"An Unnumbered Swiss Bank Account"

I've read a lot of transcripts and watched a lot of testimony. But these questions by Rep. Alan Grayson for Federal Reserve General Counsel Scott Alvarez are some of the most trenchant I've ever seen asked of a Fed official. There's long been an understanding in Washington that you just don't confront the Fed with questions like these. Ron Paul has been a lone wolf, but during testimony he sometimes dilutes his questions with too much preamble. Grayson has been extremely impressive and he deserves recognition.

I don't know anything about Alvarez, so I'm not sure if he's playing dumb in this clip or just doesn't get it. But a potentially important problem with a Fed audit is the extent to which it will go through Alvarez or other non-principals. It's unlikely that activity such as stock market manipulation or illicit transfers would be kept on the Fed's books, at least in easily identifiable form. And having already apparently misled the Joint Economic Committee in May, Bernanke has a credibility problem and can't be trusted to make full disclosure to auditors or to his own legal department. Any meaningful audit will have to find a way around this.