Newly elected Alan Grayson fights for us!

[yesthattom]

(Original post with links is here)

You may remember Alan Grayson from his campaign commercial about Iraq corruption, one so angry and well-executed that you could hardly believe it came from a Democrat. He won the seat in Florida’s eighth district, and now he’s actually in Congress, actually asking the screamingly obvious questions about the bailout.
Here’s video of Grayson yesterday querying Donald Kohn, the Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve, about who the hell they’ve given $1.2 trillion to. And Kohn REFUSES TO ANSWER. Matt Stoller, who’s now a senior policy advisor to Grayson, has more, including a request for suggestions on where to take things next.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict Grayson will not be swallowed up by the Horrible Borg. He’s certainly worth admiring right now (uh, mostly).

Watch all the way to the end. Watch a Democrat FINALLY stand up for us and ask the hard questions:

Comments

[geminigirl]

He's my Congressman...I just wish he'd take down his leftover campaign signs-they're kind of an eyesore.

It was a rather nasty race though.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

I've always thought that candidates should be fined for every sign left out past one week. But I can't come up with a good way to regulate it so that it isn't abused.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

They could put down a deposit and only get it back after the signs are down. That'd work better for local, smaller, campaigns.

[sigje.livejournal.com]

... utility of the facility.. Kohn is really fluffy.

[wayward-va.livejournal.com]

The theory, as I understand it, is that if people knew an institution was borrowing from the Federal Reserve that they would lose confidence and stop doing business with the institution. In banking terms, you'd have a run on the bank sparked by fear that the bank was unsound. I can see where that case could be argued during normal times; a bank runs into a spot of short term trouble, they borrow from the Fed for a day or a week or a month and then they're back to normal. That's how these things used to work.

But these are not normal times. The entire SYSTEM is in trouble. We're not in an irrational crisis of confidence where discretion is a positive thing. We're in a perfectly rational crisis of solvency where discretion only delays the process of sorting out who is broke and who isn't. Until the true value of assets becomes transparent the system of credit and banking in this country will continue to be effectively frozen. Having the Federal Reserve hide the details of it's balance sheet does not help us in getting to the point where true asset values are established.