Audit the Fed Prompts Central Bank to Release Swaps Info Voluntarily

Speaking just before the Audit the Fed amendment went to vote (ongoing now), Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), the architect of the financial regulatory reform bill, noted that the amendment has already prompted the Fed to voluntarily release more information on its foreign-exchange swaps:

I want to tell my colleague from Vermont, not only are we going to achieve what he wants here with this amendment, but we had a meeting with the chairman of the Federal Reserve to brief us on the events in Europe over the weekend. And the chairman of the Federal Reserve is going to put up on its website as soon as possible the contracts between the Fed and any other central banks that occurred over the past weekend. He’s also committed that the Fed would report weekly on the activity on each of the swap accounts by the Federal bank, not simply the aggregate. The legislation is going to do a lot, but you already have an influence on the conduct of the Fed in terms of transparency issues.