Rand Paul: I Rise Today in Opposition to the Money Changing at the Temple of the Federal Reserve

In a speech given on the U.S. Senate floor on Monday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) iterated his opposition to Federal Reserve Chair nominee Janet Yellen and the practices of the Federal Reserve as a whole.

Partial transcript as follows:

PAUL: I rise today in opposition to secrecy, in opposition to the veil of secrecy that cloaks the money changing that takes place in the temple of the Federal Reserve. While the money changes hands, the moneyed class gets richer and the middle class gets shortchanged. It is more than time to put the curtain — to part the curtain that hides the trillions of dollars that change hands.

There is a revolving door from Wall Street to the Treasury to the Fed and back again. We have former Secretaries of Treasury who go from government to Wall Street, pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars. I’ve called repeatedly for transparencies at the Federal Reserve so Americans can see what is being done with their money supply.

Every time I call for transparency, people from both sides have said transparency would undermine Fed independence. The problem is, Congress created the Fed and Congress was intended to have oversight over the Fed and as time has gone on we’ve lost that oversight so independence has led to abuse.

Some say, well, oh, the fed is already audited each year. The investigator general who is responsible for auditing the Fed came to congress in 2009 and here’s what she had to say during question and answer at a House committee. A congressman asked: What are have you done to investigate the off balance sheet transactions conducted by the Federal Reserve, which according to Bloomberg now total $9 trillion in eight months?

She fumbled, she repeated herself, looked silly and then she said, “you know, I think it may be important at this point to” — yada, yada, yada. Then several yadas later, this bombshell. “We do not have the jurisdiction” — this is the auditor – “we do not have the jurisdiction to directly go out and audit the reserve bank.” So there is no audit to the Federal Reserve. Don’t let anybody tell you there is an audit. No meaningful audit exists and when the overseer of the Fed was asked about $9 trillion, the inspector had no clue what had been purchased with the money.

(h/t RCP Video)