Sanders calls for reform to Federal Reserve system (Burlington Free Press)

June 12, 2012

By Dan D’Ambrosio

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has released the names of 18 current and former Federal Reserve regional bank directors whose banks and businesses received more than $4 trillion in near zero-interest Federal Reserve loans in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse.

The names included JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon, who sits on the board of directors at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Dimon’s bank received some $390 billion of the $4 trillion total. The names came to light in a Government Accountability Office investigation last year of potential conflicts of interest in the Fed called for by Sanders, but had not been released until Tuesday.

Also serving on the New York Fed before or during the 2008 crisis were Jeffrey Immelt, chief executive officer of General Electric; Stephen Friedman, who sat on the Goldman Sachs board of directors; Sanford Weill, former chief executive officer of Citigroup; and Richard Fuld Jr., former chief executive officer of Lehman Brothers.

“So here you have representatives of the largest financial institutions in this country sitting on the New York Fed, which is supposed to regulate themselves,” Sanders said Tuesday in an interview with the Burlington Free Press. “If this is not a clear example of the fox guarding the hen house, I don’t know what is.”

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