Poll finds 75% favor auditing Fed

By Rasmussen Reports
Asbury Park, New Jersey
Wednesday, July 29, 2009

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/general_business...

So much for the ongoing secrecy of the nation's independent central banking system. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 75 percent of Americans favor auditing the Federal Reserve and making the results available to the public.

Just 9 percent of adults think that's a bad idea and oppose it. Fifteen percent aren't sure.

Over half the members of the House now support a bill giving the Government Accounting Office, Congress' investigative agency, the authorization to audit the books of the Federal Reserve Board.

Support for the bill has grown now that the Obama administration is proposing to give the Fed greater economic regulatory powers. The Fed, which sets U.S. monetary policy, was created as an independent agency to keep it free of politically-motivated interference.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke in a town forum filmed on Sunday, which is airing this week on PBS stations, said he is strongly opposed to the audit legislation. "I don't think the American people want Congress running monetary policy," he said. Howard Rich addressed this issue in a recent commentary and concluded it was important to locate the "trillions of dollars" the Fed has spent over the last year and a half.

The new survey finds that an overwhelming majority of Americans in every demographic category -- including age, gender, political affiliation, race, and income -- disagree with Bernanke and favor auditing the Fed to make its secretive deliberations public.

Fifty-two percent of Americans support Bernanke's efforts to speak out more publicly than his predecessors as Fed chairman, but his favorables have gone down over the past month. A plurality (41 percent) think the previous Fed chairman, Alan Greenspan, did a better job too.

While the president hopes to expand the Fed chairman's regulatory controls, 46 percent of Americans say he already has too much power over the economy.

Fifty-one percent oppose expanding the Fed's regulatory powers.

Despite Bernanke's pledge that the Fed will keep interest rates and inflation down, 54 percent of Americans think interest rates will be higher a year from now, up 20 points from April.

Perhaps helping to drive the support for regularly auditing the Fed is the growing unpopularity of Obama's economic initiatives to date. While the Fed is an independent agency, just 20 percent of Americans believe the Fed chairman is truly independent of the Obama administration. Sixty percent say his decision making is influenced by the president.

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