a hundred years of court action.
Mostly the money in fact goes back to the Fed. It’s really just shuttling bank assets to the Fed’s balance sheet in return for nice new Treasuries for the bank’s balance sheet.
Stimulating the economy beyond that is mission creep, and probably a bad idea.
In the case of Grayson, it’s always about scoring points.
What a bureaucrat she is. A fairly high-ranking one, with what should be an important job.
This is the type of person who ends up with massive responsiblity in Big Government. Maybe Elizabeth Coleman should become one of the poster children for the Tea Party movement. Maybe seeing her might get through to some knuckleheads who vote for government spending.
Put a clip of Obama promising government “stimulus” with a caption of “what you’re sold” then a quick cut to Elizabeth Coleman with a caption “what you get.”
Actually might be a good marketing campaign. Clips of Obama promising to reduce the debt followed by that chart Glenn Reynolds keeps showing. Clip of Obama promising to “save or create three million jobs” followed by the latest umemployment numbers, etc. What you’re promised… what you get.
But lying and whatnot aside, tying the slickster politicians who sell the programs with the dissembling, evasive, less-than-competent looking bureaucrats who implement them will help take some of the shine off the next snake oil pitch.
Maybe we’re overlooking the obvious. Quite possibly they’re all drunk.
Is this 9 trillion in off balance sheet lending in addition to the 12.8 trillion in loans and backstops we already know about or is there some overlap?
Drunk but not through alcohol– drunk with power.
Guess who is picking up the tab?
Yep.
Is Grayson simply scoring points or is something seriously broken?
He’s on to something. Watch the gal behind Coleman, and the gent behind that gal. They are big-time nervous, and are coaching Coleman on what not to say. Coleman’s a good enough actor – she looks cool and collected and makes an OK figurehead, waffling with the best of them – but those minions behind her see where the game is heading, and they’re scared. What a shame that Rep. Grayson’s time ran out.
Green side out,
Brown side out,
Run in circles,
Scream and shout
A little Corps poetry before Walt chips in
In all the hollering not much attention has been paid to the Fed. But in dollar terms the money the Fed has put out is the greatest amount.
I almost- almost feel sorry for Obama. Really all this was set in motion by Paulson and Bush. When Obama won he was just like Robert Redford in “The Candidate”- “What do we do now?” The Clinton retreads were just the beginning of the problem. The Hyde Park crowd has no idea how to run a taco stand, much less the US government and the US economy.
This makes me want to ask, who is minding the store? But I know the answer is that no one is. We have let the Federal government grow to Fedzilla size without any governor on the engine of state, as it were.
It is time to reassert states rights and stop feeding the monster.
Don’t you really think it’s funny
That the people with the money
Would at least know where the heck it all got sent
But when you ask about it
Then you might as well just shout it
‘Cause the only thing they know is it got spent
Spent on whom you might well wonder
Spent it well or just a blunder
They just shrug their shoulders with a winning smile
Saying please now not to worry
Things just happen in a hurry
We’ll get back to you in just a little while
If there’s one thing I am certain
It is time to pull the curtain
On the IG at the Federal Reserve
As the trillion debt is mounting
She just shrugs and says who’s counting
So I guess we always get what we deserve
15 – Insufficiently Sensitive “What a shame that Rep. Grayson’s time ran out.”
And what a double-triple shame that the next Rep. did not pick up on the same theme.
Ahhh.
novanglus @#6: So, my fellow Americans, at what point do we go Bartleby the Scrivener on government and when they ask for taxes, we simply say “I prefer not to”?
An AP report the other day announced Obama was hiring nearly 800 new IRS agents to enforce the US tax code.
Remember, Bartleby croaked in prison.
All I can say is: buy stuff now!
The hyperinflation that the Government is creating to Wiemarize their debt will do the same for yours. If you are holding gold, don’t let go. If you are not, get some now. And I mean HOLD it, get metal (the kind you can touch) not stocks or funds.
With them printing money at twice the speed of the light the coming inflation is going to make the dark days Ford/Carter look like a picnic.
Have you looked at oil prices? Hovering around $59USD a barrel, and not because of demand (that is still shrinking as the economies unwind) the oil producers have figured out that we are just printing cash to pay our debts. China has seen the light as well, not much desire to hold US debt from them anymore.
Nobody in this administration has ever run a business (successful or otherwise) or any level of civil organization, they have been office-holders with little responsibility. Suddenly “just being Governor of Alaska” looks pretty darned good, a complete political entity with budgets, different branches of services etc is a significantly bigger task than sleeping through (or simply not attending) meetings.
We are in deep and sinking fast.
Seriously though, they might be using the money to prop up the stock market, or buying gold to pay off China (as China publicly announces it has been buying gold all along).
Okay, that’s it, everybody out of the pool. Free swim is over.
They’re not even trying to hide their incompetence anymore. Here’s an exercise for Congresscritters to run any so-called “inspectors” through. Ask what they’ve inspected in the last 8 months.
I’m a software developer in the private sector. I can name numerous concrete, specific projects I have completed in the last 8 months. The same holds true on any given day back through a career spanning 17 years. If it didn’t, I would have been fired long before 8 months was up.
Can ANY of these people name a single concrete thing they have done, EVER? Without resorting to hemming and hawing, that is.
Color me gobsmacked. Even for a pseudo-government entity like the Fed, this is incredible.
NO Accounting and NO Accountability!
We would be better served by our tax dollars if they were used as fuel to heat our homes. Burn them in bales.
The ‘levers of power’ are now playthings of people whose greatest achievement was to fool their constituents. They don’t care because they are accountable only as a group, not individually.
Malfeasance of office is grounds for dismissal. We just need to figure out how to apply it…
tom
Karen/21
Remember, Bartleby croaked in prison.
Excellent point. However, CA is planning on releasing tens of thousands of prisoners, because the judges have determined that the overcrowding is inhumane. Where would the put tens of millions of tax dissenters?
If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute. ~ Thomas Paine
novanglus @#28: Where would the put tens of millions of tax dissenters?
Concerns such as “inhumane overcrowding” only apply to favored disadvantaged groups, like convicts who can be thought of as victims of bad environment. For people like us, they’d probably just hastily throw up giant tent cities surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire.
What an excellent Thomas Paine quote you chose: It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute.
Inspectors General are not there to do the same thing as the Congressional Budget Office or Office of Management and Budget or financial bureaus of the Treasury Department. Obama has put all of the relevent transparency into recovery.gov and what is behind it.
Inspectors General are ombudsmen and inspectors by task. If you look at their offices you’ll find their budgets are quite tiny in comparison to the whole of a department.
The questioning is all flash — and should be answered by any teacher of U.S. Federal Govt organizational studies 101.
Is the money slipping away? Maybe or maybe not. Democrats often ran those lines on the Defence Department. Much of what is accused is true. The numbers are so huge and so complicated, stuff can get lost.