This past Friday, I wrote that the financial powers were winning the debate on Capitol Hill. Today, another victory for those powers:

The Senate on Tuesday voted unanimously to require a one-time audit of the Federal Reserve’s emergency actions during and after the 2008 financial crisis as part of broad legislation overhauling the nation’s financial regulatory system.

The amendment, proposed by Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, would require the Government Accountability Office to scrutinize some $2 trillion in emergency lending that the Fed provided to the nation’s biggest banks.

The vote was 96 to 0. [emphasis added]

   You ask: how could an audit of the Fed be a bad thing and a victory for the financial elite? Haven’t you been criticizing the Fed for months?

   The short answer: the vote was 96-0.

   We’ve been snookered here. Bless his heart, Bernie Sanders was trying to reign in the Fed. But, this is a ONE-TIME AUDIT. It says nothing about going forward–it will only look back at the past. The Fed still maintains the powers it has had to date–powers that I believe are too vast for an unelected entity that has enormus power over the economy. I would have been happy even if there has been a reassertion of the Fed’s twin responsibilities–price stability and FULL EMPLOYMENT. The latter has vanished into thin air–along with the American Dream