Politicians Kill Audit the FED Bill

WSJ The Federal Reserve won a key battle Thursday when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) agreed to substantially alter his provision to audit the central bank’s operations. But pressure from the audit-the-Fed movement is far from over. First, the latest action: Sen. Sanders, after intense lobbying by the Obama administration and Fed officials, removed language in his amendment to the financial-regulation overhaul that would’ve opened the Fed’s monetary policy deliberations to audits by the congressional Government Accountability Office. The original Sanders amendment eliminated restrictions — passed by the Senate in May 1978 — that block the GAO from reviewing the Fed’s monetary policy actions, discount window lending, open market operations and transactions with foreign central banks or governments. Instead, the new Sanders amendment requires a one-time audit of the …