> On Jul 30, 9:55 pm, fractional <fractionalend...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > From cut and paste the URL - americanfreepress.net/html/
> > fed_chairman_187.html

> > Ben Bernanke, the head of the privately owned and controlled Federal
> > Reserve, cannot remember to which foreign banks the Fed has loaned a
> > half trillion dollars. His lack of memory can be understood, given
> > that the Fed has loaned or guaranteed trillions of U.S. dollars to
> > banks around the world since the U.S. economy took a turn for the
> > worse in the summer of 2008. Still, it was quite an embarrassment for
> > the country’s top banker, who, during a three-hour grilling on July 21
> > before the House Committee on Financial Services, admitted he did not
> > know the recipients of foreign liquidity swaps—loans to foreign
> > financial entities—that amounted to some
> > $550 billion.

> > Shortly after news broke of Bernanke on the hot seat, video of his
> > testimony spread like wildfire on the Internet with hundreds of
> > thousands of viewers around the world watching the chief banker
> > stutter and squirm. Here is the relevant portion of the official
> > transcript relating the exchange between Bernanke and Rep. Alan
> > Grayson (D-Fla.), who is also a sponsor of Rep. Ron Paul’s landmark
> > “Audit the Fed” legislation (H.R. 1207).

> > Grayson: “What’s that [the $553 billion amount]?”

> > Bernanke: “Those are swaps that were done with  foreign central banks.
> > Many foreign banks are short dollars. . . .”

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> > Grayson: “So who got the money?”

> > Bernanke: “Financial institutions in Europe and other countries.”

> > Grayson: “Which ones?”

> > Bernanke: “I don’t know.”

> > Grayson: “Half a trillion dollars, and you don’t know who got the
> > money?”

> > Grayson was following up on earlier testimony by Bernanke, who said
> > that loans to foreign banks had increased from $24 billion at the end
> > of 2007 to $553 billion at the end of 2008. That is a 2,300 percent
> > increase in one year for anyone doing the math.

> > Grayson and Bernanke were debating complicated global financial
> > transactions known as foreign liquidity swaps, whereupon the Federal
> > Reserve gives U.S. dollars to foreign financial entities, usually
> > foreign central banks. In return for dollars, the foreign institutions
> > usually hold an equivalent amount of their own currencies in accounts
> > for the Fed.

> > Officially, the Federal Reserve states, “When the foreign central bank
> > lends the dollars it obtained by drawing on its swap line to
> > institutions in its jurisdiction, the dollars are transferred from the
> > foreign central bank’s account at the Federal Reserve to the account
> > of the bank that the borrowing institution uses to clear its dollar
> > transactions.”

> > Translated from banker-speak, the U.S. dollars, in a nutshell, are
> > going to back unstipulated loans in countries around the world.- Hide quoted text -

> - Show quoted text -