"Fed Intends to Hire Lobbyist in Campaign to Buttress Its Image"

[galtgulch]

<<<"Fed Intends to Hire Lobbyist in Campaign to Buttress Its Image

By Robert Schmidt

June 5 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve intends to hire a veteran lobbyist as it seeks to counter skepticism in Congress about the central bank’s growing power over the U.S. financial system, people familiar with the matter said.

Linda Robertson currently handles government, community and public affairs at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and headed the Washington lobbying office of Enron Corp., the energy trading company that collapsed in 2002 after an accounting scandal. She was also an adviser to all three of the Clinton administration’s Treasury secretaries.

Robertson would help the Fed manage relations with lawmakers seeking greater oversight of a central bank that has used emergency powers to prevent Wall Street’s demise. While she wasn’t tied to Enron’s fraud, her association with the firm may raise questions, analysts said.

“Some members of Congress think there are votes in attacking the Fed” after it “unnecessarily and unwisely entangled monetary policy with fiscal policy,” said former St. Louis Fed President William Poole. “The Fed is going to have a tricky time of unwinding what has been done” and will need to “keep in touch with members of Congress more thoroughly,” said Poole, now senior fellow with the Cato Institute in Washington.

Robertson served under Treasury Secretaries Lawrence Summers, Robert Rubin and Lloyd Bentsen. She didn’t return calls seeking comment.

Summers Tie

Summers now heads the White House National Economic Council. Along with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, he is leading Obama administration efforts to broaden the economic rescue and overhaul financial regulation. He has been mentioned as a possible successor to Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke should Bernanke not be renominated when his term ends in January.

Robertson is likely to start at the Fed in July and have the title of senior adviser to the Board of Governors, the people familiar with the situation said.

She was considered for a senior post under Geithner at the Treasury but ran up against the Obama administration’s restrictions on hiring lobbyists, the people said.

“People have been asking whether the Fed is capable of getting its job done right,” said Lynn Turner, a former chief accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission. “Hiring a former lobbyist from Enron will surely make one wonder.”

Lawmaker Pressure

Robertson would confront a range of issues in the newly created position. Congress is looking to subject the Fed to more scrutiny, and some lawmakers have suggested that district bank presidents should be confirmed by the Senate.

Some legislators have also expressed opposition to the Obama administration’s attempt to make the Fed the regulator in charge of financial companies deemed too-big-to-fail.

In addition, the central bank has been become a target to some members of Congress who’ve posted online videos of their interrogations of Fed officials during public hearings.

One YouTube clip, of Florida Democratic Representative Alan Grayson’s grilling of Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman, has garnered almost 500,000 views in about a month.

Robertson is expected to advise the Fed on communications strategy, the people said. In recent months, Bernanke has pushed to make the traditionally secretive institution more open. He’s done a television interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” program and taken questions from reporters at a National Press Club function in Washington.

According to her biography on the Johns Hopkins Web site, Robertson has spent more than 25 years working on federal legislative issues.

While Robertson’s Hopkins biography makes no mention of her work at Enron, federal disclosure documents show she joined the company in 2000 after working at the Treasury. Robertson, who signed some of the forms, said she lobbied on energy and tax issues.">>>

<<"To contact the reporter on this story: Robert Schmidt in Washington at rschmidt5@bloomberg.net.">>

Despite no explicit mention of HR1207 the efforts of Ron Paul and his supporters at Campaign For Liberty were instrumental in bringing the Federal Reserve and its lack of transparency and its role in causing the economic crisis to the fore.

Here is a link to one of the youtube videos in which Geithner and Bernanke are questioned about where in the Constitution they find a provision which gives them the power to do what they do:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9DgMG-_6Ls

Perhaps the reason Geithner appears bewildered is because there is no Constitutional authority for the very existence of the Federal Reserve System which explains in part why Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson did not renew the charters of the central banks which had been unconstitutionally created in their day. They knew the evils of paper currency controlled by private bankers.

Bernanke managed to sidestep the question as well but relied on the Congress legislating for the Fed while they had no authority in the Constitution to do so.

www.campaignforliberty.com 8 Jun 6AM 156,907, 5PM 157025, 7PM 157,058 and 190 cosponsors of HR1207

Only a literal handful of states have no congressman as a cosponsor of HR 1207. www.thomas.gov

gulch

Edited June 8, 2009 by galtgulch

[Rich Engle]

Predictable, but not enough so to stop me from sicking up my coffee.

[Selene]

Gulch and fellow forum folks:

We are so so screwed.

This is five minutes of the Inspector General of the Fed's testimony.

Put a strip over her eyes and just watch the micro facial movements of her cheeks and around her mouth.

Then watch it again with the strip across her mouth and watch her eyes and upper cheeks.

What do you see as to her truthfulness and her attitude.

Just forget the fact the the IG of the Fed is either lying to Congress, incompetent or a fellow traveler of the agenda or a Peter Principle Post Graduate.

Adam

[galtgulch]

Gulch and fellow forum folks:

We are so so screwed.

This is five minutes of the Inspector General of the Fed's testimony.

Put a strip over her eyes and just watch the micro facial movements of her cheeks and around her mouth.

Then watch it again with the strip across her mouth and watch her eyes and upper cheeks.

What do you see as to her truthfulness and her attitude.

Just forget the fact the the IG of the Fed is either lying to Congress, incompetent or a fellow traveler of the agenda or a Peter Principle Post Graduate.

Adam

Adam,

Fortunately, Ron Paul, Congressman in his eleventh term representing the 14th Congressional District of Texas, has proposed HR1207 entitled Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009. The Bill would enable the GAO to perform a complete audit of the Federal Reserve by 2010. The Bill is in committee and now has 190 cosponsors on its way to the 218 cosponsors necessary to force the bill out of committee onto the House floor for discussion and a vote. It has bilateral support including the head of the Banking and Finance committee who is a democrat. There is a companion bill in the Senate S604 which has no cosponsors yet and was proposed by Bernard Sanders Senator of Vermont.

The members of the Campaign For Liberty are actively petitioning their Congressmen and emailing them as well. We will have them to thank if this bill gets out of committee and is passed by the House and the Senate.

www.campaignforliberty.com 8 Jun 8PM 157,062, 10PM 157,073

gulch

Edited June 9, 2009 by galtgulch