Audit the Fed, But With Watercolors

So the Senate voted overwhelmingly to adopt an amendment, authored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT, opposed to those endless unemployment extensions), forcing a comprehensive review of the Federal Reserve's emergency lending activities. The amendment passed by a 96-0 vote.

Don't celebrate just yet.

Championed by Ron Paul since the seventies, it has faced extraordinary opposition from the White House, Wall Street and the Fed itself. Late last week, in a move that defused the opposition, and may have saved Wall Street reform legislation, Sanders agreed to limit the scope of the audit to emergency lending only, exempting other Fed activities.

Let me repeat that, an audit of the emergency lending only...

The House of Representatives adopted a similar provision--authored by Reps. Alan Grayson (D-FL) and Ron Paul (R-TX)--that would have required a comprehensive Fed audit. But though Grayson still supports a full audit, he applauded the steps that the Senate is taking in a statement last week. "There is deep bipartisan support for a full audit of the Federal Reserve, in both the House and the Senate," Grayson said. "The Sanders Amendment takes a significant step in that direction. I will work hard to help Dr. Paul and Senator Sanders to get a full Fed audit in the final bank reform bill. It is time for America to know what happened to our money."

Okay, if you really want to know - why water it down? Why not go for the jugular and do it - instead of this wet toilet paper approach?

Perhaps it's already way, way too late?

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

~Thomas Jefferson