Constant Painful Reminders

You can always count on the bureaucrats of the Federal Reserve to provide us with constant painful reminders of their backstage exploits.

After it was found that we had given billions of dollars to Libyan Dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, federal investigators probed the New York branch of the Federal Reserve about money that we have sent to other countries.

When asked about the money we had shipped into Iraq during the early days of the U.S. invasion, the New York branch of the Federal Reserve refused to provide any information.

The lack of disclosure is making it impossible for federal investigators to follow the paper trail of billions of dollars that went missing in the chaotic rush to finance the Iraq occupation, and to determine how much of that money was stolen.

According to a 2007 investigative report, the cash originated from a little-known Fed vault located at 100 Orchard Street in East Rutherford, NJ, the largest depository of American currency in the world.

On Tuesday, June 22, 2004, unmanned vehicles loaded a tractor-trailer with pallets of $100 bills — weighing 30 tons and worth $2.4 billion — and that truck headed out onto New Jersey Route 17 bound for Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, DC.  There, the money was transferred to a C-130 transport plane and flown to Baghdad.

The transfer on that one day was just one of several such shipments of currency to Iraq, and the inspector general is trying to determine just how much was sent, and how much was stolen once it arrived in Iraq.

“We don’t have access to the Federal Reserve account to know how much money actually came out of the Fed,” said Jason Venner, the inspector general’s chief auditor. “They won’t tell us.”

It was one of the largest shipments of cash in history.  And the inspector general says that if the money was stolen, that would represent the largest heist in history.

The continual maneuvering of the Federal Reserve to evade accountability and transparency must come to an end.  We must ensure Maryland's representatives demand a full audit.

However, it looks like we will have to remind some of them just how important this issue is.

When Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger co-sponsored our previous bill, which would have required a full audit of the Federal Reserve, he told Marylanders that he would stand up for us on this vital issue.

When the bill finally came up for a vote, Congressman Ruppersberger voted against it.

The United States currently has 14 trillion dollars in debt and the Federal Reserve is shuffling billions of dollars around with no oversight.   This is not a time for Congressman Ruppersberger to be playing political games.

It is time to light up the Congressman's phone lines and remind him of that.

I need your help in reminding Congressman Ruppersberger about the importance of this issue.  Will you help me out by making a quick phone call?

Please call Congressman Ruppersberger and ask that he co-sponsor H.R. 459, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2011.

Thanks for helping us drive this issue. If we act together, we can bring much needed accountability to the irresponsibility of Federal Reserve.

In Liberty,

Robin Grammer
Interim State Coordinator
Maryland Campaign for Liberty