While the American people did not completely lose in the auditing the Federal Reserve amendment, they certainly did not win.

Rather than the whole loaf of bread the people got two thin heel slices.  

Dean Baker, trying to put a positive spin on the fiasco, writes: "The effort to audit the Fed got a big boost last night when SenatorBernie Sanders reached an agreement with Chris Dodd, the chair of thebanking committee. Under the deal, the Government Accountability Office(GAO) would undertake a full audit of the special facilities created bythe Fed since December of 2007. GAO would make the findings from itsaudit available to the Congressional leadership. It would also makemost of the details of the Fed's transactions available to the public." 

However, Baker then admits:

"Sanders did make some compromises. The audit has an arbitrary cutoffdate of December 2007. The special facilities date from the summer of2007. It also only has the audit as a one-off proposition, rather thanestablishing GAO audits of Fed operations as an ongoing principle. Thecompromise also explicitly exempts open market operations - the Fed'sdaily buying and selling of short-term assets to control interest rates- from GAO scrutiny.

"These concessions are unfortunate, the Fed is a creation of Congressand for that reason it should be subject to the same investigativeprocedures as any other federal agency, but they certainly aresecondary compared with getting a full accounting of the money lent outthrough the special facilities..."

However, Jonathan Tasini at Working Life says the financial mandarins actually won, not the people.

"The forces trying to instill some rollback of the power of thefinancial elites suffered two defeats yesterday. First, Bernie Sanders'amendment to bring more scrutiny to the Fed was watered down. Where didthe pressure come from to let the Fed continue to operate in the same way it did before the crisis--a crisis the Fed helped foster?:

Atleast half a dozen Obama administration officials joined the blitz,including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner—a former Fed official—andRahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff. Administration aidescredited Mr. Dodd with pushing back against the original amendment anddeveloping an acceptable alternative.

New York Fed PresidentWilliam Dudley also advocated to scale back the scope of the auditing.He was among those arguing that ongoing reviews of the Fed's regularlending to financial institutions would stigmatize the program andcripple the Fed's role as the nation's lender of last resort.

"Sherrod Brown also lead an effort to put some caps on the size offinancial institutions. His effort was defeated because almost half ofhis own party sided with the Republicans, protecting the bloated sizeof an industry that should be cut back:

The Senatebeat back another amendment with populist tinges, defeating 61-33 aprovision that would have put strict caps on the size of the nation'sbanks. Offered by a bloc of liberal Democrats, it would have capped at10% the limit on the nation's total insured deposits any single bankholding company could carry. It would have also set a 6% leverage limitfor banks and capped their non-deposit liabilities at 2% of U.S. grossdomestic product.

"If you look at the Democratswho voted against the caps, many of them are awash in financialservices legalized corruption (read: campaign contributions)."

Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake says Bernie Sanders helped Obama protect the financial mandarins from effective oversight.

"...the White House prevailed upon Bernie Sanders to limit the audit to only going back to 2007, and Bernie complied. 

"What does that mean?  Scarecrow:

" 'The key is not when they audit, it’swhat the (sic) get to audit. They’ve excluded the workings of the OpenMarkets Committee where the decisions were made.

'.....So we’ll get an accounting of how much looting occurred by (sic) notnecessarily learn how the looting occurred or who designed it orcovered it up.' "

"As Michael Whitney said, Bernie 'held out longer than when he screwed us on public option.' I guess that’s progress."

Thisconfirms that Obama and his administration are for the financialelites' interests not for the people and not for the common good....andthere are no real progressives on Capitol Hill.