In a positive sign for transparency advocates everywhere, on Monday the Wall Street Journal reported that House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) is expressing support for Congressman Ron Paul's (R-TX) bill authorizing the Government Accountability Office to audit the Federal Reserve. While it may seem to be the most unholy of unions (the gay liberal from Massachusetts partnering with the archconservative from Texas), this is one of those rare policy areas where almost every politician can agree.

Indeed, almost two-thirds of the House has already signed onto the bill as cosponsors, a remarkably high number for a piece of legislation. Frank's support, though, gives the bill important procedural support. As the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, Frank can help start moving the bill through the House, hopefully to the House floor. Such support is crucial, since the bill, despite its 282 cosponsors, has been sitting in limbo ever since Paul introduced it back in February.

Of course, this being Congress, things aren't as simple as they could be. In this case, the devil is in the details. Frank is apparently still working on the specifics of the bill, and his spokesman said, according to the Wall Street Journal, that Frank "wants to be sure that some parts of the Fed are adequately protected" from the audit process. It remains to be seen what exactly "some parts of the Fed" and "protected" means in reality, but too much "protection" could end up gutting the entire meaning of the bill. Auditing the Fed would provide insight into the inner workings of one of the most secretive federal agencies, one which has successfully fought transparency efforts ever since it was created. How can we be expected to assess Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's first term if we don't even know everything the Fed is doing?

Additionally, according to the WSJ article, many of the bill's sponsors, including Paul, are supporting the bill to get more information on the Fed's recent interactions with foreign banks. While this topic certainly deserves scrutiny, a quasi-xenophobic investigation isn't the best justification for increasing transparency, especially when there are many other, more important, issues before the Fed. For instance, yesterday my colleague Craig Jennings wrote about the Fed's possible role in encouraging the growth of banks, and the monopoly ramifications of these actions. Any audit of the Fed should shed light onto such topics, and hopefully lawmakers won't protect too many (or any) parts of the Fed from a GAO audit.

Image by Flickr user M.V. Jantzen used under a Creative Commons license.