Just one in 10 American adults is opposed to auditing the shadowy Federal Reserve, with an overwhelming 74 percent supporting an audit of the controversial central bank, according to a new poll released by Rasmussen. While the banking cartel-run institution has hired lobbyists and unleashed various gimmicks to improve its image and protect its cloak of secrecy from Congress and the public, it appears increasingly clear that the people see through the charade. Now, the question is whether lawmakers will side with the establishment to protect the Fed, or with the American public and their demands for transparency.
The survey results, which echo the findings of numerous other polls conducted on the issue in recent years, show that support for an audit of the Fed transcends party lines. While backing for transparency at the central bank was strongest among Republicans — 83 percent support an audit, versus 7 percent opposed — nearly two thirds of Democrats also want to know what is going at the Fed, compared to 14 percent who do not. Among Americans who do not identify with either major party, almost eight in 10 support an audit, with less than one in 10 against it.
According to Rasmussen Reports, which released the results on November 8, part of the reason that Americans still “overwhelmingly support” a public audit of the Fed might be “because a sizable number think the Fed chairman has too much power over the economy.” Neither current central bank boss Ben “Helicopter” Bernanke nor his likely replacement, Janet Yellen, was very popular with the public either. Among respondents who expressed an opinion and had heard of the central bankers — over a third did not recognize Yellen’s name — strong majorities held unfavorable views of them.
Overall, without even knowing what is going on behind closed doors at the central bank due to a lack of transparency, half of likely voters said they had a negative impression of the Fed — with more than 20 percent saying they viewed the institution “very” unfavorably. Among Republicans, an overwhelming seven in 10 respondents had a negative view. Just seven percent of adults surveyed had a “very favorable” impression of the central bank, and around one fourth said “somewhat favorable.” About 16 percent said they were unsure. Wealthier Americans were less likely than others to have a negative view, though even among higher earners, the Fed was hardly popular.
With just 10 percent of American adults opposed to auditing the shadowy but unimaginably powerful central bank, and a full three fourths in favor of opening up the books, there have been strong efforts in Congress to pass “Audit the Fed” legislation for years. Led in part by then-Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), the push to audit — and eventually abolish — the controversial institution has been gaining momentum quickly. From being virtually unknown among much of the public prior to the most recent economic crisis, trillions in lawless bailouts, the ongoing erosion of the dollar’s purchasing power, and increasing awareness have all contributed to the escalating political shift surrounding the Fed.
Of course, some members of Congress — for the most part responding to overwhelming public pressure — have been trying for years to find out what is going on behind the impenetrable veil of silence shrouding the U.S. central bank. However, the privately owned institution, which has a government-granted monopoly on America’s rapidly depreciating U.S. dollar, has fiendishly resisted transparency at every turn. Even Freedom of Information Act requests have been met with defiance, with the New York Fed pointing out in its refusal to hand over documents that it is privately owned by shareholders and not part of the government.
In response to the growing public outcry, the Fed actually resorted to hiring a lobbyist to protect its interests on Capitol Hill. More recently, it began waging what the New York Times described as a “public relations offensive.” When that failed to stem the escalating outrage, the central bank even asked for contractors to help it spy on critics — with one of the stated goals being to help tailor its “public relations” gimmicks, also known as propaganda, more effectively. In an apparent fit of desperation, the shadowy institution even began peddling propaganda to high-school students last year, in addition to pro-Fed comic books targeting young children.
Despite its best efforts, however, the House of Representatives has already voted overwhelmingly to audit the Fed in the past, obliterating normal partisan divides. Still, the secretive monetary cartel has managed to avoid serious scrutiny thus far. Thanks largely to certain establishment-minded senators — especially Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who fought hard to protect the Fed’s secrecy and ensure that only a watered-down audit would make it through — a real “audit the Fed” to investigate all of what the central bank is doing has remained elusive.
Even the neutered version of the audit that did pass, however, revealed more than $3 trillion in bailouts to foreign banks, major conflicts of interest, and much more. In just two and a half years, the Fed pumped more than $16 trillion — trillion with a t, more than the entire GDP of the United States — into bailouts for banks and mega-corporations. On both sides of the aisle, lawmakers claimed to be outraged about the heist, yet for some reason, Congress and the president have steadfastly refused to take real action. Of course, there have been a few efforts to rein in the Fed in recent years, but the institution continues to conjure trillions into existence with no accountability and no transparency.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has a plan to change that soon. Late last month, the high-profile freshman senator announced that he would be tying Janet Yellen’s nomination to take over the central bank to legislation giving the federal government the power to audit the Fed. “As part of Senate consideration of the Janet Yellen nomination to be Chair of the Federal Reserve, I will request a vote on my bipartisan Federal Reserve Transparency Act, S. 209,” Sen. Paul wrote in an e-mail to supporters of Campaign for Liberty, a grassroots organization founded by honest-money champion Ron Paul. “The American people deserve transparency from the Federal Reserve and the federal government as a whole.”
Of course, despite overwhelming public support for an audit, the bipartisan establishment still vehemently opposes transparency at the Fed — after all, it represents one of the establishment’s primary tools to confiscate wealth, enrich cronies, centrally plan the economy, and wreak havoc at will. The central bank, while privately owned, also has a deep symbiotic relationship with the political class in Washington, D.C., that facilitates the perpetuation and growth of the welfare-warfare state. Considering that, it is no surprise that analysts expect fierce resistance in the Senate to opening the Fed’s books.
The trends in public opinion, though, are crystal clear: By gigantic margins, Americans want to know what is going on at the unconstitutional institution that controls their currency and centrally plans vast swaths of their economy while handing out trillions to big banks around the world. The Rasmussen survey of 1,000 adults nationwide has a margin of sampling error of three percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence. Other polls have similarly found that about four in five Americans want to audit the Fed, too. So, if Sen. Paul succeeds, senators will have to go on record showing whether they side with the people — or with the establishment-dominated banking cartel behind the Fed.
At this point, owing almost entirely to the Fed’s reckless policies and the U.S. government aiding and abetting them, the prospect of ending the dollar’s reign as the global reserve currency is now being openly trumpeted in the headlines around the world. The implications of that, needless to say, are Earth-shattering — especially for the U.S. economy and the American people, whose wealth has been secretly but steadily extracted through inflation and other monetary gimmicks over the last century. With public awareness growing quickly, though, the Fed’s days of operating in the shadows could be numbered.
Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, politics, and more. He can be reached at [email protected].
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