"Ron Paul on the Dodd Proposal's Treatment of the Fed"

[WhiskeyGirl]

Me: Are you disappointed that Dodd's new proposal provides the Fed with more systemic risk authority than his original bill?

Paul: Well, I don't know whether I'm disappointed or excited. It's just sort of what I expected. What else do they do? When somebody gets very powerful, and they mess things up, Congress tries to clean it up, and they exacerbate it by giving the people who caused all the trouble more power. I just think it's typical of the way government works. I don't expect much good to come form this, and the Fed's gonna be more powerful than any other, and there's really not gonna be any real transparency of the Fed. They're protected from that happening.

What do you make of Dodd putting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Fed?

Well, I think that's the main thing where they're getting a lot more power. It's interesting that, of course, it'll be funded by the Fed. So they're going to do all this mischief and have all these bureaucrats. It won't even be on the budget. And there will really be no oversight by the Congress. It's government totally out of control. It's just absolutely bizarre that you could create a Consumer Protection Bureau within the Fed, and they do all their own funding. And Congress probably won't do anything about it.

Dodd does want a GAO audit of the Fed. What's your sense of how that compares to your amendment that passed for the House version?

I haven't looked in total detail, but it looked to me like the same language of the Watt bill, when Mel Watt and I had the debate in committee when his went down and mine prevailed. I think the Watt language got put in there, which was just sort of words, but no true audit. It's been more or less been conceded by the Fed and others that these lending agencies that were created during the crisis, that we will eventually will get that material, and I think that's what they say they can do. But it doesn't do anything about overseas lending, central banks and other governments, and what happens at the discount window. None of that will be audited.

more here - http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/03/ron-paul-on-the-dodd-proposals-treatment-of-the-fed/37589/