Video: Federal Reserve Cannot Account for $9 Trillion

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 12:30 PM

By: Julie Crawshaw

The Federal Reserve apparently can't account for $9 trillion in off-balance sheet transactions.

When Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Orlando) asked Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman of the Federal Reserve some very basic questions about where the trillions of dollars that have come from the Fed's expanded balance sheet, the IG didn't know.

Worse, nobody at the Fed seems to have any idea what the losses on its $2 trillion portfolio really are.

"I am shocked to find out that nobody at the Federal Reserve is keeping track of anything," Grayson says.

Grayson asked Coleman if her agency had done any research into the decision not to save Lehman Brothers, which “sent shockwaves through the entire financial system,â€