For the first time in history, the Federal Reserve Bank may be facing an audit. On Thursday, the House Finance Committee passed a bill (HR 1207) that authorizes the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a wide-ranging audit of the Fed’s secretive deals with foreign central banks and major U.S. financial institutions.

HR 1207, sponsored by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), currently has 313 co-sponsors in the House from both sides of the aisle, which is a veto-proof majority. A companion bill in the Senate (S 604) has 30 co-sponsors.

Glenn Greenwald, an investigative reporter writing for Salon.com, points out what may be the most significant aspect of the passage of HR 1207: Read the full story

Google has clarified that it will not index publishers against their wishes, in response to Rupert Murdoch’s threat to block the search engine from his newspapers’ websites.

A spokesman for the search giant said: “Google News and web search are a tremendous source of promotion for news organisations, sending them about 100,000 clicks every minute.

“Publishers put their content on the web because they want it to be found, so very few choose not to include their material in Google News and web search. But if they tell us not to include it, we don’t.” Read the full story

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Ken Lewis, the beleaguered CEO of Bank of America, announced Wednesday that he will retire at year’s end.

Lewis, who was stripped of his chairman title in April, will also step down from the board. No successor was named. Read the full story

We knew it was going to happen, but we’re still stoked to report that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski formally proposed a set of net neutrality rules this morning, calling them “the fair rules of the road for companies that control access to the internet.” There are two big new rules, which say broadband providers of any kind can’t discriminate against content or applications, and must be transparent about their network management policies — a big change for wireless carriers like Verizon and AT&T, who would have to open their networks to scrutiny, and a direct response to Comcast’s secretive packet-filtering techniques.

Read the full story

Los Angeles, CA— World leading drug-industry investigators have uncovered stunning documents proving an international drug ring, operating from New York City, is behind the H1N1 swine flu fright and vaccination preparations. Read the full story

White House wants to kill royalty-in-kind program

WASHINGTON — Interior Secretary Ken Salazar today told Congress he would kill a controversial program that allows energy companies to use actual oil and natural gas — instead of cash — to pay the government royalties for drilling on public lands. Read the full story

BOSTON (AP) — James S. McDonald, president and chief executive of investment management firm Rockefeller & Co., has died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, Massachusetts authorities said Tuesday. Read the full story

By Thomas Lahey

Forum Columnist

“Economic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics.” These words, written by economist Ludwig von Mises, seem terribly pertinent in light of recent developments in the United States. Congress extends its reach over the economy daily with every new regulatory measure it can think up. In today’s world, where problems are a dime a dozen, that means a lot of new legislation. Unfortunately, the question is never “Should the government do something?” but always, “What should the government do and how quickly?” This is a recipe for bad policy. Read the full story

And so the guns come out blazing. The Clearing House Association, another name for all the banks that were bailed out over the past year with the generous contributions from all of you, dear taxpayers, are now threatening with another instance of complete systemic collapse if Bloomberg’s lawsuit is allowed to proceed unchallenged, let alone if any of the “Audit The Fed” measures are actually implemented. Read the full story