Not to mention $12,000,000,000,000.00 in Fed-supplied handouts, er, bailouts.

Why can't the public be told where all this money is going, starting with the $700,000,000,000.00 in TARP bailouts? The explanations given don't hold up to close inspection.

How much do elite propaganists charge elite banksters for elite propaganda and elite obfuscation, anyway?

$12T in handouts are paid with checks cut by the U.S. Treasury, for which it is issuing bonds to cover as per Mr. Leonard's article. So a Fed audit will reveal exactly nothing regarding these transactions. Unless of course the Fed audit uncovers how it secretly controls all the spending in the U.S. budget. Now that's a conspiracy!

A not-particularly-clever deception. Who, pray tell, owns the listed corporations? They're fronts for those who prefer anonymity. Corporate shell games are as old as corporations and are in fact the reason why corporations are formed in the first place.

Shareholders own corporations. So the conspiracy includes all the shareholders of almost all the banks in the US? I see. Remind me why you aren't a shareholder in these publicly owned banks? Evidently you think you stand to make a pile of money. I'll put my money elsewhere, thank you very much.

A self-audit, carefully constructed to conceal inconvenient facts, like all corporate audits, and fully expected to be self-serving and intentionally deceptive.

A bill to require an independent audit overseen by congress is making its way through the House. What odds do you give of its passage? Zero? A whelk's chance in a supernova?

Actually, if you read it you will see that it is an independent audit, as mandated by a bill Congress passed in 1978. How many Fed auditing bills do you want to pass before you are satisfied? Won't they all be sham audits?

That's what so entertaining about conspiracy theories. What makes some people believe, is the total lack of any evidence. How powerful our overlords must actually be that they have the ability to completely control all information. How could it not be true.

Ron Paul plays a delicate game. Obviously there is merit to more transparency in the operations of the Fed and banks. But, there is a lunatic fringe element that believes a secret worldwide cabal controls the world's central banks including the Federal Reserve. They are going to enslave us all by charging us interest on money they've created through the national debt. Supposedly, the interest we pay goes directly into the pockets of these secret elite bankers. So when these true believers hear about Ron Paul's bill, they're thinking the audit will expose the vast amounts of money that the Fed's shadowy overlords are hoarding and expose who they really are. It isn't clear to me whether Ron Paul is a believer in the conspiracy himself or not. He is very careful not to make definite statements about it in Congress (unlike Michele Bachmann). But he also is a regular on the conspiracy circuit (see www.prisonplanet.com) where he is equally careful not to make statements that contradict their crazy theories. He's playing a strange and dangerous game either way.

Once again I see the crazy claims about the Fed...

And the Fed, as we know, is a private corporation which does not offer stock to the public, does not publish lists of its owners, and is not subject to audit.

The Fed doesn't list its owners? Try here. There's a similar page for each district.

http://www.frbsf.org/banking/institutions/index.html

The Fed isn't subject to audit? Then what is this document supplied by the Federal Reserve?

http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/rptcongress/annual08/pdf/audits.pdf

And no private corporation has to sell stock to the public. Regardless, if the member banks are making so much cash off their membership in the Fed, why not buy member bank stock? How's bank stock trading these days?

Sheesh.

The notion that the US would want to avoid a nuclear S. Korea and Japan at all costs isn't obviously true to me. First of all, there would have to be some extreme change in the domestic politics in Japan for this to ever happen to begin with. Secondly, China is the one who wants to avoid a nuclear Japan and S. Korea. China also holds the keys when it comes to pressuring N. Korea into doing anything. So let the US stand aside for once. Serious rumblings from Japan and S. Korea about the need for nuclear weapons to counteract N. Korea would be just what the doctor ordered. China would bring the hammer down.

The more well-fed media pundits that decide to try waterboarding (on camera) just to see what it's like, the less I'm inclined to consider it Torture. Nobody is asking to try a red-hot poker to the eye, or to have their fingernails pulled out just to see what it's like. I don't think these guys are helping to make the case. Didn't Christopher Hitchens ask to try it again just to make sure? I thought the point was that terrorists would snitch on their own mothers just to keep from having it performed again, and here was Hitchens asking for it? Come on. It's seem less and less like torture each time I see this kind of thing.