The results of the first audit in the Federal Reserve nearly 100-year history were posted on Senator Sander’s webpage on July 21, this summer, two months ago.

Here is the link:

sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3

What was revealed in the audit was startling. Here is a brief summary:

$16,000,000,000,000.00 (TRILLION) was secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments.  Virtually none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0% interest.

To place $16 trillion into perspective, the Gross Domestic Product of the United States, the sum of all goods and services produced in the country in one year, is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is only $14.5 trillion.

The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is only $3.5 trillion.

There was no public debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.

When you have conservative Republican stalwarts like Jim DeMint(R-SC) and Ron Paul(R-TX) as well as self-identified Democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders all supporting a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, it seems clear that the Federal Reserve is not presently accountable to any public scrutiny.

Here is a link to a PDF file of the complete audit, which is quite long (I myself had a hard time getting through it): http://sanders.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/GAO%20Fed%20Investigation.pdf

The list of institutions which received the most money from the Federal Reserve can be found on page 131 of the Audit, and are as follows:

Citigroup: $2.5 trillion($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)

“No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president,” Senator Sanders said this summer. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.”